Technology, crime and policing: The remaking of domestic life?

The role of technology in the commission of existing and novel crime types has been subject to considerable research and debate in recent decades, extending back at least to the emergence of analysis of cybercrime in the early 1990s. This chapter briefly updates these developments, arguing that the further reach of online technology into the domestic environment creates circumstances in which some forms of offending become normalised and routinised as they become embroiled into banal everyday practices. The relative ease of perpetrating abusive and threatening behaviour online, for example, is problematic not only in terms of investigating offences or the impact on victims but also because it risks transforming social relations more widely as routine and ordinary interactions – mediated via technology in our everyday activities – become immanent locales for offending. Similarly, the capacity of the Internet of Things to transform mundane household objects into sites of surveillance and control not only has the potential to cause new forms of crime and harm but also raises the possibility that social and familial relationships are themselves reimagined. Policing and offending through mundane domestic technology transform private social encounters into latent criminological events in ways that recast domestic moments into opportunities of risk and insecurity.