Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: The Infrapolitics of Predictive Policing

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF), Sociology, and Law and Science programs. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Robert Vargas at the University of Chicago, this postdoctoral fellowship supports an early career scientist investigating the longstanding linkages between society and the quantification of the penal sector. The goal of this research project is to advance our understanding of critical shifts in policing styles. This research will provide empirical insights into how policing models and practices inform the emergence of new approaches to policing, which will be of benefit to social scientists as well as policymakers interested in the intersection between the quantification of crime control and social inequality. Drawing upon a multi-method research design, this study will investigate how communities perceive and negotiate predictive policing. This project will make both empirical and theoretical contributions to overcome three major gaps across the literature on predictive policing: 1) relations that made the datafication of crime control possible in a region, 2) urban residents’ interpretation and negotiation of data-driven policing, and 3) the agency of actors in redefining and responding to policing. This research will advance social and behavioral sciences and introduce an epistemic shift in the understanding of crime control and urban policing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.