Analysing the multiple dimensions of predictive policing's techno-social harms. (17th December 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wood, Mark A.; Warren, Ian
• Is Part Of: Justice, power and resistance. Volume 5:Number 3(2022)
• Page Start: 208
• Page End: 226
• Publication Date: 2022-12-17
• Subjects: technology-harm relations -- policing -- predictive policing -- automated technologies; Social control -- Periodicals; Criminal justice, Administration of -- Periodicals; Criminals -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; Liberty -- Periodicals; 364.6
• DOI: 10.1332/NYHN8325
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2398-2764

Abstract

Abstract : This paper outlines and applies a framework for analysing how technologies can contribute to social harms at individual, institutional, and societal levels. This framework – which we term the technology-harm relations approach – synthesises the insights of postphenomenology and critical realism to detail how harms can emerge from direct human-technology relations (first-order harm relations), as well as the results of the results of human-technology relations (second-order harm relations). To apply this framework, we explore how, through first- and second-order harm relations, predictive policing algorithms might magnify harm through conventional law enforcement activity. We explain how first- and second-order harm relations are by-products of a system that currently generates harm through false ideals of objective, neutral, and non-discretionary enforcement, and that aims to promote consistency while at the same time eroding accountability for decisions utilising automated processes.