ABSTRACT
The idea that criminal or violent behaviours can be detected and/or prevented through surveillance practices emerges with modern law enforcement and police.1 From the very beginning of the modern fight against crime, surveillance practices have received mixed responses from the public, since such practices were always considered to be related to an illegitimate secrecy.2
Surveillance practices have developed a long way since these early days and contemporary law enforcement officials see a concept of ‘predictive policing’ on the horizon.3 This would enable crime prevention through prediction based on computer algorithms, processing historical and real-time data from surveillance systems and other sources. Looking at the history of surveillance and crime prevention or detection, the co-evolution of
technological development and law enforcement strategies becomes obvious. Most new technologies, developed for different applications, can be used for surveillance and fighting crime one way or the other: from DNA to sensor technologies to advanced data processing technologies such as data mining, each technological innovation is prone to function creep into the field of law enforcement and security work, and each new wave of surveillance technology receives mixed responses in public discourse. Whereas the critics taking a rights perspective point to the dangers that go along with new surveillance practices (such as loss of privacy, encompassing control, social sorting, loss of civil liberties, etc.), the supporters take a threatbased position, pointing to the damage caused by criminal or terrorist activities and the need to do whatever is technologically possible to prevent, detect or deter such activities. Since the operational activities of law enforcement and police work are not openly discussed
and typically are hidden from the general public, it is often difficult to assess the effects and effectiveness of individual strategies applied to detect and prevent criminal or terrorist acts. So in a first part of what follows, we will briefly address key issues arising when talking about crime and crime prevention. The same is true for the surveillance practices and the technologies applied in the field of law enforcement and detection. We will address these conceptual issues in more detail below.
