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Police-community racial asymmetry and the use of surveillance technology
Hendrix, J., Taniguchi, T., Strom, K., Barrick, K., & Johnson, N. (2018). The eyes of law enforcement in the new panopticon: Police-community racial asymmetry and the use of surveillance technology. Surveillance & Society, 16(1), 53-68. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v16i1.6709
This study examines the
relationship between police-community racial asymmetry and the use of
surveillance technology by local law enforcement. The data come from a
nationally representative survey of law enforcement agencies, with
supplementary information provided by the Law Enforcement Management and
Administrative Statistics Survey, the Census, and the Uniform Crime Reports.
Results indicate that police departments that underrepresent African Americans
in the community are more likely to use or plan to implement surveillance
technology, controlling for a range of agency- and contextual-level factors.
One potential explanation for these findings is that surveillance technology
operates as a form of social control that is differentially applied to racial minorities
to manage what is perceived to be a greater proclivity toward criminal
behavior. The implications of these findings are discussed.