Video surveillance recordings and artificial intelligence in crime investigation

Our objective is to generate rich knowledge about the consequences of the implementation of video surveillance and AI for investigative purposes in the Swedish Police Authority.

We aim to determine how increased implementation and encouraged use of video surveillance and AI technologies affect the police’s capacity to investigate and solve crime and identify how video surveillance technologies and the materials they produce are used and actively turned into evidence by crime investigators.We combine theories on technology use with theories on formal and informal work in an ethnographic study.

We observe 75 work shifts of crime investigators involving video surveillance technologies, do 30 interviews with them, and collect all relevant policy documents.

Together, this will generate an in-depth understanding of video surveillance and AI for crime investigative and crime solving purposes, thus providing an important contribution to the international research on surveillance technologies in criminal investigation work, which is scarce and in Sweden non-existing.The Swedish Police Authority is pressured to improve crime clearance rates and its investigative work.

We contribute knowledge to facilitate decision-making about under what circumstances camera surveillance should be used and how investigation work should be organized. More generally, we contribute new knowledge about the implementation of technologies in work organizations.