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Abstract
This study examines the relationship between police-community racial asymmetry and the use of surveillance technology by local law enforcement. The data come from a nationally representative survey of law enforcement agencies, with supplementary information provided by the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics Survey, the Census, and the Uniform Crime Reports. Results indicate that police departments that underrepresent African Americans in the community are more likely to use or plan to implement surveillance technology, controlling for a range of agency-and contextual-level factors. One potential explanation for these findings is that surveillance technology operates as a form of social control that is differentially applied to racial minorities to manage what is perceived to be a greater proclivity toward criminal behavior. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Introduction
In the late 18th century, utilitarianism philosopher Jeremy Bentham imagined the panopticon prison design, a circular inspection house containing a central observation tower with full view of prisoners' cells populating the prison's outer wall. Unable to view the inspectors themselves, prisoners had to assume that they were being watched at all times. Eventually, Bentham envisioned that this external control would convert to internal control whereby prisoners would self-police their own behavior to conform to socially desirable expectations and to avoid punishment (Foucault 1977; 1978). Put succinctly by Foucault, "inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers" (1977: 201).
A panopticon was never built during Bentham's lifetime. However, scholars have argued that his vision lives on in the modem age through various forms of surveillance technology (Davis 1990; Koskela 2003; Marx 1988; McMullan 2015; Staples 1997). Specifically, the core function of surveillance technology is compatible with the concept of "central inspection," or the notion that citizens' behaviors can be better controlled when they are surveilled from a central location (see Davis 1990; Fyfe and Bannister 1996; Norris 2003; Reeve 1998; Simon 2005). Likewise, akin to the inspection tower, surveillance technology can be understood as a physical embodiment of citizen distrust and a mechanism of social control by which that distrust is mollified.
In the present study, we explore key factors that may influence the use of surveillance technology among law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in the United States. We focus...