Infrastructure shortcuts: the private cloud infrastructure of data-driven policing and its political consequences

Marciniak, Daniel

Abstract

Described interchangeably as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data, recent years have seen an increasing move towards the use of automated forms of data analysis and scoring mobilised to reorganise and “improve” policing. One form of this is area-based predictive policing, which has received significant attention in public discourse and is the focus of this chapter. This chapter draws on ethnographic interviews with technology leads in UK and US police forces and companies developing predictive policing solutions, as well as visits to industry events. It engages with the often invisible “infrastructure work” of iterative technological innovation and technical maintenance. With police data increasingly hosted on cloud services and police departments lacking technical expertise, software companies’ ready-made analytical tools shape how police understand and make use of the data they produce. The chapter problematises the role of private companies in the ongoing normative decision-making entangled with the infrastructure work they provide.

Citation

Marciniak, D. (2024). Infrastructure shortcuts: the private cloud infrastructure of data-driven policing and its political consequences. In M. Avis, D. Marciniak, & M. Sapignoli (Eds.), States of Surveillance. Ethnographies of New Technologies in Policing and Justice (143-163). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003412908-10

• Online Publication Date: Oct 7, 2024
• Publication Date: Oct 7, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jun 17, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 9, 2024
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 143-163
• Series Title: Routledge Studies in Surveillance
• Book Title: States of Surveillance. Ethnographies of New Technologies in Policing and Justice
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9781032536118
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003412908-10
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4702500