There is widespread evidence of racial profiling by police forces all over the continent while issues of institutional racism are hardly addressed. Anti-immigrant policies which lead to increased control and checks on the streets and at borders further exacerbate the criminalization and disproportionate targeting of racialized communities. Meanwhile, counterterrorism programs legitimize far-reaching and intrusive surveillance projects that result in the over-policing and stigmatization of Muslims.
While data-driven policing—or, more simply, police tech—is still at an early phase of adoption across Europe, its deployments so far have had adverse effects on minority ethnic and marginalised communities. Members of these communities are treated as fodder for police tech experiments, left to shoulder the emotional, psychological, and material consequences of police tech mistakes, distortions, and mistreatment. Meanwhile state and private sectors make spurious claims of public benefit and public safety, driving the tech boosterism of the digital surveillance industry
Groups on the ground bear witness to the harms of police tech, but these experiences of racialized communities appear as afterthoughts in policy and public debates. Most spheres of policy and oversight addressing data-driven automation are limited by their exclusivity, featuring mostly expert groups who tend to overlook the specific harms and everyday realities of the communities most affected by the onset of data-driven policing. In addition, organizers lack the capacity to learn from other contexts and communities questioning the baseline assumptions, deployments, and outcomes of police tech.
In this context the Justice, Equity and Technology Project seeks to build a broader set of community-centred visions and strategies for confronting discriminatory technologies. We aim to abolish systemic injustice perpetuated by discriminatory technologies and envision a world where all people live the lives they value, free from exploitation, dispossession, and violence.
Combining a collective understanding of racialized criminalisation with insights about the incursion of new technologies into contemporary policing, we aim to build strategies and shift the narrative.