"Data-driven Policing: The Hardwiring of Discriminatory policing practices across Europe", November 2019

This report explains the potential effects of the increased use of data-driven technologies for minority groups and communities. The introduction of new technology is negatively impacting ethnic minority communities in three ways: 1) the impact of new technologies to identify, surveil and analyse will be disproportionately felt by minority ethnic communities, as they are already over-policed; 2) many algorithmically driven identification-technologies disproportionately mis-identify people from black and other minority ethnic groups; and 3) predictive policing systems are likely to present geographic areas and communities with a high proportion of minority ethnic people as ‘risky’ and subsequently, foci for police attention... There is evidently a need to develop rigorous monitoring processes to build European wide understandings of the utility and impact of police technology on minority groups and communities and to hold law enforcement agencies and technology companies to account for the consequences and effects of technology-driven policing... [Recommendations for action include:] Challenge and resist the use of stereotypical crimetypes... used against negatively racialised communities... Mapping the technologies being deployed will allow individuals and communities to be better informed about how they are policed... [and] through freedom of information laws... gather information on certain databases [and] technology that police are using.