police

Can an algorithm predict crime? For several years, United States police forces have used software that is said to detect the locations of future crimes and offences. Of the many companies working in this field, Predpol is the name that is mentioned the most. But the success of this Californian start-up is more the result of marketing than any actual predictive effectiveness. The stance of this paper is twofold: first, a closer look from the seismologist who developed the algorithm reveals that this solution is far from having the predictive capacity boasted by its promoters. Second, the ethical problem with Predpol’s algorithm appears not to be police discrimination, as many feared, but rather the exclusion of a section of the population from the public security offering.

Whereas in France police forces deemed guilty of brutality have called for a demonstration against “anti-cop hatred,” in Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, the interaction between the police and protesters is marked by restraint and dialogue. The French police are resisting the new models of policing built around the concept of de-escalation. Olivier Fillieule and Fabien Jobard explain the reasons for this doctrinal retrenchment.

By tracing the history of surveillance in Europe and the Soviet bloc, the historian Sophie Cœuré explains the differences between democracies and dictatorships in this area. She also urges us to put things in perspective: We do not (yet) live in a “surveillance society.”

Michael Brown’s death and the Ferguson unrest signal a change in the condition of Black people in American society since 2000. This new condition is marked by the culmination of the penal state’s power over Black people’s lives, and an increase in socio-economic inequalities between races.

How can the police force be reformed in a way that puts an end to corruption and localism without cutting ties with citizens or losing legitimacy? This was the dilemma faced by the municipal government of New York City at the beginning of the 20^th century, before community policing was established between the 1970s and the 1990s.

A recent book and two documentaries shed new light on the repression of the demonstration by Algerians in Paris on 17 October 1961. By looking at these events in their long-term context, they show that the repression was not some sort of blunder. It was a “colonial massacre” perpetrated by the Paris police acting under the orders of their Prefect (Commissioner), the infamous Maurice Papon.

In their discussion of crime and the best ways to curb it, French politicians have relied on a crude opposition between “the culture of results” and neighborhood policing, a doctrine whose American origins they seem to ignore: for sociologist Fabien Jobard, more than creating a new force, reforming the police implies better coordinating between central and local authorities.

Are rioters different from the rest of the British people when it comes to their relationship with the police? Public debates have answered in the affirmative, and demanded more aggressive policing styles. But Bradford and Jackson argue that trust in the police might be as important in explaining rioting as it is in explaining compliance.

In the backdrop of the “war” between drug cartels and violence escalation in Mexico, the gap between the police and society is widening. Historian Pablo Piccato analyses the historical and geopolitical factors underlying the strong distrust of the police in Mexico.

Where does the high level of trust and legitimacy the British bobby enjoys come from? In this outstanding synthesis, two sociologists show that the police’s capacity to be trusted signals both their acceptance and their efficiency. On the contrary, when the police is feared, they are deprived of citizen’s involvement in the production of social order.