The Routledge Handbook of Technology, Crime and Justice

M. R. McGuire, Thomas Holt, M. R. McGuire, Thomas Holt, M. R. McGuire, Thomas J. Holt

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317590750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Technology has become increasingly important to both the function and our understanding of the justice process. Many forms of criminal behaviour are highly dependent upon technology, and crime control has become a predominantly technologically driven process – one where 'traditional' technological aids such as fingerprinting or blood sample analysis are supplemented by a dizzying array of tools and techniques including surveillance devices and DNA profiling.

This book offers the first comprehensive and holistic overview of global research on technology, crime and justice. It is divided into five parts, each corresponding with the key stages of the offending and justice process:

• Part I addresses the current conceptual understanding of technology within academia and the criminal justice system;
• Part II gives a comprehensive overview of the current relations between technology and criminal behaviour;
• Part III explores the current technologies within crime control and the ways in which technology underpins contemporary formal and informal social control;
• Part IV sets out some of the fundamental impacts technology is now having upon the judicial process;
• Part V reveals the emerging technologies for crime, control and justice and considers the extent to which new technology can be effectively regulated.

This landmark collection will be essential reading for academics, students and theorists within criminology, sociology, law, engineering and technology, and computer science, as well as practitioners and professionals working within and around the criminal justice system.

Part I
Technology, crime and justice

Theory and history

1
Theorizing technology and its role in crime and law enforcement

Philip Brey

1. Introduction

Virtually any human practice or institution that exists in society has been seriously affected by the use of technology. However, the role of technology in society is little understood. Decision-making processes concerning technology are often driven by false and naïve images of technology and its interaction with society. A sound understanding of technology and its role in human practices and institutions requires specialist knowledge. Such knowledge is developed in several fields in the social sciences and humanities, including science and technology studies (STS), philosophy of technology, ergonomics, management of technology, and others. In this chapter, I will review these fields, with particular reference to approaches and theories in STS and the philosophy of technology, and I will report on their main findings regarding the role of technology in society. This review will be carried out in Section 2.

A second aim of this chapter is to introduce a particular theory of technology and to apply it to an analysis of the role of technology in crime and law enforcement. The theory in question, extension theory, provides a powerful perspective for understanding the role of technology in society, in particular the powers that technological artifacts give to their users (individuals, groups and organizations) and how these powers help them further their aims. After introducing extension theory in Section 3, I will use it in an analysis of the use of technology in crime and law enforcement in Section 4. This analysis intends to show how new technologies have extended the powers of both criminals and law enforcement, and how these new powers play out against each other. The chapter ends with a concluding section that reviews the chapter’s main findings.

2. Understanding technology

Technology is a key driver of social change. The industrial revolution and the technologies it has yielded have radically transformed a great number of societies. Modern societies are shaped by modern technology, which has caused revolutionary changes in work, the economy, social organization and the way of life. The ever increasing pace of technological innovation promises more such changes for the future. Because of the profoundly influential role of technology in every sector and institution of society, whether it is healthcare, education, government, law, business, the arts, or any other, an adequate understanding of these sectors nowadays requires an understanding of the role and impact on them of technology.

Several academic fields have emerged to study technology and its role in society, including the nature of technology, its design, development, and historical evolution, its dependence on social and economic developments, its impact on individuals, society, and the environment, and the governance of technology. Most centrally, technology is studied in the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS), sometimes also called science, technology and innovation studies (STIS) (Hackett et al. 2007; Sismondo 2009). This field aims to study the evolution of the institutions and practices of science and technology in society, their impacts on society, and their governance and regulation. STS emerged in the 1970s, and has established itself as a field with departments and programs around the world, as well as specialized conferences and journals.

STS is a loosely knit field, with a wide variety of contributing disciplines, such as sociology, history, cultural studies, anthropology, policy studies, urban studies and economics. It is fair to say, however, that it is dominated by sociological, historical and governance approaches. Sociological approaches are concerned with an understanding of institutions, modes of organization and practices of science and technology, and their interactions with other sectors of society. Historical approaches study the historical development of science and technology and the social context in which its institutions and actors operated.¹ Governance approaches, finally, investigate how science and technology and its impacts can be governed or managed in society, by government agencies as well as by the private sector and other relevant actors (Smits et al. 2010).

Several other fields exist that study some aspect or dimension of technology and its role in society. They are either closely associated with STS, or have developed along a largely separate trajectory. They include, amongst others, economics of technology, ergonomics, material culture studies, internet psychology, design studies, technology management, innovation management, and the philosophy of technology. I will now further introduce one of these fields, the philosophy of technology. The philosophy of technology is a field that, next to STS, aims to develop theories of technology and society of a general nature. It is also the source of the theoretical perspective on technology that I will be developing in Sections 3 and 4 of this chapter.

The philosophy of technology emerged in the course of the twentieth century, largely as a response to the major impacts of technology on society during that century, many of them perceived to be negative by philosophers. These include the unprecedented destruction and carnage during the First and Second World Wars, the rationalization and automation of work which brings alienation, the rise of a consumer culture that promotes materialism and shallow consumption, and the destruction of the environment due to modern technology. Philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse and Günther Anders developed extensive critiques of modern technology based on these perceived social consequences.

Since the 1990s, the broad critiques of these classical authors have made way for more pragmatic and empirically oriented philosophical studies that aim to better understand specific technologies and their role in society. This new orientation has been called the empirical turn in the philosophy of technology (Kroes and Meijers 2000; Brey 2010a). Studies after the empirical turn tend to be more descriptive, more informed by empirical results from their own case studies and from empirical studies in other fields, more focused on concrete technologies and social problems, less pessimistic about technology, and less determinist about technological change and impacts of technology. In addition to this descriptivist empirical turn, the 1990s also saw the emergence of ethics of technology as a major field of study, including new specializations like computer ethics, nanoethics and ethics of design. Due to the empirical turn, the philosophy of technology has moved closer to STS, a field from which it has incorporated methods and ideas. In spite of this alignment, the philosophy of technology has largely retained a status separate from that of STS.

What is technology?

Let us now turn to the insights into technology and society that can be gained from these fields. A proper understanding of these matters should begin with an adequate understanding of the concept of technology. Unfortunately, definitions of technology in dictionaries and professional textbooks differ widely in their meaning and scope. Technology is variably defined as a process of making things, a type of knowledge for making things, or the very things that are made (Reydon 2012; Li-Hua 2009). In addition, many definitions hold that technology involves the application of science to useful ends, but there are also definitions that make no reference to science and define technology as the application of knowledge for practical ends, where presumably this knowledge can be of any kind (Mitcham and Schatzberg 2009). Moreover, some definitions hold that technology involves the manipulation of matter for practical ends, whereas others merely hold that it involves the creation of practical value, so that presumably applications of the social sciences would also qualify as technology (“social technology” or “soft technology”) (Jin 2011).

Most commonly, however, technology is related to engineering, and definitions incorporate three elements: technology is something that involves the manipulation of matter, has an orientation towards practical ends, and has a basis in the sciences. Technology can, according to this conception, be defined as the development, through the application of science and mathematics, of physically defined or implemented means (devices, systems, methods, procedures) that can serve practical ends. This assumes that technology is the mere application of science, whereas convincing arguments have been made that, although science is applied in engineering, engineering also involves the application and creation of unique engineering knowledge, which is a highly formalized, evidence-based and systematic type of knowledge (Vincenti 1990). So probably the definition should be amended to hold that technology is developed through the application of science, mathematics and engineering knowledge.²

This definition of technology characterizes it as a process that is carried out by engineers and applied scientists. However, in other contexts, “technology” appears to refer instead to the means created in this process, as when it is said that a store sells office technology, or to a form of knowledge, namely knowledge of the techniques for the production of artifacts and other useful means. Technology is hence defined as a process, a set of objects, or form of knowledge, depending on context (Mitcham 1994).

Subclasses of technology are often defined in relation to engineering branches. The main branches of engineering are chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, and they produce chemical, civil, electrical and mechanical technologies, respectively. More specialized branches, such as software engineering and biomedical engineering, also yield corresponding technologies. Note that engineering branches are sometimes defined in terms of technological features (e.g. mechanical engineering), and sometimes in terms of application areas (e.g. environmental engineering).

For a consideration of consequences of technology for society, the most relevant aspects of it are not technological knowledge or technology development processes carried out by engineers, but rather the technological products that result from engineering: devices, systems, procedures and methods that are used for practical purposes and through this use, impact society. The products of technology development are of two basic kinds: objects (tools, devices, systems) and instructions for carrying out processes (procedures, methods). The latter includes methods and procedures for processes like food irradiation, iron smelting and automated assembly of laser diodes. The focus of theorists has, however, mostly been on the objects produced by engineers: technological artifacts, which are the physical products of technology.

The notion of a “technological artifact” or “technological product” is usually associated with electronic and technologically complex devices, such as computers, mobile phones and automobiles. However, there are many human-made products that are the result of science-based technological production processes but that are not themselves machines or electronic devices. A nylon jacket is not generally seen as a piece of technology; it is not a device with mechanical parts and does not run on electricity. However, it is a technological artifact in the sense that it is a product of advanced technological processes of production of nylon polymers out of chemical compounds which are subsequently mechanically melted, spun and fused together into wearable items. Most products that people buy in stores are technological artifacts in this sense, including hammers, cups, tables and even many foods. It is often difficult to distinguish between technologically produced artifacts and craft-based artifacts; a wooden chair could be of either type. For this reason, theorists sometimes for convenience refer to any human-made artifact as a technological artifact, although in other contexts it may be appropriate to restrict the scope to engineering-based products, machines or electronic devices.

The most exemplary class of technological artifacts consists of (electronic) machines. A machine is a tool that consists of parts with different functions and that receives energy from a source and transforms it, through the interoperation of its parts, into useful actions. In the evolution of technology, one sees the evolution from simple tools and devices to mechanical machines (machines powered by natural forces like wind and water, or human and animal labor), followed by electrical machines (powered by electricity, or converting mechanical to electric energy), electronic machines (electric machines with active electrical components) and computing machines (electronic machines in which the store and flow of electrons is interpreted as information).

New technologies and fields of engineering emerge regularly, and new technological products and methods, often incorporating multiple technologies, are developed at an ever increasing rate. The constant emergence of new technologies means that technologies exist in society at different stages. A rough distinction can be made between entrenched and emerging technologies. Entrenched technologies are established technologies with long histories that have yielded many products that are broadly used in society. Automotive technology is an example. Emerging technologies are new technologies that have not yet yielded many concrete products and applications, if any, and that are still mostly defined in terms of fundamental research. Examples are nanotechnology (although it is yielding more applications every year) and synthetic biology. This distinction is important because in assessing future impacts of technology on society, one should not only consider innovations within entrenched technologies, but also potential applications of emerging technologies.

The mutual shaping of technology and society

Majority support has emerged in STS and philosophy of technology for a number of positions concerning the way in which technology is developed and interacts with society, which I will now attempt to spell out. A first point of agreement is that technology does not evolve in a deterministic fashion, but rather evolves along a path that is strongly influenced by a wide variety of social factors. Technology is socially shaped, meaning that technological change is conditioned by social factors, and technological designs and functions are the outcome of social processes rather than of internal standards of scientific-technological rationality (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1999).

The social shaping thesis denies the technological determinist idea that technological change follows a fixed, linear path that can be explained by reference to some inner technolog...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of images
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Technology, crime and justice: theory and history
• Part II Technology, crime and harm
• Part III Technology and control
• Part IV Technology and the process of justice
• Part V Emerging technologies of crime and justice
• Index