Globalization of Quantitative Policing: Between Management and Statactivism

Abstract

Information policing seems to be pervading public security police all around the world. This review asks whether this appellation describes a homogeneous set of phenomena. Compstat was the first program to massively computerize policing. The literature reviewed here follows its fate in the United States and, on a global scale, in France, where the program was imported. The review successively discusses the perspective of managers who were favorable to the program and that of “statactivists,” activists who use statistics, who were opposed to it. Despite the many differences intervened during the importation process, especially in the balance of expertise and publicity, some points seem to be common to both contexts, such as the building of a computer infrastructure, a specific use of the data, and the constructive tensions between the police institution and its critics.

What's New with Numbers? Sociological Approaches to the Study of Quantification

“…Today, the French school is central in studies of relations between quantification and valuation, and measure and worth (Adkins & Lury 2012, Berthoin Antal et al 2015, Fourcade 2011, Karpik 2010, Lamont 2012, Vatin 2013. It has also been influential in studies that examine how forms of quantification have proliferated under financial capitalism and various neoliberal regimes (Chiapello & Walter 2016, Lengwiler 2016, Supiot 2015, including crime statistics (Didier 2018), benchmarking (Bruno & Didier 2013, and political activism (Bruno et al 2014). Where earlier scholarship emphasized the depiction of features of the state (e.g., crime statistics), new scholarship examines how numbers are used to manage the state (e.g., deploy police based on current crime locations) (Didier 2018).…”

“…Recent work on statactivism explains the use of statistics by political activists, highlighting the double role of statistics in representing and criticizing reality (Bruno & Didier 2013, Bruno et al 2014, Didier 2018. These studies examine how activists use statistics as a means of emancipation in the collective organization of resistance, for instance, to criticize and influence the police (Didier 2018), challenge national price indices (Samuel 2014), or fight for gender equality (De Rosa 2014). In the United Kingdom in 1975, the Radical Statistics Group (Radstats) was founded to create awareness of the actual and potential misuse of statistics within and outside of government.…”

Business Ethics and Quantification: Towards an Ethics of Numbers

“…Beyond state formation, gathering and tracking statistics has been instrumental to state functioning, from account-keeping to public health to economic growth (Bruno et al 2016 ). Policing, for instance, has been deeply transformed by statistical methods, while the question of how numbers should be used and by whom has been an area of intense contestation (Didier 2018 ). Quantified surveillance has made it possible to centralize power and govern at a distance (Espeland and Stevens 2019 ).…”

“…Based on this idea, a second set of research questions involves the ethics of struggle around who measures or how a social phenomenon is measured. Already, an emerging literature on “statactivism” is beginning to take seriously the idea of counter-statistics or inclusion of less-represented groups in the quantification process (e.g., Didier 2018 ; Bruno et al 2014a , b ). Some work has begun to try to map out who are or are not represented by scale development (e.g., Ottaviani 2015 ) and how scales relate to domination (e.g., Wilson et al 2020 ) as well as examining alternative quantifications of constructs such as well-being (Bache 2019 ; Alexandrova and Haybron 2016 ).…”

Just Look at the Numbers: A Case Study on Quantification in Corporate Environmental Disclosures

“…In fact, rankings seem especially useful in areas such as environmental reporting, where quantification is at least superficially voluntary as the regulatory power of state does not extend to the domain of reporting. In such regulatory capitalism (Braithwaite 2008), various NGOs can assume the role of mediators and interpreters of environmental rankings (Chelli and Gendron 2013), but which at the same time provides opportunities to contest the numbers (Didier 2018). Mau (2019, p. 173) asserts this as the 'paradoxical simultaneous status consolidation and status fluidity by rankings'.…”