Digital Criminology: Bureaucracy, Algocracy and Democracy

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

This panel will explore how digital technologies, platforms, algorithms and computing infrastructures (re) shape crime control. Four papers give insights into a variety of digital practices including those of street-level bureaucrats and higher-level public organizations exercising crime control. Empirical research on practices of law enforcement organisations in several European countries and EUROPOL will serve as the bases for the different analyses and discussions about the digitalization of bureaucracy and democratic values.
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

• Rosamunde Van Brakel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Individual Presentations

• Towards a theory of bureaucracy in the AI Age: AI-Level Bureaucrats & the Rise of Dual Experts - Sophie Maeva Bettex, ETH Zürich

• Digitalisation of police in Belgium - Sarah Van Praet, National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC); Carrol Tange, National Institute for Criminology and Criminalistics (Belgium); Bertrand Renard, National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC-INCC)

• The appraisal machine. Archival frictions in data-driven European security - Megan Hadasa Leal Causton, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Rocco Bellanova, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Lucas Melgaço, Associate Professor -VUB