Big Data, Crime and Social Control

"Data science is having profound effects on public and private life. However, thanks to a combination of technical complexity, proprietary privilege, and secretive state practice, both policy makers and the public remain largely in the dark about its uses and implications. This book offers desperately needed insights into the ways that Big Data analytics are being developed and applied in the domains of law enforcement, crime control and criminal justice. Alex Završnik has compiled a critically important collection of essays that shed light on the profound changes afoot in the way societies define, investigate, prosecute, and punish crime and criminality. These scholars are sounding the alarm about the major challenges that Big Data poses to civil rights and social justice, unpacking some of the ways that new systems of data analytics are undermining legal concepts and tenets that are fundamental to democratic governance. The volume covers considerable ground: how predictive policing and algorithmic sentencing exacerbate racial and class-based discrimination; how data analytics not only fails to prevent but enables financial crimes and tax evasion among economic elites; how "informed consent" morphs into "forced consent" with ubiquitous data tracking; how automated policing pushes toward total information capture; how different legal concepts of privacy have shaped the possibilities of judicial oversight of mass data collection; how international law addresses cyber-espionage; and more. It is a must-read for anyone concerned with how Big Data and predictive analytics are disrupting and destabilizing the institutions and ideals of democracy."

– Kelly Gates, Department of Communication and Science Studies Program, University of California San Diego, USA