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Call for Papers
AGOPOL ONLINE CONFERENCE
Algorithmic Governance and Cultures of Policing (2)
Diffusion of Policing in the Algorithmic Society
November 18, 2022 – 09:00 – 18:00 Oslo time / Online event
Keynote Speakers
Ignas Kalpokas
LCC International University, Lithuania
Lauren Waardenburg
IÉSEG School of Management
Event organized by: Veronika Nagy, Ella Paneyakh & Tereza Østbø Kuldova
Policing practices have arrived at a new stage of digital transition in late modern societies. The tasks of maintaining social order and public safety are gradually being extended from traditional crime control and investigation measures towards invasive prevention strategies across many segments of society and everyday lives, spanning social, economic, and even environmental issues. Traditional policing actors are losing their legitimacy and monopoly on crime control, while new providers of security and intelligence services proliferate. This fragmentation and diffusion of policing, along with the shift towards pre-emption, generates both a culture of responsibilization and new opportunities for state-corporate collaborations in and outside of the scope of traditional security governance. Certain policing functions are being gradually taken over by civic and state agencies responsible for licensing, maintenance of registries and databases, while others are directly delegated via regulation to private sector actors, in-house corporate security, civil society organizations and diverse public bodies beyond traditional law enforcement (Kuldova, 2022). Hence, diverse actors become plugged into networks of intelligence work (Ben Jaffel & Larsson, 2022) and into the logic of pre-crime and pre-emptive policing, often relying on the data-driven technologies (McCulloch & Wilson, 2016). At the same time, law enforcement agencies also rely on data created and maintained within civic agencies and private corporations in their everyday policing work. With the growing dominance of nonstate and often also transnational actors in the security, intelligence and consultancy markets, digitization, AI, big data analytics and automation, have become the technosolutionist (Morozov, 2013) buzzwords and selling points – coveted by the public and private sector alike – promising efficient, transparent, and objective control and prevention measures. These buzzwords and the fear of missing out is not only used to justify the use and expansion of different identification, surveillance, authentication, verification, and monitoring technologies to fight criminal threats, but these buzzwords also promise seamless preventive and pre-emptive solutions for threats associated with specific target (high-risk) groups, situations, and locations. While these technologies are frequently developed with good intentions, they do and can contribute to criminalization and discrimination, further fueling the crisis of law enforcement on one hand, and societal mistrust and injustice on the other.
We invite papers that examine the dynamics of privatization, pluralization, and hybridization of what can be conceptualized as algorithmic policing. We welcome innovative, critical, original, and empirically grounded research across social sciences and humanities, including historical perspectives.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
· Algorithmic policing – theoretical and empirical approaches
· Privatization, pluralization, and hybridization of policing and the role of technology
· Corporate interests, public order, and securitization
· Diffusion of (pre-emptive) policing and intelligence functions
· Policing back: NGOs/online activist groups/investigative journalism
· Data governance, crime control, surveillance, and data sharing across organizations
· Automating decision-making, discretion and the limits of “human-in-the-loop”
· Imagining the futures of pre-crime and algorithmic policing
· Identification, authentication, verification, and the dynamics of due diligence as intelligence
· Human rights, freedoms, due process, and social justice in a pre-crime society
· Historical roots of algorithmic policing: planning and Fordism in management of law enforcement agencies
Timeline
Deadline for Abstracts: October 10, 2022
Notification of Acceptance: October 20, 2022
Please include:
· The name and contact information of the author(s), along with a brief bio.
· The title of the proposed contribution.
· An abstract (max 300 words) and 4-7 keywords
Feel free to contact the organizers beforehand.
We plan to publish an edited volume, based on this and our previous AGOPOL workshops. A separate call for submissions will be issued in November, with deadline for abstracts by 15th of December and deadline for 1st drafts by 15th of May 2023. You may indicate whether you would be interested in publishing with us when submitting your abstract.
Organizers
If prospective authors have more questions, please contact one of the organizers below.
Veronika Nagy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology in Utrecht (V.Nagy@uu.nl)
Ella Paneyakh, PhD, Researcher at the College of International and Public Relations Prague, Czech Republic (paneyakh@gmail.com )
Tereza Østbø Kuldova, PhD, Research Professor at the Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan University (tereza.kuldova@oslomet.no)
References
Ben Jaffel, H., & Larsson, S. (2022). Introduction: What’s the Problem with Intelligence Studies? Outlining a New Research Agenda on Contemporary Intelligence. In H. Ben Jaffel & S. Larsson (Eds.), Problematising Intelligence Studies: Towards a New Research Agenda (pp. 3-29). Routledge.
Kuldova, T. Ø. (2022). Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society. Palgrave Pivot.
McCulloch, J., & Wilson, D. (2016). Pre-crime: Pre-emption, precaution and the future. Routledge.
Morozov, E. (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here. Public Affairs.
This workshop is funded by The Research Council of Norway under project no. 313626 – Algorithmic Governance and Cultures of Policing: Comparative Perspectives from Norway, India, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa (AGOPOL).
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