Surveillance

• Surveillance Defined

  The monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control. It involves observing people's behaviour to gather data, and using this data to regulate, manage or 'correct' their behaviour. It often involves the use of sophisticated technology to produce profiles of groups and individuals (e.g. CCTV, automated number plate recognition, electronic tagging).
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; 2 Different Forms of Punishment

  Sovereign Power- before the 19th Century, when the monarch had absolute power over people and their bodies. Control was asserted through inflicting disfiguring, visible punishment on the body. Punishment was a brutal, emotional spectacle, such as public execution.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; 2 Different Forms of Punishment

  Disciplinary Power- became dominant after the 19th Century. A new system of discipline which seeks to govern not only the body, but the mind or 'soul'- this is done through surveillance. Foucault claims that disciplinary power replaced sovereign power simply because surveillance is more efficient 'technology of power' to help further control.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison

  The Panopticon- a prison design where each prisoner's cell is visible to the guards, but the guards aren't visible to the prisoners. The prisoners then don't know if they're being watched- so they behave at all times as if they are being watched, and so the surveillance turns to self-surveillance, and discipline becomes self-discipline. Control then takes place 'inside' the prisoner, rather than physical inflictions outside the body.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; Aims

  Unlike sovereign power which aims to violently repress offenders, disciplinary power involves intensely monitoring the individual with a view to rehabilitate them. Foucault then sees experts as having an important role in applying their specialised knowledge to correct the individuals deviant behaviour. Arguing that the social sciences were born at the same time as modern prison, and careers such as psychologists.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; The 'Dispersal of Discipline'

  Arguing prison is just one of a range of institutions that have increasingly began to subject individuals to disciplinary power to induce conformity through self-surveillance. These include mental asylums, factories, workhouses and schools. Also, non-prison based social control practices (like community service orders) form part of the 'carceral archipelago'- a series of 'prison islands' spreading onto other institutions and wider society were professionals exercise surveillance over the population. DP has then dispersed.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; Criticisms

  The shift between SP to DP is less clear than suggested. He is accused of wrongly assuming that the expressive 'emotional' aspects of punishment disappear in modern society. He exaggerates the extent of control- Goffman shows that some inmates of prisons and mental hospitals are able to resist controls. He overestimates the power of surveillance to change behaviour- people instead become self-disciplining as they cannot be sure if they are being monitored.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; Criticisms

  CCTV Cameras- a form of panopticism, aware of their presence but unsure if they are recording. Norris reviewed studies worldwide and found that while CCTV reduced crimes in car parks, it had little to no effect on other crime- and may cause displacement. Showing they may not be effective in preventing crime.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; Criticisms

  CCTV Cameras- it assumes that criminals know they are being watched and care enough to be deterred by this. Gill and Loveday found that few robbers, shoplifters or fraudsters were put off by CCTV. Its real function may be ideological, falsely reassuring the public about their security even though it makes little difference to their risk of victimisation.
• Foucault: Birth of the Prison; Criticisms

  Koskela criticise CCTV as an extension of the 'male gaze'. As provides the male camera operator access to the women, instead of making them secure.
• Synoptic Surveillance

  Mathiesen- sees Foucault's account as only half of the story when applied to modern day society. Arguing that there is an increase in the top-down, centralised surveillance as Foucault describes, but there is also surveillance from below- where everybody watches everybody ('synopticon'). Thompson argues powerful groups such as politicians fear the media's surveillance may uncover damaging information about them, this then acts as a form of social control over their actions. Widespread mobile phone ownership means ordinary citizens can 'control the controllers'.
• Synoptic Surveillance- Criticisms

  However, McCahill argues occasional bottom-up scrutiny may be unable to reverse established 'hierarchies of surveillance'. For example, under anti-terrorism laws, police have powers to confiscate the cameras and mobile phones from 'citizen journalists'.
• Surveillant Assemblages

  Foucault's panoptic approach is based on the manipulation of physical bodies in confined spaces. However Haggerty and Ericson argue surveillance technologies now involve the manipulation of virtual objects (digital data) in the cyberspace. Until recently, surveillance technologies tended to be stand-alone, but there is now a trend towards combining different technologies (CCTV can be analysed using facial recognition software). Calling these combinations 'surveillant assemblages' where data from various technologies can create a 'data double' of the individual.
• Actuarial Justice & Risk Management

  Feeley and Simon- argue new 'technology of power' is emerging throughout the CJS, differing from Foucault's DP in 3 ways: focusing on groups rather than individuals; not interested in rehabilitating offenders but simply preventing them from offending; and it uses calculations of risk/'actuarial analysis' which calculates the statistical risk of particular events happening to particular groups (e.g. young drivers risk of an accident).
• Actuarial Justice & Risk Management- Surveillance

  Apply the idea of 'actuarial analysis' to surveillance and crime control. E.g. airport security screening checks are based on known offender 'risk factors'. Using information gathered about passengers (age, gender, religion, ethnicity) they can be profiled and given a risk score. Anyone scored above a given level is stopped, questioned and searched. Aims to predict and prevent future offending. Young claims it acts as a damage limitation strategy to reduce crime using statistical information to pick out likely offenders.
• Actuarial Justice & Risk Management- Social Sorting & Categorical Suspicion

  Lyon- purpose of 'social sorting' is to categorise people so they can be treated accordingly to the risk they pose. The effect of this is to placing entire social groups under 'categorical suspicion'- where people are placed under suspicion simply because they belong to a particular group. Lewis: 2010 West Midlands Police sought to introduce a counter-terrorism scheme were they placed sometimes covert cameras in suburbs of Birmingham- placing the whole community under suspicion.
• Actuarial Justice & Risk Management- Criticisms

  The danger of the self-fulfilling prophecy; profiles of typical offenders are often compiled using official statistics. If these appear to show that inner-city Black males are most likely to carry a weapon, then police using this data will be more likely to stop them than members of other groups- if they then find a weapon, it confirms their suspicions and causes a further alteration to the crime statistics- confirming the validity of their profiling.
• Labelling and Surveillance

  Ditton- in one major city centre CCTV system, the cameras were capable of zooming in on vehicle tax discs from hundreds of metres away to see whether the tax had expired. However, the system's managers didn't think this was a suitable use of technology and so the offences of motorists were left unchecked.
• Labelling and Surveillance

  Research shows that CCVT operators make discriminatory judgements about who among the thousands of potential 'suspects' appearing on their screens they should focus on. For example, Norris and Armstrong found that there is 'a massively disproportionate targeting' of young Black males for no other reason than their membership of that particular social group.
• Labelling and Surveillance

  Such judgements are based on the 'typifications' or stereotypical beliefs of those operating surveillance systems about who is likely to be an offender. A result of these beliefs is the self-fulfilling prophecy in which the criminialisation of of some groups is increased as they are targeted and their offences are revealed, while criminalisation of others is lessened because their offences are ignored.