The Risks of Risk Aversion: Trajectories of Automation in Policing

Technology integration into state security apparatuses has prompted questions about the risks of ‘big data’ and its effects on society. Examining the impact of mechanisation, the book chapter extrapolates the possible futures of law enforcement in technological societies. Neoliberalism in modern policing, technological determinism, the risk society, abstract systems of trust and legitimacy, and the recent push towards evidence-based practice, are explored to underscore the possible drivers and consequences of modernity. The potential and scope of mechanisation, prominently artificial intelligence (AI) is presented with emphasis on its limitations and vulnerability to abuse by state actors, idealistic expectations surrounding its capacity to reduce or even eliminate human error, racism, sexism, and prejudice from the criminal justice system, as well as the dangers of such technologies augmenting historic and existing fallacies within the same.