Policing the poor through space: The fil rouge from criminal cartography to geospatial predictive policing
Keywords:
Predictive policing, crime mapping, predictive mapping, social control, critical criminology, vigilancia predictiva, cartografía del delito, mapeo predictivo, control social, criminología críticaAbstract
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in predictive policing, with a clear opposition emerging between supporters and critics of its implementation. While critical accounts conventionally centre on opacities and operational asymmetries of the algorithmic construct (biased training, feedback loop, etc.), I argue that a different critique is first needed. Focussing on place-based techniques, I maintain that contemporary predictive mapping basically perpetuates the political and epistemic dictates which have historically framed the conceptualisation of crime in relation to space. Through a review of sources spanning from the Cartographic School to current predictive policing literature, I identify two main conceptual axes which operationalise this heritage: first, an explanatory framework of crime that has never detached from the socio-economic deficit archetype; and secondly, an ontologisation of crime alternative to biologicist positivism, nonetheless integral to the etiologic paradigm. Therefore, without first disputing these ideological bottlenecks, no initiative towards a transparent use of predictive policing is plausible, neither does a sharp distinction between place-based and person-based predictions seem tenable.
En los últimos años se ha asistido a una explosión de interés por la vigilancia policial predictiva y al surgimiento de una clara oposición entre partidarios y detractores de su implementación. Mientras que los relatos críticos se centran convencionalmente en opacidades y asimetrías operacionales del constructo algorítmico (entrenamiento sesgado, bucle de retroalimentación, etc.), lo que aquí se plantea es la necesidad preliminar de otro tipo de crítica. Con el foco puesto en las técnicas de predicción geoespacial, se sostiene que los métodos de mapeo predictivo tienden a perpetuar los dictados políticos y epistemológicos que históricamente han enmarcado la conceptualización del delito en su relación con el espacio. Mediante una revisión de fuentes que abarcan desde la Escuela Cartográfica a la literatura contemporánea sobre vigilancia predictiva, se detectan dos grandes ejes conceptuales que operativizan dicho legado: primero, un marco explicativo del delito que nunca supo emanciparse del arquetipo del déficit socioeconómico, y segundo, una ontologización del delito alternativa a la del positivismo biologicista pero aun así parte integral del paradigma etiológico. Así pues, sin antes cuestionar dichas constricciones ideológicas, ninguna iniciativa encaminada a un uso transparente de la policía predictiva es plausible, ni una distinción real entre mapeo predictivo y predicción individualizada parece defendible.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1360
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