How Algorithms Inscribe the Understanding of Crime in Police Work

This research focuses on the consequences of the shift to data-driven work for daily police work. Our ongoing ethnographic field study of a team of police officers shows that predictive policing algorithms inscribe a different crime theory-in-use – i.e., the understanding of why crime occurs and how it should be prevented – that influences daily police work. Instead of having a social-environmental crime perspective, police officers are shifting attention towards features of the physical environment as explanations of why crime occurs. Our preliminary findings have implications for debates on the consequences of data analytics by showing how the different theory-in-use inscribed in algorithms influences traditional work practices.