Description: Policing is experiencing a rapid transformation because of globalization, technological evolution and societal challenges. Both daily police work and encounters with citizens (external) and with police officers and superiors (internal), are progressively mediated by technology. They push the police to adapt in order to respond to global criminal networks. The question arises what impact digitalization has on the Belgian local police.
Therefore, this DIGIPOL research project aims to study how the process of digitalization through technologies like Body-Worn Camera’s, Mobile-Tenant Platform (focusplatform) and analysis software affects the everyday work of the Belgian local police. In addition, the project aims to gain insight in how the arrival of technology in the police organization changes the workplace and working conditions, the internal working relationships and police-public relations. Furthermore, there will be certain attention on how technology should, on the one hand, contribute to police’s efficiency, and on the other hand, contribute to police legitimacy. Finally, the project will question how the expansion of technology-mediated interactions affects organizational and police legitimacy.
To achieve these objectives, the DIGIPOL project mobilizes previous interdisciplinary research experience and methodological insights from different scientific research fields (i.e. police studies, labor and surveillance studies, anthropology of bureaucracy and organizational sociology). In doing so, the research consortium adopts an inductive approach in which the work of front-line police officers and executive police officers (e.g. supervisors) will be studied 'in situ'. The DIGIPOL project combines classical qualitative methods (i.e. (policy) document analysis, participant observation and semi-directive interviews) with more collaborative methods (i.e. workshops with field workers, professional guidance committee meetings and ad hoc steering committee meetings with each police force involved in the project).
Coordinator: dr. Carrol Tange (NICC)
Promotors: Prof. dr. Sofie De Kimpe (VUB), Prof. dr. Lucas Melgaço (VUB), Prof. dr. Sybille Smeets (ULB), Prof. dr. Aline Bingen (ULB), Prof. dr. Maïté Maskens (ULB) & dr. Bertrand Renard (NICC)
Researchers: Lies Vande Meulebroucke (VUB), Kevin Emplit (ULB) & Sarah Van Praet (NICC)
Partners: ULB & NICC
Funding: The Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo)
Duration: 2023-2027
Research Line: Policing & Surveillance