ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how risk estimates become enacted by patrol units in their work practices. It places predictive policing within larger trajectories of patrol techniques and particularly within the conflict between an occupational culture of discretion on the one hand and aspirations of managerialism and micromanagement of police work on the other. Vis-à-vis the entrenched conflict between “craft” and “science”, the narrow spatial and temporal parameters for targeted patrolling in predictive policing have the potential to favor rationalization over professional experience and intuition. However, as police departments have virtually no possibility to track and monitor patrol units, they need to convince patrol officers of the meaningfulness of algorithmically produced risk. Eventually, the chapter explores how the notion of criminal futures impacts the behavior of patrol officers. While the logic of the patrol is generally geared toward the production of deviance and suspicion as a function of the (mis)fit between persons and their surroundings, there is reason to believe that predictive policing might reinforce already existing concerns in patrolling such as racism, discrimination, or spatial prejudice.
