6 - Automation, Actuarial Identity, and Law Enforcement Informatics

Summary

Automated profiling, predictive analytics, and data mining represent the extension of nineteenth-century statistical models through the lens of computation. Algorithmic pattern matching also has origins in supermarket management, as well as the discipline of operations research that developed through the Vietnam War. When applied to law enforcement, policing, and criminal justice, this has led to a plethora of systems used by governments, typically developed by private companies, used for intelligence, predictive policing, and criminal justice risk assessments. This chapter argues that the establishment and proliferation of these tools has cemented the primacy of statistical knowledge systems as the primary systems of evaluation by which individuals are interpreted and known by states.