ABSTRACT
This chapter traces how humans and digital objects together create new rationalities and agencies that it is important to unpack and examine critically. It highlights the multiplicities of rationales that appear in this co-construction of crime predictions. The chapter explores the particularities of the digital in predictive policing and the ways in which data, processes and humans together create new policing rationalities. The collaboration and competition between digital data, processing tools, and humans is explored in relation to three consecutive steps in predictive policing: the conceptualization of data, data selection and preparation, as well as data processing and the outputs produced. The co-construction of crime predictions begins long before the actual prediction software is put to use. It starts with the characteristics of digital data and how these are understood by their users. The data selection process being informed by different theories about what kind of information is most likely to reveal crime patterns.
