New Police Technologies: An Exploration of the Social Implications

The “microdrone” may be small, but for police it’s a powerful new weapon. It’s equipped with an array of technological weaponry, including video and infrared cameras. Images from the camera can be beamed to operators as far as 500 yards away. It even flies almost completely silently. SOURCE: Impact Lab

By Steve Wright~Programme of Peace & Conflict Research University of Lancaster

Whilst developments in military hardware receive critical attention almost as a matter of course, innovations in police technology are only rarely focused upon. In this article an attempt is made to rectify this anomaly by providing a detailed survey of some recent devel opments in police technologies, as well as directing concern towards the unanticipated consequences associated with their integration into systems of socio-political control.

The technology of socio-political control is by definition more or less repressive. Since it appears to offer a flexible solution to many of the problems of internal control, there is a grave danger of its becoming a technological panacea substituted for real political authority when this is absent. Politicians are increasingly prone to hand over their most problematic difficulties to the police or military for solution, only to get them back later in a more intractable form.

Consideration is given to the social implications of the vertical and horizontal proliferation of these technologies and their role in effecting the militarization of the society in which they are deployed. The article concludes that new police technologies facilitate the creation and maintenance of totalitarian societies. They pose a real threat to civil liberties and human rights, a threat likely to increase over time. The most repressive forms are currently being transferred to the Third World to service existing systems of cultural imperialism. By frustrating the struggles of the peoples in these countries to obtain a more just and equitable social order, the transfer of political control technology will escalate the processes leading to domestic arms races and thus increase the overall level of violence in the long term.

The Militarization of Our Police from PuppetGov on Vimeo.

1. See for example Hewitt, P. 1977, & State Research, 1978.

2. Jonathan Rosenhead provides a contempo rary example of the politics which formed the decision to deploy riot control shields in the U.K. Rosenhead, J., 1977a & 1977b.

3. Figure assumed from Ballantyne, 1977a.

4. For an intriguing discussion of the bizarre double binds which are implicit in governmental approaches to secrecy, see Laurie, P., 1978.

5. See New Scientist, 5 February, 1976, ‘Teargas in high doses is lethal’, P. 267. Also Gonzales et al., 1954, Stein & Kirwan, 1964, & HMSO, C.m.n.d. 4775, 1971.

6. Figures taken from New Scientist, 29/273, p. 726, ‘Anti-crowd weapons work by causing fits.’ It should be noted that ways exist to beat the photic driver using a simple eye patch (see New Scientist 11/10/73).

7. They are: State Research, 9, Poland Street, London W1., U.K. CILIP c/o Berghofstiftung für Konfliktforschung, Winklerstrasse 4a, 1000 Berlin 33, West Germany.

Project on Militarism and Disarmament, Insti tute of Policy Studies, 1901 Que St., N.W. Wash ington D.C., 20009 USA.

8. These effects are described in more detail in New Scientist 9/11/71, p. 67: ‘Interrogation Questioned’.

9. Report in The Sunday Times June 26, 1976. ‘Why Britain Tortures its Own Soldiers’.

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 15, No. 4, 305-322 (1978)
DOI: 10.1177/002234337801500402