Digital Criminology: Privatisation and Commercialisation

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

Big or small – private companies have become central to the ways in which digitalization changes law enforcement and crime control. This panel focuses on several key developments, including tensions between international tech companies and national digital sovereignty in the use of data processing platforms for law enforcement. It also traces the commercialization of fields as different as genome analysis for police investigation or judicial data analysis. Here, the data economy, especially access to information, actively shapes legal and law enforcement institutions. While a strong influence of private actors stands central, others find that it is not the commercial sector alone that drives, for example, video surveillance forward.


This panel is part of collection of digital criminology panels at EUROCRIM2025 and contributes to innovative crime and justice scholarship within the 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 infrastructures in criminological settings (Stratton, Powell and Cameron, 2018; Wood, 2020; Kaufmann and Lomell 2025, Van Brakel and Govaerts, 2025).

Subtopic

• Topic 5: Social Control and Criminal Justice / Policing and Law enforcement (Policing WG)

Chair

• Ales Zavrsnik, Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law University of Ljubljana

Individual Presentations

• Between operational requirements and the desire for national digital sovereignty – The debate on the regulation of the platformization of Germany’s police - Simon Egbert, Bielefeld University

• The Commercial Dynamics of Direct-to-consumer Genome Testing and Law Enforcement Cooperation - Silje Bakken, University of Oslo; Mareile Kaufmann, University of Oslo

• The Evolving Data Economy in Judicial Settings: Access, Privilege, and Monetisation - Ales Zavrsnik, Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law University of Ljubljana

• Speaking into existence: On the performativity and symbolism of video surveillance in the quest towards smartness - Stephanie Garaglia, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Lucas Melgaço, Associate Professor -VUB; Rosamunde Van Brakel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel