#technofix

[scanzen]

The City of Future by Technofix no. 274. Wind-up tin toy, made in U.S.-Zone Germany, c1948.

via vatera

[myresearcharchive]

Anti-Police Brutality Activists: Body Camera Guidelines No Panacea — and Might Make Things Worse - The Intercept

“Body cameras are already in use in some police departments across the country, and those departments have not changed their stated or actual missions," says an anonymous CopWatch activist.

[myresearcharchive]

The Hands Up 4 Justice App was created to video and audio record encounters with law enforcement.

[daisyocarl]

Technofix 282, Western Germany / Väst Tyskland 1960 Photo / Foto: lord enfield

[louxosenjoyables]

Technofix 282, Western Germany 1960. by lord enfield on Flickr.

[myresearcharchive]

Police use the "techno-fix" discourse to justify surveillance

Kearon 2012:

"...technology and technological expertise are mobilized as sources of legitimation for criminal justice practices to augment the increasingly fragmented, critical and theoretical forms of knowledge and expertise traditionally provided by academic criminology." (p. 3)

[myresearcharchive]

Surveillance as "Techno-Fix" and Threat to Legitimacy for Police

"...the period from the late 1980s onwards is [...] a period in which the traditional state monopoly of access to surveillance technologies has been eroded, with a growing range of widely accessible technologies that can be utilized by the public to carry out informal surveillance, which is often incorporated into narratives that are critical of criminal justice and other state agencies (Cottle, 2008; Greer and McLaughlin, 2010a, 2010b; Jenkins, 2009)." (p. 1-2)

Cottle S (2008) Reporting demonstrations: The changing media politics of dissent. Media, Culture & Society 30(6): 853–872.

Greer C and McLaughlin E (2010a) ‘Trial by media’: Policing, the 24–7 news mediasphere and the ‘politics of outrage’. Theoretical Criminology 15(1): 23–46.

Greer C and McLaughlin E (2010b) We predict a riot? Public order policing, new media environments and the rise of the citizen journalist. British Journal of Criminology 50(6): 1041–1059.

Jenkins H (2009) What happened before YouTube? In: Burgess J and Green J (eds) YouTube. Cambridge: Polity.

"Although much of the existing literature on technology and criminal justice focuses on the ability of surveillance technologies to contribute to the efficient and effective operation of agencies (Jacobson, 2004)..."

Jacobson M (2004) Reply to Kevin D Haggerty. Theoretical Criminology 8(2): 233–238.

"there is an emerging literature that critically examines criminal justice-related technologies in a social context, particularly in the case of surveillance (Andrejevic, 2007; Ditton, 2000; Hier, 2003; Marx, 2003; Norris and McCahill, 2006)."

Andrejevic M (2007) iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Lawrence, KA: Kansas University Press.

Ditton J (2000) Crime and the city: Public attitudes towards open-street CCTV in Glasgow. British Journal of Criminology 40: 692–709.

Hier S (2003) Probing the surveillant assemblage: On the dialectics of surveillance practices as processes of social control. Surveillance & Society 1(3): 399–411.

Marx G (2003) A tack in the shoe: Neutralizing and resisting the new surveillance. Journal of Social Issues 59(2): 369–390.

"Within these debates about the relationship between technology and criminal justice there have been several attempts to explore potential connections between use of technology by criminal justice agencies and attempts to bolster public confidence in the legitimacy and capabilities of those agencies (Haggerty, 2004b; Kinsella and McGarry, 2011; Neyroud and Disley, 2008)."

Haggerty K (2004b) Technology and crime policy: Reply to Michael Jacobson. Theoretical Criminology 8(4): 491–497.

Kinsella C and McGarry J (2011) Computer says no: Technology and accountability in policing traffic stops. Crime, Law and Social Change 55(2–3): 167–184.

Neyroud P and Disley E (2008) Technology and policing: Implications for fairness and legitimacy. Policing 2(2): 226–232.

"Several writers have argued that one of the reasons for the proliferation of criminal justice technologies has been attempts by criminal justice agencies to tap into firmly established cultural perceptions of the abilities of technology to deliver significant improvements in performance, efficiency and effectiveness (Haggerty, 2004a, 2004b; Nunn, 2001)."

Haggerty K (2004a) Displaced expertise: Three constraints on the policy relevance of criminological thought. Theoretical Criminology 8(2): 211–231.

"Haggerty (2004b) posits the emergence of a criminal justice ‘techno-fix’ in which technology and technological expertise are mobilized as sources of legitimation for criminal justice practices to augment the increasingly fragmented, critical and theoretical forms of knowledge and expertise traditionally provided by academic criminology."

"But within these debates there is also a small and emerging literature which is beginning to explore an alternative possibility – that technologies utilized both by criminal justice agencies and by the public in their interactions with criminal justice agencies have the potential to undermine public confidence in these agencies (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010b; Kinsella and McGarry, 2011; Neyroud and Disley, 2008; Wells, 2007, 2008, 2011; Wilson and Serisier, 2010)."

Wells H (2007) Risk, respectability and responsibilisation: Unintended driver responses to speed limit enforcement. Internet Journal of Criminology. Available at: http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Wells%20-%20Risk,%20Respectability %20and%20Responsibilisation.pdf.

Wells H (2008) The techno-fix versus the fair cop: Procedural (in)justice and automated speed limit enforcement. British Journal of Criminology 48(6): 798–817.

Wells H (2011) Risk and expertise in the speed limit enforcement debate: Challenges, adaptations and responses. Criminology and Criminal Justice 11(3): 225–241.

Wilson D and Serisier T (2010) Video activism and the ambiguities of counter-surveillance. Surveillance and Society 8(2): 166–180.

"It should be emphasized that this is still a largely unformed and speculative aspect of the debate on technologies and criminal justice agencies, and this current article is another speculative and theoretical intervention in this debate. While the possibility that technologies could inadvertently impact on public confidence in criminal justice agencies has been posited, there have been relatively few attempts to explore the precise manner in which these challenges to confidence may be engendered."

"three scenarios where there is apparent potential for surveillance technologies to generate a direct or indirect challenge to public confidence."

"the increasing availability of formal surveillance footage of misconduct by police and other agencies." "One of the unintended consequences of the expansion of formal systems of surveillance such as CCTV has been the increasing incidence of ‘official’ surveillance footage used to publicize and prosecute cases of alleged malpractice by police officers."

"the growing use by sections of the public of smart phones and other widely available image recording devices (often in conjunction with social networking websites) to carry out informal surveillance of criminal justice agencies and disseminate critical images and information." "..images that have triggered significant and highly visible public criticism of criminal justice agencies have not routinely been generated by formal technologies and networks of surveillance, but by technologies of informal surveillance utilized by members of the public."

"the deployment of speed cameras by local Safety Camera partnerships and the wider use of surveillance technologies by local government agencies to explore some of the forms in which technologically mediated interactions between the public and regulatory agencies can engender public critiques of the agencies involved."

Kearon, “Surveillance technologies and the crises of confidence in regulatory agencies”. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 0(0) 1–16

[evokit-notes]

Which government would not be enticed by the technofix to beat all technofixes? Think about it: no need to take on powerful fossil fuel companies, no need to tax petrol and electricity, no need to ask consumers to change their lifestyles.