Predicting risk: There is an 83% chance you are a criminal

• In Event: Political and Social Discourses about Crime and Justice Panel 3

Abstract

Recollections of a previous “golden age” of the “born criminal” have led to various attempts at re-imagining the changing nature and scope of criminal prediction, in turn leading to grim forecasts over the ubiquitous use of biotechnology and emphasizing the disastrous consequences for racialized persons. While these efforts have taken multiple forms and utilized different methods, they have historically been rooted in the idea of biodeterminism. This theory is generally understood to imply the universal and innate causal influence of one’s biological makeup, and minimizes (or flat out denies) the causal effects of environmental factors on individual (and social) behaviors. By tracing the history of biodeterminism and prediction, this presentation shows how new theoretical developments and applied technologies related to criminal prediction can be linked back to that same age-old underlying logic. Some of the most contemporary technological developments in this area include the use of artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms based on biometric and classification systems. Through an intersectional and structural-historical approach, and while theoretically engaging with themes in science and technology studies and critical race theory, I argue that similar to 19th-century physiognomy-based practices that attempted to predict future dangerousness and criminality (e.g. Lombroso), contemporary uses of biometric and predictive technologies, such as facial recognition software, have been rooted in a particular epistemic construction of the racialized body intrinsic to biodeterminism.

Author

• Jona Zyfi, University of Toronto