763582

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TCR0010.1177/1362480618763582Theoretical CriminologyHannah-Moffat

Article

Theoretical Criminology

Algorithmic risk governance:

2019, Vol. 23(4) 453­–470
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480618763582
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480618763582
information activism in journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr

criminal justice debates

Kelly Hannah-Moffat
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Abstract
Meanings of risk in criminal justice assessment continue to evolve, making it critical
to understand how particular compositions of risk are mediated, resisted and re-
configured by experts and practitioners. Criminal justice organizations are working with
computer scientists, software engineers and private companies that are skilled in big
data analytics to produce new ways of thinking about and managing risk. Little is known,
however, about how criminal justice systems, social justice organizations and individuals
are shaping, challenging and redefining conventional actuarial risk episteme(s) through
the use of big data technologies. The use of such analytics is shifting organizational risk
practices, challenging social science methods of assessing risk, producing new knowledge
about risk and consequently new forms of algorithmic governance. This article explores
how big data reconfigure risk by producing a new form of algorithmic risk—a form of
risk which is posited as different from the social science (psychologically) informed risk
techniques already in use in many justice sectors. It also shows that new experts are
entering the risk game, including technologists who make data public and accessible to
a range of stakeholders. Finally, it demonstrates that big data analytics can be used to
produce forms of usable knowledge that constitute types of ‘information activism’. This
form of activism produces alternative risk narratives, which are focused on ‘criminogenic
structures’ or ‘criminogenic policy’.

Keywords
Actuarial risk assessment, big data, predictive police algorithms, race, sentencing

Corresponding author:
Kelly Hannah-Moffat, University of Toronto, 63 Banff Rd, Toronto, Ontario, M4S2V6, Canada.
Email: hannah.moffat@utoronto.ca
454 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

Introduction
Some argue that we are now living in an ‘algorithmic age where mathematics and com-
puter science are coming together in powerful new ways’ that influence individual
behaviour and governance (Danaher et al., 2017: 1). Scholars in various fields are
examining how big data is being assembled and used. For example, international secu-
rity agencies access and sort through extensive communications metadata to define,
identify and neutralize national security risks, including terrorism (Lyon, 2014).
Governments also routinely merge financial transactional data with various forms of
client case file data to detect and respond to fraud (Ruppert, 2012), and health data are
mined and tracked to predict and monitor disease and prevent outbreaks (Thomas,
2014). Policing agencies are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their uses of bio-
data, facial recognition software, traffic cameras, body/car cameras, licence plate read-
ers and Global Positionning System (GPS) locators, all of which produce digital data
that can be combined to identify and track individuals in the pursuit of safety and secu-
rity (Brayne, 2017; Gates, 2011; Gitlin, 2012; Kitchin, 2014, Lupton, 2015; Smith and
O’Malley, 2017).
Several private companies are marketing and distributing data-driven technologies to
criminal justice institutions (Brayne, 2017). One of the best known is PredPol, a predic-
tive policing software: its software developers work with local police agencies to map
criminal events in real-time, allowing police to efficiently deploy resources (PredPol,
2017).1 Florida uses machine learning algorithms to set bail amounts (Eckhouse, 2017).2
Some US prisons are also adopting new technologies: for example, some provide prison-
ers with tablets pre-loaded with approved applications to manage their mail and music
(Tynan, 2016). While these technological enhancements in prisons can be seen as pro-
gressive, they also reflect a trend towards digital monitoring and decision making. These
tablets allow for the collection, collation, manipulation and storage of vast amounts of
data about individual prisoners, their families, including forms of data that are unrelated
to prison (e.g. Facebook, credit histories, internet activity, health records, neighbourhood
information). Digital storage and mining of this type of data is quite appealing to penal
officials and others.
Although big data is often acclaimed for its ability to enrich our understanding of
particular phenomena (Lazer et al., 2009), it is also ‘a political process involving ques-
tions of power, transparency and surveillance’ (Tufekci, 2014: 1). It is not as ‘objective,
neutral, or complete as they are portrayed in mainstream media representations’ (Lupton,
2015: 101). Instead, big data, its incumbent analytics and the knowledges they produce
are socio-political and cultural artefacts that are transforming how we live, work and
think about social problems (Lupton, 2015). Its recent uptake by criminal justice actors
in relation to the production of risk requires analysis. Inasmuch as criminal justice organ-
izations are now embracing ‘big data’ analytics (Brayne, 2017), they are engaged in vari-
ous new forms of ‘algorithmic governance’ (Danaher et al., 2017). Big data has
invigorated the criminal justice system’s (CJS) focus on ‘smart’, ‘data-driven’ and ‘evi-
dence-based’ solutions, allowing individuals and private companies with technical
expertise to offer various big data informed options for criminal justice actors and organ-
izations. CJS representatives are working with computer scientists, software engineers
Hannah-Moffat 455

and private companies that are skilled in data analytics to produce new ways of thinking
about and managing risk. These collaborations are expected to enhance the efficiency of
prediction systems, while at the same time designing them in a way that will not operate
in a discriminatory manner. However, little is known about how CJS, social justice
organizations and individuals are producing, challenging or redefining conventional risk
episteme(s) through the use of big data analytics (Kitchin, 2017). As such, the introduc-
tion of big data technologies warrants analysis both because the concept of risk is central
to our legal and criminal justice culture, and because it represents an epistemic deviation
from risk assessments that are grounded in psychological disciplines.
The governance of crime and understandings of risk continues to be fluid and shifting
(Maurutto and Hannah-Moffat, 2006). For several decades, CJS have actively embraced
a variety of risk logics and technologies with the goal of enhancing efficiency, account-
ability and equity. Systematic and psychologically informed actuarially based risk
assessments are widely accepted as being rooted in an evidence base, and by extension
are considered to be more scientifically credible than professional discretion and clinical
judgement in assessing risk (Skeem and Lowenkamp, 2016). Criminologists and soci-
ologists have studied how risk logics have become embedded in criminal justice plan-
ning and practice, and how psychologically informed actuarial risk analyses are used to
predict and prevent crime, enhance security, sentence offenders and manage penal popu-
lations (Feeley and Simon, 1992; Hannah-Moffat, 2013; Harcourt, 2007; Kemshall,
2003; O’Malley, 1992, 2004, 2010). This research has helped clarify how knowledge and
understandings of crime are framed and addressed though risk logics. Scholars have also
argued that risk informed practices of governing crime have led to the over-representa-
tion and over-policing of particular segments of the population, mainly racialized indi-
viduals (Chouldechova, 2017). Researchers have also turned their attention to the ways
in which newer big data technologies aid in predicting risk levels, managing the ‘crime
problem’ and solving these inequalities (Brayne, 2017; Eubanks, 2018; Ferguson, 2017;
Smith and O’Malley, 2017).
This shift to big data analytics represents a notable departure from other algorithmi-
cally influenced risk technologies. Despite the fact that social scientists have long used
large official data sets to map crime patterns and track offenders, the advent of big data
analytics is considered to be a game changer for criminal justice governance because of
its phenomenal speed, breadth and depth capacities. It also entails new forms of data
from an assemblage of sources, including but not limited to smart phones, digital cam-
eras, GPS tracking devices, internet searches, consumer databases, social media, open
data sources and smart software (Lupton, 2015; Smith and O’Malley, 2017). The term
‘big data’ then generally refers to a wide array of digitally stored information about indi-
viduals, organizations, companies and events. The term can also be used to describe the
techniques used to efficiently assemble and disassemble this information for a variety of
commercial and non-commercial purposes. Still, we have little understanding of where
‘big data’ actually comes from, how it is used or how it lends authority and justifies deci-
sions. As a result, ‘big data has the effect of making-up data and, as such, is powerful in
framing our understanding of those data and the possibilities that they afford’ (Beer,
2016: 1). As a socio-technical phenomenon, it can trigger apprehension and hope,
depending on how, and by whom, it is used to govern. Thus, there is a need to better
456 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

understand how algorithmic governance is designed and used (Danaher et al., 2017),
how it translates policy problems in to computer code (Kitchin, 2017) and how it funda-
mentally alters risk prediction logics and practices. This article is an effort to respond to
these needs.
This article explores how big data is altering organizational risk practices, challenging
social science methods of assessing risk and affecting knowledge about risk. It also
shows that big data has initiated evidence-based public critiques about ‘data harms’ and
empowered critics in ways that can help reshape the CJS. First, I argue that big data
reconfigures risk by producing a form of algorithmic risk, which is different from the
social science, dominantly psychologically informed actuarial risk techniques already in
use in many justice sectors. Second, I show that new players or experts are entering the
risk game: technologists (e.g. concerned citizens, computer scientists, software engi-
neers and hackers—usually not trained in social science) who make data public and
accessible to a range of stakeholders. Third, I argue that big data analytics can be used to
produce forms of usable knowledge that constitute types of ‘networked social action’ and
‘information activism’ (Halupka, 2016; Zavos, 2015). Big data can be used to support
powerful racialized social justice critiques of traditional police, court and penal practices
(see, for example, Hetey et al., 2016; Mapping police violence, n.d.; Police Union
Contract Project, n.d.; Police Use of Force Project, n.d.; ProPublica, 2017). These data-
driven critiques can also be used to resist current definitions of ‘risk’ (Angwin et al.,
2016).3 As a consequence, public knowledge about risk is shifting and expanding: big
data technologies are producing an alternative risk narrative, which focuses critical
attention on ‘criminogenic structures’ or ‘criminogenic policy’.

Big data
Chan and Bennett Moses (2016) argue that big data is flexible and subject to different
interpretations by those seeking to use it for a variety of scholarly, commercial or govern-
ment purposes. Data mining has endless possibilities in terms of potential sources and
applications in the governance of crime. Vast amounts of data are routinely collected and
stored. Most people are indifferent or unaware of their data traces and willingly use prod-
ucts or services-including fitness trackers, GPS, banking services, online shopping,
smartphones, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter— that feed a digital economy
and contribute to vast data banks used to create algorithmic identities. Big data analytics
are increasingly being used as a new technique of security (Valverde, 2014) with little
oversight; it is a critical part of the evidence used to justify many intersecting forms of
social and legal governance. Big data analytics are also shifting how we think about
research (Chan and Bennett Moses, 2016), as well as influencing criminological prac-
tices, as evidenced by the rise of ‘computational criminology’ (Berk, 2008; Williams and
Burnap, 2016).
The ‘avalanche of numbers’ (Hacking, 1990: 5) characterizing big data is not particu-
larly new, although the types of data and related analytics have changed (Beer, 2016).
Social data have long been collected to govern people and populations, but the technical
sophistication of analytics, speed, volume and variety of data available is unprecedented.
Before going further, it is important to define the term ‘big data’ (Lohr, 2013). Most
Hannah-Moffat 457

technical definitions of big data emphasize the three Vs: volume (the amount of data);
velocity (the speed at which data are added and processed); and variety (data may come
from multiple sources using different formats and structures) (Chan and Bennett Moses,
2016). Boyd and Crawford (2012: 663) suggest that big data is a cultural, technological
and scholarly phenomenon involving: technologies that maximize computational power
and algorithmic accuracy of large amounts of data; analyses that use large data sets to
make economic, social, technical and legal claims; and mythology related to the popular
belief that large data sets offer insights that were previously impossible, with the ‘aura of
truth, objectivity, and accuracy’. Here, I use the term ‘big data’ to refer to a concept for
‘understanding how visions of contemporary data are incorporated into the imagining of
life, the production of truths and the liminal work that contains the social world’ (Beer,
2016: 5). The term ‘big data techniques’ refers to the processes by which enormous
amounts and often disparate pieces of information are populated into data sets, predictive
analytics and algorithms. These data are disconnected from one another and are acquired
from multiple and diverse sources; using big data techniques, these data are efficiently
assembled into a useable form and drawn upon to inform policy questions and institu-
tional decisions.

Nuances of actuarial risk

The definition of ‘risk’ is highly contingent upon the temporal, socio-political and institu-
tional context; it is a fluid construct with multiple meanings and differential effects
(Hannah-Moffat, 2004b; O’Malley, 2004). Risk knowledges are fluid, flexible and capa-
ble of supporting a range of culturally contingent penal strategies. The meanings of risk in
criminal justice assessment evolve and it is important to understand how particular com-
positions of risk are mediated, resisted and re-configured by experts and practitioners. For
instance, Hannah-Moffat (2004a) has shown how understandings of risk shifted from
static to dynamic categorizations, how this development aligned our understanding of risk
with need and eventually how responsiveness to treatment—as a consequence of actuarial
knowledge about criminogenic risk—became elevated above professional judgement as a
reliable method of risk assessment. However, this reality is often forgotten with the result
that the term ‘risk’ is often used imprecisely to describe and rationalize a range of govern-
mental actions. As a result, it is important to be precise and distinguish between different
forms of risk, in this case psychological and big data informed algorithmic risk.
To better understand the heterogeneity of actuarial risk and its recent evolution, the
following outlines how social science (hereafter psychologically) informed risk differs
from big data informed risk. The term psychologically informed risk is meant to generi-
cally capture the wide range of actuarial technologies used to assess static and/or dynamic
risk and criminogenic needs. The emergence of such technologies displaced non-actuar-
ial clinical assessments of risk, which were discredited on the basis that clinical judge-
ment was subjective, unempirical and had poor predictive accuracy. Examples of
psychologically informed actuarial tools include the Salient Factor Score and the
Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS, used
in the United States), the Risk of Reconviction (used in the United Kingdom) and the
Level of Service Inventory (LSI-R, used internationally).4
458 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

Although both psychologically based and big data forms of risk construction are actu-
arial and use statistical calculations to forecast and share similar limitations, they are
epistemologically and methodologically distinct. Psychology informed risk and big data
informed risk differ in their design, method and use. Psychology informed risk technolo-
gies are often designed to predict recidivism, whereas big data informed risk technolo-
gies can be applied in this manner. The technologies also differ in the size of the
population from which their results are based: psychology informed risk tools are based
on statistical analyses of a sample of a population, whereas big data informed risk algo-
rithms are based on massive and potentially infinite population data. Additionally, psy-
chology informed risk tools are based on data that have been collected and vetted as per
discipline-specific research methods. Algorithmic risk, on the other hand, is based on
data collected from multiple sources that is assembled and analysed with little attention
to social scientific methodological standards, and with limited substantive knowledge of
the subject matter (cf. Berk, 2012). In terms of how data are used, psychology informed
risk technologies collect and use data for the purpose of the research at hand, and employ
methods and approaches that are conceptually grounded in social science disciplines. In
contrast, big data informed risk use data that are assembled and disassembled for a range
of purposes and is developed without being linked to a specific discipline. Psychology
informed risk technologies are designed for a particular purpose and are static, while big
data risk technologies use data that are value-laden, variable and can be ‘black-boxed’
(i.e. new data can be inputted/processed by existing algorithms). Finally, psychology
informed risk technologies are designed to be empirically defensible, reliable, valid and
clean, while big data risk technologies contain methodological uncertainties.
Psychology informed risk assessments used by the criminal justice system are ‘evi-
dence-based’ instruments that rely on statistical predictions of risk of a particular out-
come, normally recidivism (e.g. COMPASS or LSI-R). These instruments are predicated
on a discipline-based causal knowledge of criminality, and are designed in such a way as
to systematically produce and organize a diverse range of information. An offender’s
quantitative risk score is determined by measuring their individual factors (e.g. history of
substance abuse, age at first offence). Such factors are measured by the tool because they
are statistically linked to the risk of recidivism in correctional populations. The tools are
typically based on research involving large aggregate population samples (historically,
White male adults). The data sets are manually and deliberately constructed by social
science researchers, usually adhere to social scientific methodological guidelines and are
situated in theoretical frameworks (often dominated by psychology). For several dec-
ades, practitioner-driven classification, assessment and management research has
focused on risk and its identification and management. Within the penal field, ‘risk/need
assessment’ practices have been informed by a technical, persuasive and a now deeply
embedded practitioner-driven research agenda (Hannah-Moffat, 2013).
Like psychology informed risk tools, big data technologies rely on large population
data sets to produce risk-related information about individuals or events. However, the
amount, source, and scale of the information available in a big data set is vastly larger
than the data sets used to produce most conventional risk assessments. Big data mobi-
lizes and exploits computational power and algorithmic accuracy to collect, analyse,
link and compare large data sets as well as to ‘identify patterns in order to make
Hannah-Moffat 459

economic, social, technical and legal claims’ (Chan and Bennett Moses, 2016: 24). It
makes predictions depending on how data are assembled and for what purpose. Unlike
psychology informed risk technologies, big data technologies are not implicitly designed
to predict the risk of recidivism. Despite this, emerging algorithms designed for sen-
tencing and bail are now being used to predict risk, and to standardize decision making
in much the same way as risk assessments. With the advent of artificial intelligence and
machine learning, it is believed that big data assessments can function with real-time
data and thus have a higher degree of objective predictive accuracy than the psychology
informed tools.
Unlike psychology informed risk assessment instruments, however, big data tech-
nologies are not constrained by preconceived theoretical or methodological disciplinary
norms or necessarily administered and interpreted by certified assessors. Nonetheless,
implicit and disconnected assumptions about society, individuals, social institutions and
scientific practice are embedded within big data analytics. Some scholars have argued
that big data analytics presents a significant challenge to long-established social scien-
tific research methodologies, and that social scientists could lose their place as estab-
lished experts on ‘the social’ if they do not keep pace with technology (Mayer-Schönberger
and Cukier, 2013).
Furthermore, big data is often characterized as value-laden and variable because the
meaning of data collected can be constantly fluctuating in relation to the context in which
they are generated (McNulty, 2014). It is also often considered to be full of error and
uncertainty, or messy and noisy (Marr, 2014). Nonetheless, big data technologies are
capable of quickly collating and infinitely expanding the amount and range of data about
an individual or a targeted population. All actuarial technologies are susceptible to simi-
lar critiques. Intellectual property rights make big data algorithms unavailable for public
scrutiny, much in the same way that the underlying algorithms used by risk tools are
neither accessible nor public. As with many forms of psychology informed risk assess-
ments, big data can act as a ‘black box’. Tools are rarely transparent and their internal
mechanics are not typically shared by companies, agencies or governments that own and
develop the algorithms. Additionally, big data informed algorithms are ‘ontogenetic and
performative’, which means they are fluid, opaque and often ‘modified and adapted in
response to user interaction; they change in uncontrollable and unpredictable ways’
(Danaher et al., 2017: 5) as they learn or acquire new data points. Emergent forms of big
data risk algorithms are often devoid of social, political and ethical consciousness sur-
rounding the substantive CJS context as the experts developing these technologies are
trained as data scientists, not as social scientists devoted to researching the criminal
justice system (discussed below). Notwithstanding the complexity and lack of transpar-
ency of these programs, the presumption is that these technological developments can
enhance safety, efficiently analyse data and limit error. Thus, big data technologies, like
risk instruments, simultaneously appear neutral and authoritative, which can make them
powerful tools of governance (Beer, 2016; Hacking, 1990).
As with risk, linking big data discourses and technologies with the legal/criminal
justice complex results in big data being configured to meet the needs and logics of those
systems. Emergent rationalities and techniques of algorithmic risk governance continue
to have an emphasis on probability and use statistical techniques to document patterns,
460 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

generate evidence and guide policy. Currently, the private sector, advocacy organizations
and CJS agencies are exploring how big data informed algorithms can improve the pre-
diction of recidivism, refine sentencing, improve police practices and reveal the difficul-
ties associated with various forms of actuarial data. Big data analytics is reconfiguring
how we think and talk about risk. The next section will explore how knowledge about
crime and criminal processes is being created by different experts, and how expanded
access to this knowledge allows for different exercises of power.

Munging and wrangling: Producing new criminological

knowledge
Data scientists organize massive amounts of unstructured data, producing large data sets
that can be used for various analytic purposes. Discussions of big data often revolve
around the exceptional volume, speed, capacities and efficiencies of computer-assisted
technologies. Less attention is devoted to the more mundane task of data ‘munging’ (also
known as ‘wrangling’), which loosely refers to the processes involved in producing data
sets: cleaning, matching, aggregating and converting data from its raw format into a
compatible and useable form (data ‘scraping’). These mundane techniques of data scrap-
ing, munging and wrangling are used to assemble and reassemble knowledge about algo-
rithmic risk.
The production of useable data and the training of statistical models are time-consum-
ing and complex processes that require judgement, interpretation and generally some
knowledge about what questions the data will be used to answer. Some software develop-
ers who produce data sets about race and crime are making their data sets searchable and
publicly available; some also show the processes they use for data munging/wrangling
(O’Neil and Schutt, 2013). Others provide open source code and detail the steps they used
to build statistical models. However, specific criminal justice jurisdictions that produce
risk algorithms usually do not show how data are processed. Independent researchers or
commercial risk tool developers can protect their data through copyright and other more
nefarious techniques. Additionally, many computer and data scientists, as well as software
engineers, are unfamiliar with the normative politics and nuances of criminal justice
data—an unfamiliarity that can lead to conceptual and methodological problems.
Big data, and the propagation of useable data and open source code, provide access to
data that can be used to reveal patterns of systemic and overt discrimination. These pat-
terns have been easy to conceptualize and demonstrate qualitatively on a case-by-case
basis, but extremely difficult to quantify. In the past, access and analysis of data measur-
ing various forms of vulnerability, racism or discrimination has been hindered by geo-
graphical boundaries, institutional policies and organizational priorities, and blocked
access to official data. In the past, official data were also unable to capture structural or
CJS information (e.g. postal codes, places of arrest, incarceration) or to coordinate dif-
ferent data systems (e.g. court/police/correctional data systems, health information,
employment information, gun registries, etc.). In effect these data were inaccessible to
researchers interested in understanding how these systems and practices affect vulnera-
ble individuals and populations, making it difficult to advocate for appropriate systemic
changes.
Hannah-Moffat 461

Big data analytics can make significant contributions in terms of making data public
and providing accessible information about criminal justice practices that may have been
previously unknown. While making these data public raises concerns about privacy, eth-
ics and unintended harm, as well as a host of other issues within commercial and inter-
national surveillance spheres, others have turned their attention to ethically evaluating
how these data are used and mobilized. Researchers are now engaged in debates about
the ethics of data usage, access and storage, commercial uses and the unknown implica-
tions of big data analytics (Metcalf and Crawford, 2016). For example, some scholars are
using big data analytics to identify data harms such as racialized discrepancies between
an individual’s race and their perceived risk of recidivism. Additionally, some data ana-
lysts are focusing on questions that previously preoccupied socio-legal scholars and pun-
ishment and society scholars. For instance, they are asking how ‘algorithmically
generated scores’-generated by risk assessments that are uniform psychological tools or
those developed for a specific jurisdiction—may produce biased outcomes.
Scholars at the New York Data and Society Research Institute5 were concerned about
the increased reliance of risk assessments (machine-generated scores) in light of pending
legislation in the United States Congress. If passed, this legislation (Bill S.2123, the
Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015) would have required the use of risk
assessments (Grassley, 2015). The scholars6 obtained the COMPAS risk scores assigned
to more than 7000 people arrested from 2013–2014 in Broward County, Florida, and
examined how many had been charged with new crimes over the next two years (the
same benchmark used by the creators of the algorithm). They found that COMPAS
scores were remarkably unreliable in forecasting violent crime. When considering all
types of crime (e.g. misdemeanours such as driving with an expired licence), the algo-
rithm was slightly more accurate than a coin toss. They also identified significant racial
disparities. For example, while the number of prediction errors was similar among Black
and White defendants, the errors themselves were of very different types. COMPAS
scores tended to falsely flag Black defendants as future criminals, incorrectly labelling
them this way at almost twice the rate as White defendants, whereas White defendants
were more likely to be mislabelled as low risk than Black defendants (Angwin et al.,
2016). The authors investigated whether this type of error was the product of differences
between criminal records, and found that these disparities persisted despite their having
controlled for criminal history (Angwin et al., 2016).
The private company that developed the popular COMPAS instrument disputed their
findings, stating, ‘Northpointe does not agree that the results of your analysis, or the
claims being made based upon that analysis, are correct or that they accurately reflect the
outcomes from the application of the model’ (as cited in Angwin et al., 2016: n.p.).
Nonetheless, this example shows how risk assessment can be demystified. By exposing
the inner workings of risk instruments, and revealing the tautological nature of risk
scales, the research team disproved the claim that risk instruments provide an ‘unbiased’
risk of recidivism score. Interestingly, this research was not conducted by risk scholars
or disseminated in an academic forum. Instead, the findings were published on a public
website called ProPublica: Journalism in the Public Interest (ProPublica, n.d.). This kind
of exposure shifts the logic of responsibilization and risk management. In this instance,
the institution is responsibilized for preventing data harms; the evidence supports the
462 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

delegitimization of actuarial risk-based governance, which appears to produce and repro-

duce various forms of systemic racism. Because data mining technologies are reconfig-
uring risk and its management, it is important to document and conceptualize how the
governance of risk is simultaneously evolving.

Public aspects of data analytics: Sharing and facilitating

knowledge
Advocates of big data stress the importance of open access or open data, whereby data
are proactively placed in the public domain without restrictions on their use. Various
criminal justice stakeholders and advocacy organizations are embracing big data tech-
niques because they allow them to shift and shape narratives by participating in ‘evi-
dence-based’ dialogue. One example of this form of information activism emerged in
response to a February 2016 Virginia Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court ruled
that court offices were not required to provide anyone with bulk aggregate information
about lower court cases, despite the fact that all of this information is available on a pub-
lic website and can be searched on a case-by-case basis. According to the ruling:

[The] Supreme Court does not have to release a bulk collection of lower court case information,
even though the collection is maintained to provide access to the records through a public
website […] the Supreme Court is not the custodian of the records and does not have authority
to release them; instead, the records belong to the individual circuit court clerks who provide
them to the Supreme Court.

(VirginiaCourtData.org, 2017)

The court website does not have an integrated interface or centralized database; individu-
als wanting to retrieve this type of data are required to use a menu to separately pick one
of the 118 circuit courts that use the system.
However, the production of bulk data from these 118 circuit courts ispossible, and
relatively simple. In 2014, at the request of a journalist from the Roanoke Times, volun-
teer software engineers created free, open-source software to get around the website’s
roadblocks and allow anyone to perform a statewide name search. As of 2016, an inde-
pendent website committed to open data had 2.2 million anonymized court cases avail-
able for bulk download (VirginiaCourtData.org, 2017). This kind of software had been
adapted for use by journalists and lawyers to produce data sets related to various issues
(e.g. low prosecution rates for sexual assault cases, hospitals hiding malpractice lawsuits
and criminal defendants being denied their constitutional right to counsel). As these
examples demonstrate, various big data analytics are enabling lawyers and data scientists
to create tools that expedite research.
Searchable data sets of judicial rulings, precedents and legislative interpretations, as
well as various witness or victim statements, court logs and insights are now being created
and accessed by data scientists, advocates and the public. These new computational and
analytic tools are enabling law firms to analyse documents in a fraction of the time and
cost than was possible just a few years ago (Markoff, 2011). Data users often publish their
Hannah-Moffat 463

analyses on websites that outline their methodologies, sharing open access data sets and
open source code. These websites may also include brief articles with memorable facts
and images that draw attention to broader systemic patterns and issues of public concern
and interest, such as racism within the criminal justice system. For example, David
Colarusso, formerly a lawyer and now a legal hacker and software engineer, posted a
detailed account of how he used the VirginiaCourtData.org website to show how race
affected sentencing. He wrote, ‘[f]or a black man in Virginia to get the same treatment as
his Caucasian peer, he must earn an additional $90,000 a year’ (Colarusso, 2016: n.p.).
Although he found that race only explained 6 per cent of the variance, he concluded:

What we see here is the aggregate effect of many interlocking parts. Reality is complex. Good
people can find themselves unwitting cogs in the machinery of institutional racism, and a
system doesn’t have to have racist intentions to behave in a racist way.

(Colarusso, 2016: n.p.)

His findings support those of risk scholars, who have demonstrated that many routine
risk assessment instruments fail to adequately capture the complexities of gender, race
and ethnicity. Instead, as with specialized gender-based tools, factors historically charac-
terized as ‘needs’ are reframed as ‘risks’ (Hannah-Moffat, 2005, 2009, 2016a).
Overall, this type of big data analytics challenges current institutional forms of data
management and its availability. Researchers are devising alternative forms of predictive
analytics and moving data into the public domain, where they can be freely accessed and
manipulated. Some researchers have argued that access to big data has altered how peo-
ple view and engage with democratic processes and social institutions, giving rise to a
new form of political participation: ‘information activism’ (Halupka, 2016). Similarly,
the new trend of ‘clicktivism’ allows individuals to engage in small political actions such
as reacting to a post on Facebook, posting on LinkedIn or tweeting or retweeting images
of police violence (Halupka, 2016). This kind of ‘networked social activism’ has been
observed in various social movements, such as Idle No More, Arab Spring and Occupy
Wall Street (Castells, 2012), all of which relied on forms of ‘fast, autonomous, interac-
tive and reprogrammable communication’ (Halupka, 2016: 1488).
We the Protesters is another networked social movement engaging in information
activism. It is producing algorithmic risk narratives that critique racialized police prac-
tices, especially lethal police violence (Mapping police violence, n.d.; Police Union
Contract Project, n.d.; Police Use of Force Project, n.d.). It uses big data technologies to
challenge the logic of evidence-based policing by focusing instead on identifying police
practices that are risky and those that reproduce the systemic barriers that become meas-
ured as individual risk factors(Hannah-Moffat, 2016a, 2016b). In this way, the We the
Protesters movement is using big data analytics to reveal how particular institutional
techniques of governing individuals and populations can be adapted and used by differ-
ent actors and organizations to different ends. Together, these examples reveal how net-
worked social movements and information activism are challenging hegemonic forms of
psychologically based actuarial risk assessment, police practices and surveillance, in
ways that affect policy.
464 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

Big data technologies and critically informed risk algorithms can act as catalysts for
the development of responsive social policy changes and organizational alternatives
(Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Bennett et al., 2014). Their swift diffusion of ideas can
also allow ‘citizens who have become uncoupled from their political authorities […] to
take political change into their own hands, engaging in their own terms in their own
ways’ (Halupka, 2016: 1491). The diffusion of ‘evidence-based’ risk knowledge into
the hands of activists and the public at large allows for the production of counter-nar-
ratives that challenge the efficacy and neutrality of actuarial risk and expose various
forms of systemic racism. This approach appears to be more effective than academic
discourse about the harms and effects of actuarial risk techniques. By producing and
publicly disseminating information about how CJS agencies assess risk, it is possible
to expose and contest these forms of power, knowledge, related techniques and accom-
panying experts.
These examples also illustrate how risk crosses institutional contexts and is shaped by
knowledge that may be independent of traditional social science and can be applied for
various purposes. The rise of ‘algorithmic risk’, and the new knowledge brokers who are
using these data to frame policy and institutional practices as ‘risky’, are now moving the
focus away from individual criminals or specific criminal events, to particular governmen-
tal practices and policies that contribute to crime and thus recidivism. Put another way, big
data is enabling new techniques of social critique that disrupt the traditional institutional
reliance on ‘evidence’—it is reconfiguring power and knowledge assemblages.
Finally, the examples reveal public aggregation, consumption and dispersal of risk
information. Big data analytics can influence public opinion, assist protesters and ulti-
mately lead to change. The point here is not whether algorithms are accurate, neutral,
reliable or valid, but that algorithmic risk is itself being used as ‘evidence’. The tradi-
tional CJS rarely considers the epistemic origins or wider jurisprudential impact of risk
evidence. In contrast, big data analytics is shifting and popularizing access to various
forms of criminal justice and legal data. This has forced the CJS to be more publicly
accountable and responsive to value-laden empirical questions. In responding to cri-
tiques made possible by big data analytics, criminal justice organizations can reduce the
‘data harms’ resulting from its traditionally discriminatory practices.

Opening a debate about social structure, policy and

jurisdictional risk
Big data technologies allow opportunities to critique and rethink what evidence-based
policing, smart sentencing and risk informed decision making can mean. They can help
situate risk as external to the penal subject, and to responsibilize different actors.
Recently, a special issue of Psychology, Crime and Law (Gannon, 2016) was devoted to
dynamic risk factors: it interrogated current assumptions underpinning the concept of
dynamic risk. The omission of socio-structural risks in most dialogues of dynamic risk
can overestimate the predictive power of assessments and obscure important structural
features of recidivism. Additionally, the current focus on the individual when assessing
dynamic risk ignores the social and jurisdictional practices and processes that are them-
selves criminogenic, dynamic or changeable. Moving the focus to these socio-structural
Hannah-Moffat 465

factors can expand the idea of dynamic risk (and risk in general), as well as redistribute
responsibility and allow for different kinds of interventions.
Thus, big data analytics have contributed to theoretical and practical dialogues on risk
assessment. Specifically, this form of analysis has allowed for the possibility of analys-
ing structural risk assessments to reveal how particular laws, institutional practices and
social/welfare policies actually generate and produce risk. This kind of analysis explores
how conditions that are beyond an individual’s control, but are still alterable (e.g. juris-
diction-specific policies, police, bail and parole practices), can increase the risk of recidi-
vism and hamper efforts to desist from crime. Big data technologies can challenge and
shift debates about ‘criminogenic risk’, thereby allowing for different lines of risk
inquiry, encouraging the re-examination of existing risk instruments and complementing
socio-structural analyses of dynamic risk.

A cautionary caveat
Big data and its various technologies are reframing criminal justice debates and produc-
ing different forms of advocacy and mobilization. Advocacy organizations and individu-
als are using predictive analytics to track social problems and propose alternative specific
data informed approaches. However, this trend should also be met with caution and con-
cern. Big data technologies can be used for high-tech profiling of people, events and
places; they can violate constitutional protections, produce a false sense of security and
be exploited for commercial gain. Data are valuable to criminal justice agencies and
private companies, and scholars are demonstrating how seemingly innocuous data can be
accessed and assembled in ways that compromise civil liberties, and feed into discrimi-
natory policies and forms of surveillance. Technical and civil libertarian concerns about
big data include: increased capacity for high-tech profiling; inability to ensure fairness in
automated decision-making processes (e.g. by obscuring systemic discrimination/racism
in complex algorithms); loss of the protection of privacy (e.g. erosion of the ‘right to be
forgotten’); information about people being used for unintended purposes; inaccurate
data; misrepresented populations; and commercial exploitation (boyd and Crawford,
2012; McDermott, 2017; Metcalf and Crawford, 2016). All technologies, regardless of
how well intentioned, are vulnerable to error, misapplication and manipulation. What
remains unclear is how big data technologies that purport to facilitate equality, open
access, transparency and free information exchange may be used to further a range of
commercial, regulatory and punitive agendas. There can and will be unintended effects,
and more research will be needed to explore unresolved questions about privacy, data
ownership, implementation capacities, fairness, ethics, applications of algorithms, val-
ues determination, transparency, constitutionality and interpretation. The hasty embrace
of big data analytics and risk algorithms will lead to a host of jurisprudential, methodo-
logical, interpretive and data quality issues.

Conclusion
Although it is difficult at this time to ascertain with precision how or if big data informed
risk algorithms will supplement or supplant alternative forms of psychologically
466 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)

informed risk assessments, it is important to understand the fluidity of risk and how vari-
ous forms of algorithmic governance are intersecting with risk in the management of
‘crime’. In assessing how actuarially based risk techniques affect governance, O’Malley
(1992: 268) has argued that ‘the direction of development, the form in which they are put
into effect in specific policies, their scope vis-a-vis that of other technologies, and the
nature of their social impact are all quite plastic’. He also noted that ‘one of the emergent
outcomes of new social technologies is opposition, formed in important ways by the
form and anticipated impact of the technology itself. Such opposition may never turn
back the clock’ (1992: 269). It is likely that big data technologies will function similar to
other forms of risk prediction, evaluation and prevention technologies, in that they will
be fluid and used for diverse and sometimes contradictory ends—with both meaningful
and problematic outcomes. Big data technologies will produce new ways of framing,
predicting and managing risk that challenge, embrace and modify current forms of actu-
arial and non-actuarial risk prediction and management.
There is a need for criminological and socio-legal scholars to consider how this tech-
nology may affect governance, shift debates and produce new ways of thinking about
expertise, crime and related social issues. Data-driven solutions may be developed and
applied by diverse stakeholders. While data collection is advancing governmental secu-
rity capacities, and is differentially rationalizing the continued and insidious governance
of multiple marginalized populations, big data can also be used for other purposes. For
example, individuals and groups are using big data to challenge governmental actions
and reveal how risk and other forms of crime control and punishment have produced a
variety of ‘data harms’, such as individual and systemic discrimination and the rational-
ized targeting of marginal and excluded groups.
Finally, the capacities of big data have empowered new actors and opened new spaces
for identifying and contesting the problems of crime and responses to crime. These
capacities have also made possible strong analyses that focus on the social, economic,
and political antecedents to crime and the structural factors that shape regulation, polic-
ing and punishment. As boyd and Crawford (2012: 668) have astutely noted, big data
analytics often enables ‘the practice of apophenia: seeing patterns where none actually
exist, simply because enormous quantities of data can offer connections that radiate in all
directions’. Big data allows us to merge data sets that were not previously amalgamated,
and consequently opens new lines of inquiry. More research will be needed to explore the
assemblages created by big data, their outcomes and any subsequent reshaping of the
criminological and penal field, and of the social sciences more generally. Interpretation
remains at the heart of the big data debate because data taken out of context, while capa-
ble of making powerful statements, can also lose meaning and value (boyd and Crawford,
2012).
Some scholars have suggested that big data analytics is a ‘game changer’ for criminol-
ogy (Chan and Bennett Moses, 2016). Clearly, it complicates the traditional role of aca-
demics, who were once considered responsible for calling attention to how things are
constituted. Some scholars have even claimed that reliance on big data analytics will
render social science powerless (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013). If so, and given
the rapidity of big data tracking and analysis, academics may have a new role: to try to
slow the speed at which data are collected and processed. Finally, there is a continued
Hannah-Moffat 467

need for research that enhances the transparency of algorithms and data, and that care-
fully assesses the socio-political, legal and institutional contexts in which they are
deployed.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Linn Clark, Paula Maurutto, Kelly Struthers-Munford, Pat O’Malley
and the anonymous reviewers for their careful readings and helpful advice.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Notes
1. http://www.predpol.com/how-predpol-works/. PredPol is being used internationally, and
developers work with police agencies to provide real-time maps of criminal events. This
crime prediction software uses an algorithm and machine learning. It can help police deter-
mine where to efficiently place patrol resources through customized crime predictions that
identify the places and times that crimes are most likely to occur. It also purports to automati-
cally generate a map of a prison during each working shift, using a 500 ft2 grid. PredPol’s
powerful software uses an algorithm based on three data points related to criminal behaviour
patterns: type; place; and time of past crimes. Importantly, this technology is not meant to
replace officers; it provides complementary information for interpretation by experienced
police officers and crime analysts. It is meant to empower them and help reduce the mundane
aspects of their work, not to result in the deskilling of officers or guards. It provides real-
time analysis tools for decision making, resource management and planning: Crime Search;
Mission; Control; Radar; GPS + Vehicle Pathing.
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-data-may-be-reinforcing-racial-bias-in-
the-criminal-justice-system/2017/02/10/d63de518-ee3a-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.
html?utm_term=.6250d2ef331c.
3. See, for example, http://www.checkthepolice.org/#review; http://useofforceproject.
org/#review; https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/; https://www.propublica.org/datastore/data-
set/compas-recidivism-risk-score-data-and-analysis (all accessed 21 April 2017).
4. For a more detailed discussion of the evolution of these actuarial tools see Andrews and Bonta
(1998) or Hannah-Moffat (2004a).
5. http://www.datasociety.net/.
6. https://datasociety.net/output/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing/.

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Author biography
Kelly Hannah-Moffat is a professor of in the department of Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and
Vice President Human Resources & Equity at the University of Toronto.  She is the co-editor of the
international journal Punishment and Society and has published several articles and books on risk,
punishment, human rights and detention, parole, gender and diversity, specialized courts, and crimi-
nal justice decision-making.