ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an overview of the existing literature on technology and police organizations and develops a conceptual and analytical understanding of technology as embedded within larger sociotechnical systems. From an organizational point of view, technological tools are likely to unfold a number of repercussions that go beyond the originally intended scope, including the possibility to cause active resistance as they unsettle long-standing routines and habits. In order to understand how such repercussions come about, we suggest to approach crime prediction technology as interwoven into social and organizational contexts and to highlight the relations that predictive policing forms with its environment. Eventually, the chapter introduces the concept of translation that allows us to trace the production and transmission of knowledge and power throughout police work. Drawing attention to the coordination and alignment of activities between different human and nonhuman elements that are necessary to make predictive policing work, translation addresses the question of how an algorithm eventually manages to move patrol officers into certain spaces for the sake of crime prevention.