Future Policing: Technology and Transformation

Future Policing examines how technologies such as facial recognition, quantum computing, virtual reality, data integration, artificial intelligence, robot cops, electrocardiograms, predictive policing, and investigative genetic genealogy are transforming the practice and governance of contemporary law enforcement. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholars from eight countries, this twenty-chapter volume offers empirically grounded analyses of how technologies are adopted, implemented, regulated, and experienced in practice. Chapters synthesize research evidence, operational experience, and theoretical debate to evaluate claims of efficiency, objectivity, and innovation, while identifying the social, legal, and ethical consequences that accompany digital transformation. At a critical moment when police agencies are investing heavily in technological solutions while navigating a fast-moving landscape of evolving tools, claims, and expectations, this volume provides a much-needed evidence base for understanding what these systems change in practice and what outcomes they realistically produce. And by bringing sustained critical investigation and scrutiny to rapidly institutionalizing tools, the collection establishes a foundation for the next generation of policing scholarship. Rigorous and accessible, Future Policing provides students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, among others, with the insight required to critically assess technological change and understand how innovation is reshaping what policing is, how it is done, and whom it serves.