Digital Criminology: Control and organized chaos in a ‘digital world’

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

This panel contributes to innovative crime and justice scholarship within an emerging field of ‘digital criminology’. Instead of positioning technology as separate from society more broadly, digital criminology takes up the idea that all technologies are embedded in social structures and that all societies are embedded in technological infrastructures. More specifically, digital criminology examines the incorporation of digital technologies, media, and networks in our everyday lives, including in crime control, forensic science, and criminal justice (Stratton, Powell and Cameron, 2018; Wood, 2020; Kaufmann and Lomell forthcoming, Van Brakel and Govaerts, forthcoming). This digitalization implies a more significant role for non-state actors, from increasingly powerful private actors to novel forms of political resistance, and demands new understandings of concepts such as control, chaos, harm, and resistance. This panel aims to address these themes concerning the use of bodycams by police, surveillance used for environmental crime prevention, genetic forensic evidence, programmable DNA, and criminalization of online activities challenging authoritarian regimes.

Subtopic

• Topic 5: Social Control and Criminal Justice / Criminal Policy, Criminalization, Policy of Criminal Sanctions (Criminal Law Making Policy WG)

Chair

• Rosamunde Van Brakel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Individual Presentations

• On digital realties and offline shackles - Amr Marzouk, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• DNA as forensic evidence and a commodity in the light of cultural criminology - Silje Bakken, University of Oslo; Mareile Kaufmann, University of Oslo

• Surveillance or safeguard? Police officers’ perceptions and expectations on the use of bodycams - Julie Caluwaerts, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Lucas Melgaço, Associate Professor -VUB

• Coding life: The ethics and perils of programmable DNA - Stefano Mazzilli Daechsel, University of Oslo

• Rhizomatic dreams and nightmares: An exploration of rhizomatic harms and imaginaries of environmental surveillance for crime control - Rosamunde Van Brakel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel