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 in contemporary political and social life to the extent that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between "digital" and "social" practices and their impacts, and vice versa. The term "digital society" is used to refer to the integrated whole represented by digital technologies and society, or to refer to the social, technological, and structural changes affecting contemporary societies. In this context, we talk about the "technosocial" nature of contemporary political and social life (Powell et al., 2018). In fact, cyberspace does not replace human interaction, nor does it exist separately from it; instead, new technologies are capable of generating social relationships and emerging ways of behaving (Ruppert et al., 2013). The digital and the social are constantly intertwined and shape each other.

In digitalized societies, technological transformations also encompass everything related to control and crime. Socio-legal analysis of the activities of the police, in particular, and control agencies more broadly, has long highlighted the discretionary use of the law and the selective nature of control practices, resulting in discrimination and violations of individuals' rights, especially those belonging to non-hegemonic groups.

In this seminar, first, the foundations of classical police sociology will be laid, with particular attention to the issues of discretion and police culture. Subsequently, the seminar will focus on contemporaneity, examining the lines of continuity and discontinuity in the discretionary use of power by police agencies in the digitalized societies, even in the face of new challenges posed by cyberspace. To this end, attention will be paid to new control practices and, in particular, to the predictive policing model and the technologies used in digital border control. Following that, the discussion will revolve around some criminal and criminalized practices typical of digital societies, such as hate crimes and hacking. Finally, in a concluding seminar, the risks posed by changes in crime and control for individuals' rights will be discussed, as well as the possibilities and limitations of the law in addressing them.

Readings/Bibliography

• Fabini, Gargiulo, Tuzza (2023), Polizia. Un vocabolario dell'ordine, Mondadori Università. Chapters: "Sapere sulla polizia", "Discrezionalità", "Cultura".
• Milivojevic, S. (2021), Crime and punishment in the future internet: Digital frontier technologies and criminology in the twenty-first century, Routledge. Ch. 1 and 2.
• 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, hate crimes on the web, 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