This presentation adopts a genealogical approach, tracing the emergence of police ‘platformization’ in the United States: the movement of the technical infrastructures of police agencies to cloud-based information architectures that infuse police organizations and are imagined as suturing disparate data streams together into seamless flows. The seminar will reflect upon the importance of pursuing a ‘history of the present’ of police digitalization, and by implication societal digitalization more broadly.
About the speaker
Dean Wilson is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Sussex. His research interests are policing, historical criminology, surveillance, and security. Dean is the author (with Professor Jude McCulloch) of Pre-Crime: Pre-emption, Precaution and the Future, and has recently published a series of articles examining the historical emergence of police digitalization. He was also previously a Co-Director (2015-2021) and Treasurer (2011-2024) of the Surveillance Studies Network.
