B2588 - SEM. CYBERSPACE, POLICING E DIRITTI

Learning outcomes

The seminar is designed to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the debate on police discretionary power, an important topic for the classics of sociology on policing, revisiting it in the light of the new challenges of control and crime in the cyberspace. By the end of the seminar, students should have acquired a basic knowledge of the classics of the sociology of policing, the contemporary debate, as well as the technologies of control used in the cyberspace, and be able to think critically about the risks associated with the use of discretionary police power in the datafied society, in order to balance the needs of crime prevention and the security of individuals' rights.

Course contents

Digital technologies are central to contemporary political and social life, to the extent that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the practices and impact of the "digital" from the "social" and vice versa. We speak of digitized societies ("digital society") to refer to the integrated whole represented by digital technologies and society, that is, to refer to the social, technological, and structural changes that affect contemporary societies. This is referred to as the "technosocial" nature of contemporary political and social life (Powell et al. 2018). Indeed, cyberspace does not replace human interaction, nor does it exist separately from it, but rather new technologies are capable of producing already emerging social relations and modes of behavior (Ruppert et al. 2013). Digital and social are constantly part of each other and mutually shape one another.

In digitized societies, technological transformations also affect everything related to control and crime. The socio-legal analysis of police operations, specifically, and control agencies, more broadly, has long emphasized the discretionary use of law and the selective nature of control practices, with discriminatory results and violations of individuals' rights, particularly those of marginalized groups. The use of technology is often presented as a way to avoid discriminatory use of control by the responsible agencies.

In this seminar, the foundations of the classics of police sociology will first be laid, with particular attention to the issues of discretion and police culture. The seminar will then focus on contemporary issues, reflecting on the lines of continuity and discontinuity in the discretionary use of power by police agencies in digitized societies, even in the face of new challenges posed by cyberspace. To this end, the meaning of digital society, cybercrime, and cybersecurity will be examined; subsequently, attention will be paid to new control practices and, in particular, to the model of predictive policing, first in the United States and then in Europe, and to the technologies used in the control of digital borders. Next, we will focus on some criminal and criminalized practices typical of digital societies, such as hate crimes and hacking. Finally, in a concluding seminar, we will reflect on the risks posed by changes in crime and control for individuals' rights and the possibilities and limits of the law in mitigating them.

Readings/Bibliography

• Fabini, Gargiulo, Tuzza (2023), Polizia. Un vocabolario dell'ordine, Mondadori Università. Chapters: "Sapere sulla polizia", "Discrezionalità", "Cultura".
• Powell et al (2019), Digital criminology, Routledge, Ch. 1
  
• Sarah Brayne (2020), Surveil and Predict. Data, discretion and the future of policing, Oxford University Press. Ch 4.

At the beginning of the seminar, a detailed syllabus of the lectures, speakers, and readings that students will be encouraged to complete before each seminar will be distributed. The syllabus will also include additional readings beyond those mentioned above, particularly for sessions featuring external speakers, typically averaging one or two readings per session.

Teaching methods

The seminar will include in-person lectures, during which students will have ample opportunities to actively engage with questions and comments, aiming to make each session dynamic and participatory. For this reason, we strongly encourage reading the texts listed in the syllabus before the seminar lectures.

Some of the lectures will be delivered by external instructors who are experts in the following topics: the use of digital technologies in border control, hacker practices as political activists from a historical perspective, encompassing processes of criminalization and technological innovation.

Attendance in the seminar is mandatory. Therefore, attendance at a minimum of 70% of the lectures is required.

Assessment methods

The exam will be conducted orally and will cover the topics discussed during the seminar. It is also possible to arrange with the instructor to delve deeper into a specific topic among those addressed. In this case, the student will need to coordinate with the instructor on suitable supplementary texts.

Passing the exam does not result in a numeric grade on a scale of thirty, but rather qualifies as 'Pass' or 'Fail.'

Only students who have attended at least 70% of the lectures will be eligible for the final oral exam.

Teaching tools

The teaching materials can be found on the 'Virtual Learning Environment' platform: https://virtuale.unibo.it/my/

Office hours

See the website of Giulia Fabini