Climate change is now considered more than just an environmental issue, with far-reaching effects for society at large. While the exact implications of climate change for policing practice are still unknown, over the past two decades criminologists have anticipated that climate change will have a number of effects that will result in compromised safety and security. This article is informed by the outcome of a co-creation workshop with 16 practitioners and scholars of diverse backgrounds based in The Netherlands, who sought to conceptualize and systematize the existing knowledge on how climate change will most likely impact the professional practice of the Dutch (or any other) police. These challenges, with varying degrees of intensity, are observable at three main levels: the societal, organizational, and individual level. These levels cannot be separated neatly in practice but we use them as a structuring device, and to illustrate how dynamics on one level impact the others. This article aims to establish the precepts necessary to consider when exploring the intersection between climate change and policing. We conclude that much still needs to be done to ensure that the implications of climate change and the subject of policing are better aligned, and that climate change is recognized as an immediate challenge experienced on the ground and not treated as a distant, intangible phenomenon with possible future impacts. This starts with creating awareness about the possible ways in which it is already impacting the functioning of policing organizations, as well as their longer-term repercussions.
MULTIFILE
This chapter discusses the artistic project Future Wake (2021) by Ahnjili Zhuparris and Tim van Ommeren that examines predictive policing. By shifting the focus from possible future crime offenders to possible future victims of fatal police encounters, using visual and affective means rather than expert knowledge and statistics, the artwork activates critical reflection on the politics and logics of predictive policing systems. The chapter first situates predictive policing in a context of securitization, and discusses how it enhances structures of discrimination. In the second part, Wevers interviews artist Zhuparris about the aims of Future Wake, discussing the artistic and technical process of creating the project, the politics of data, and the role of art in critical discussion on surveillance and AI.
DOCUMENT
This paper proposes and showcases a methodology to develop an observational behavior assessment instrument to assess psychological competencies of police officers. We outline a step-by-step methodology for police organizations to measure and evaluate behavior in a meaningful way to assess these competencies. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a practical example. We posit that direct behavioral observation can be key in measuring the expression of psychological competence in practice, and that psychological competence in practice is what police organizations should care about. We hope this paper offers police organizations a methodology to perform scientifically informed observational behavior assessment of their police officers’ psychological competencies and inspires additional research efforts into this important area.
MULTIFILE
Digital technologies in public spaces have become more prescient, capable, and invisible. As a result, the need to explain and mediate these technologies has become more urgent. Current processes for designing digital trust interaction protocols, visual languages, and interfaces for the urban environment have been dominated by governing actors: policing, government, and tech-companies. When communities are involved in the design process, their participation is limited to formats these organisations prescribe. By default, these designs exclude the lived technological experiences of communities that use the built environment. The outcome is a lopsided appraisal of digital trust, and designs that are insufficiently transparent and equitable– and as a result, not understood and embraced by the communities who must use them. This design-research aims to develop prototypes that include how urban interactive technologies are ‘lived’ in the spaces where they are implemented. These experiences will be teased-out through site-specific aesthetic and performative actions, which in turn inform the design process. The envisioned contribution includes ways of ’doing’ to the field of situated design, and concrete prototypes for alternative digital trust protocols, visual languages, and interfaces. By flipping the current approach on its head, this research argues that the practical and ethical departure points for addressing digital ‘trust deficits’ are already within the diverse communities who use the built environment.
