From Police Investigation to Court Verdict: Mass Video Surveillance for Criminal Justice Purposes

Our objective is to generate knowledge about when and how video surveillance recordings are used by the police and in court, determine the usefulness of video surveillance technologies in the process from pre-trial investigation to court verdict, and establish a theoretical framework enabling considerations about the justifiability of mass video surveillance for criminal justice purposes in democratic societies.Despite the rapidly increasing scope of video surveillance for criminal justice purposes, surprisingly little is known about when video recordings are useful for solving crimes and how recordings are actively turned into evidence during crime investigation and court proceedings.

We close this gap by a unique four-year ethnographic study combining theories on technology use and critical criminal justice theory.

We accompany and interview criminal justice professionals and follow crime cases as they move through the criminal justice process, from pre-trial investigation to court verdict.With this approach, we move beyond the current trend to address the issue of usefulness only through applied quantitative studies measuring crime prevention effects of video surveillance.

We also move beyond current theoretical debates about the justifiability of mass video surveillance for criminal justice purposes by establishing an empirically grounded theoretical framework for considerations about justifiability of mass video surveillance in democratic societies.