"You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World

by Torie Bosch

the Police Beat Algorithm became thousands of similar systems designed and built throughout the seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond. Over the decades, these algorithms have grown to include facial recognition, mobile surveillance, risk assessment, and other such tools used from local law enforcement to international security. The same logics and assumptions that motivated the creation of the PBA more than 50 years ago continue to permeate this array of contemporary law enforcement technologies. Fear of crime—still personified disproportionately by Black and brown people—continues to be greatly exaggerated, justifying exorbitant investment in developing more law enforcement technologies. Belief in the objective and infallible nature, and in the predictive power of data, continues to run rampant among technology purveyors, law enforcement personnel, public officials, and policy influencers. And stories about the disparate outcomes these technologies have on communities of color continue to roll in like a steady drumbeat. In these ways, today’s law enforcement technologies are not new; they’re just more sophisticated, insidious, ubiquitous, and more impactful than when the PBA was first conceived more than half a century ago.