surveillance

• surveillance


  the monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control
• Foucault


  2 forms of punishment

  sovereign power

  disciplinary power
• sovereign power


  power during period before 19th century

  monarch has absolute power

  punishment was brutal, limb amputations, execution
• disciplinary power


  new form of control from 19th century

  seeks to govern not just body but the mind

  does this through surveillance and monitoring

  aims to correct, treat, rehabilitate

  e.g panopticon
• Panopticon


  design for a prison in which each prisoner in their own cell is visible to the prisoners

  prisoners are unaware when they are being watched

  turns into self-surveillance
• criticisms of Foucault


  • goffman- argues Foucault exaggerates extent of control- prisoners can resist control
  • cctv as a form of panoticism is not always effective
  • feminists criticise CCTV as it is just an extension of the male gaze - does not secure women
• Mathiesen


  Synoptic surveillance

  everybody watches everybody

  e.g media , dash cams, cameras mounted on helmets, mobiles
• feeley and Simon - actuarial justice and risk management

  • differ from foucaults disciplinary power
  • apply ideas of actuarial analysis to surveillance and crime
  • e.g airport screening checks are based on known offender 'risk factors', use info from passengers such as age, sex to profile them and give them a risk score
  • those with a high risk score are stopped and searched
• example of categorical suspicion

  
  

  Lewis - found that in 2010 West Midlands police sought to introduce a counter-terrorism scheme to surround two mainly Muslim suburbs of Birmingham with about 150 ANPR cameras, some of them covert, thereby placing whole communities under suspicion
• gary marx


  categorical suspicion

  people are placed under suspicion of wrongdoing simply because they belong to a particular group
• surveillance theorists

  • Foucault
  • mathiesen
  • haggerty and Ericson
  • feeley and Simon
  • gary Marx
  • Noris and Armstrong
• haggerty and ericson - surveillance assemblages

  • argue surveillance technologies now involve manipulation of digital data in cyberspace
  • e.g CCTV can be analysed using facial recognition
  • suggest we are now moving towards a world in which data from different technologies can be combined to create 'data trouble'
  • increasingly more difficult for criminals to conceal crimes
• noris and Armstrong - labelling and surveillance

  • research shows CCTV operators make discriminatory judgements of potential suspects
  • found there is a disproportionate targeting of young black males
• actuarial analysis


  concept from the insurance industry

  calculates the statistical risk of particular events happening to particular groups

  e.g young drivers risk of having an accident
• feeley and Simon - pt 2 actuarial justice and risk management

  • seeks to predict and prevent future offending
  • does this by applying surveillance techniques to identify, classify and manage groups by levels of dangerousness
  • Young argues actuarial justice is strategy to reduce crime by using statistics to pick out offenders
• a03 of actuarial justice

  • lead to labelling and self fulfilling prophesy
  • gary marx - leads to categorical suspicion in which people are placed under suspicion due to their particular group / stereotyped
  • leads to discrimination, racial bias
• examples of disciplinary power

  • panopticon prison
  • cctv
• examples of sovereign power

  • execution
  • limb amputations