The scope of criminal justice surveillance, from the police to the prisons, has expanded rapidly in recent decades. At the same time, the use of big data has spread across a range of fields, including finance, politics, health, and marketing. While law enforcement's use of big data is hotly contested, very little is known about how the police actually use it in daily operations and with what consequences. In Predict and Surveil, Sarah Brayne offers an unprecedented, inside look at how police use big data and new surveillance technologies, leveraging on-the-ground fieldwork with one of the most technologically advanced law enforcement agencies in the world-the Los Angeles Police Department. Drawing on original interviews and ethnographic observations from over two years of fieldwork with the LAPD, Brayne examines the causes and consequences of big data and algorithmic control. She reveals how the police use predictive analytics and new surveillance technologies to deploy resources, identify criminal suspects, and conduct investigations; how the adoption of big data analytics transforms police organizational practices; and how the police themselves respond to these new data-driven practices. While big data analytics has the potential to reduce bias, increase efficiency, and improve prediction accuracy, Brayne argues that it also reproduces and deepens existing patterns of inequality, threatens privacy, and challenges civil liberties. A groundbreaking examination of big data policing, this book challenges the way we think about the data-driven supervision law enforcement increasingly imposes upon civilians in the name of objectivity, transparency, and twenty-first century policing.

About the Author
Sarah Brayne is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining the faulty at UT-Austin, Brayne was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research. Brayne is the founder and director of the Texas Prison Education Initiative, a group of faculty and students who volunteer teach college classes in prisons throughout Texas.

Reviews
The book reads like an encyclopedia of big data policing, supported by extremely rich empirical data in each of the coherently organized eight chapters...Grounded in solid fieldwork, this inspiring book provides far more than a case study of the police use of big data surveillance in LAPD. It provokes us to reflect the relationship among technology, policing, and our society. At a time when big data is increasingly penetrating our daily life, this book serves as a wake up call for those who are obsessed with technological solutions for social problems. Anyone interested in policing, big data, surveillance, criminal justice, and social control will benefit from reading this book. * Chen Shi, Asian Journal of Criminology *
Predict and Surveil draws compellingly on the tools of ethnography to investigate the tools of big data. It reminds readers that data are inherently social and that ignoring the social processes through which data are collected, analyzed, and deployed risks extreme harms. * American Journal of Sociology *
The author got access to observe the Los Angeles Police Department in operation and to see how "predictive policing" that relies on large-scale data collection and analysis actually works in practice. She reports that it opens the door to profiling individuals and neighborhoods, building detailed files on people who are not suspected of a crime, avoiding accountability through the use of outside contractors, increasing bias in sentencing, searching without a warrant, and other backward steps. * World Wide Work *
excellent and timely book * Rachel Ferguson, The Library of Economics and Liberty *


Awards
Winner of Winner, 2022 Michael J. Hindelang Outstanding Book Award, American Society of Criminology Winner, 2022 Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Best Book Award, American Society of Criminology Honorable Mention, 2021 Herbert Jacob Book Prize, Law and Society Association Winner, 2021 Surveillance Studies Network Book Prize.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190684099
Author Sarah Brayne
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 440g
Dimensions(mm) 243mm * 163mm * 20mm