Algorithmic Ecology and Abolition (with Sophie Wang and Shakeer Rahman)

The Algorithmic Ecology is an abolitionist framework and organizing tool that can be critically applied to any algorithm. Developed by Stop LAPD Spying and Free Radicals, it unsettles central assumptions about how predictive policing actually functions and makes visible key areas of intervention for those fighting for a world without police. 

Academics tend to present algorithmic harm in the narrow language of privacy – failing to address the ways policing shows up in people’s lives. Grassroots organizations often see predictive policing as a false reform or a useful entrypoint to discuss what we already know about policing or incarceration in general. But do predictive analytics produce new modes of surveillance and social control? How can not just go beyond “dirty data” but make the infrastructures algorithms build up visual and concrete?

An investigation of PredPol heat maps of Skid Row (a community on the east side of downtown Los Angeles and home to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition) pursued these questions, resulting in surprising insights:   

“Given the prevailing notion that algorithmic policing would create ‘feedback loops,”’ our expectation was to find Skid Row — the area around the star marked on the map — to be laden with PredPol hotspots. But the hotspots were instead clustered at the periphery of the community. Rather than visualizing the hyper-policing that we know occurs in Skid Row, the PredPol hot spot maps appear to be drawing a digital border to contain, control, and criminalize Skid Row.”

Guests: 
Sophie is a co-founder, organizer, and zine gremlin at Free Radicals, an activist collective dedicated to creating a more socially just, equitable, and accountable science.

Shakeer Rahman is a community organizer and lawyer working with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.

IG + Twitter: @WeBeImagining
Support Us: On Patreon
Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, 
Music: Drew Lewis

Links for the Episode:

LAPD ends another data-driven crime program touted to target violent offenders
'Secret' body cam video finally shows what happened in 2015 LAPD shooting
Los Angeles Community Action Network: LACAN
Before the Bullet Hits the Body – Dismantling Predictive Policing in Los Angeles
Did Garcetti achieve his $250 million LA pledge?
Monitoring and Analysis Profiles: 2015-2019 New York State (MAPS Race Rubric)
Desperate to slow spike in killings, LAPD redeploys controversial units in South L.A.
A pioneer in predictive policing is starting a troubling new project
The Complicity of Academia in Policing of Families Opinion Victoria Copeland
No Tech for ICE
US police employ mass surveillance systems
The Microsoft Police State: Mass Surveillance, Facial Recognition, and the Azure Cloud
Tech Companies’ Complicity in State Violence Runs Deep
Policing Is an Information Business
Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing
Chronic Offender Purpose and Check List (StopLAPD Report)
Defund Surveillance Campaign