ABSTRACT
‘Predictive policing’ has emerged as the key buzz term of contemporary policing. Engaging predictive analytics drawn from such diverse domains as disaster prediction, combat situations and supply-chain management, predictive policing extends the promise of anticipating crime prior to its actualisation. Marketing materials are replete with strident claims of future crimes that are calculable, knowable and targetable before they transpire. Additionally, predictive policing is promoted as the ideal policing technology for a climate of fiscal austerity, with the capacity to direct police operations in a cost-effective fashion – removing the necessity for “costly” measures such as community engagement. This chapter interrogates the claims of predictive policing, contextualising them against the longer trajectory of information technology within police organisations. While acknowledging that the outcomes of predictive policing are likely to be highly contingent, both organisationally and geographically, it is argued that it represents a potentially disturbing trend in contemporary policing. Patterns of discriminatory policing and their attendant militaristic logics may well escalate, while simultaneously remaining obscured beneath the sheen of algorithmic calculation.
