Reconceptualising the relationship between policing, surveillance technology, and democracy

Project Summary:

In liberal democracies, police legitimacy is traditionally seen as bifurcated, resting on appropriate oversight of police powers via state/legal mechanisms (top-down), and simultaneously deeply contingent on public approval of police practices (bottom-up). An under-recognised corollary is that police legitimacy acts as a fulcrum upon which the legitimacy of the state (and democratic processes) can hinge. Increasing police adoption of surveillance technology is creating unprecedented challenges to the legitimacy of democratic states by reshaping, in heterogenous and under-conceptualised ways, police and public perceptions of what the police are tasked with doing, what they need to know, and what accountability means in this context. Development of an evidence-based nonnormative conceptual framework to structure deliberative debate around these tensions is crucial. This collaboration will support large bids for an international project to develop this framework by scoping the top-down and bottom-up influences on trust/confidence in the  police and their impact on police/democratic legitimacy.

Visitor Biography:

 Justin Ellis is a senior lecturer in criminology at the School of Law and Justice at the University of Newcastle, Australia. As a digital criminologist, he interrogates the relationship between technology, identity and justice. A central focus of his program of research is police surveillance as a driver of criminalisation within marginalised communities, and its impact on public perceptions of police legitimacy. The importance of his intersectional research on the tension between police surveillance, and civilian sousveillance of police operations through bystander social media video is recognised through the global reach of his quality publication track record. In addition to over 20 publications in quality journals, he has authored two sole-authored monographs, and is a frequent writer for The Conversation. His 2021 monograph Policing Legitimacy: Social Media, Scandal and Sexual Citizenship (Springer 2021), analyses the impact of bystander social media video scrutiny on police, LGBTQIA+ rights, and police accountability. His 2023 monograph Representation, Resistance and the Digiqueer: Fighting for Recognition in Technocratic Times (Bristol University Press 2023) examines how mis- and disinformation, algorithmic discrimination, and digital platform accountability intersect with, and shape, individual and collective amplification of identity-based hate, and which has become one component in a broader push to undermine human rights-based approaches to democratic governance.