We are pleased to announce our first installment of the P&S Digital Speaker Series:
Punishment &
Society CRN Digital Speaker Series
Thursday, January 18, 2:00-3:30 EST
(Instructions for watching the talk online
forthcoming)
Sarah Lageson, Rutgers
University
“Criminal Records as Big Data
Commodity”
New forms of digital criminal record data
collection and generous FOIA and First Amendment interpretations have
allowed criminal records to transform into a valuable commodity. Data
brokers aggressively pursue law enforcement, court, and correctional data,
then repackage and sell it to a growing class of criminal record consumers.
Taking a field approach, this study traces the development
of relationships between criminal justice agencies and data
brokers. Analyses of internal and public documents and interviews with
data brokers show how this work is framed through cultural values of tech
efficiency and transparency, and as a consumer friendly alternative to
bureaucratic and inefficient government. By collating and
synthesizing public records, these companies create markets of
criminal record consumers and sell criminal record data as commodity. Ultimately,
this wide scale embrace of open records by media and the courts have
more firmly guided U.S. criminal record policy than due process, privacy and
liberty values.
No comments:
Post a Comment