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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how predictive policing systems turn algorithmic risk into a governing logic in contemporary security institutions. It explores how the systems reshape authority and accountability, and how forms of resistance emerge across criminal justice contexts in the Global South and North.

Paper long abstract

Predictive policing systems increasingly shape how security institutions anticipate crime and justify intervention. Rather than treating these systems as neutral tools that assist human decision-making, this paper approaches predictive policing as a form of security governance in its own right, one that embeds statistical risk into everyday practices of policing and punishment. As risk scores gain authority, they quietly redefine what counts as reasonable suspicion, how responsibility is assigned, and where accountability is located when harm occurs.

The paper focuses on how predictive policing models travel across the Global South and North through shared vendors, technical standards, and policy imaginaries. While these systems are introduced in very different institutional settings, they carry similar assumptions about crime, and uncertainty. The result is recurring patterns in which algorithmic risk legitimises expanded surveillance while dispersing responsibility across police agencies and institutions. In this context, questions of justice are increasingly mediated by data infrastructures that are difficult to contest or even fully understand.

The paper also examines emerging forms of resistance to predictive policing, including legal challenges, institutional refusals, and collective efforts to question the authority of algorithmic risk itself. These responses are treated as governance practices rather than reactive opposition, revealing how agency persists within systems of algorithmic control. By foregrounding the political and institutional work performed by predictive technologies, the paper contributes to ongoing debates about whether AI can support more just forms of security governance, or whether it consolidates new modes of digital control under claims of efficiency and objectivity.