Digital Transformation in Policing: The Promise, Perils and Solutions

This book shares essential insights into how the social sciences and technology could foster new advances in managing the complexity inherent to the criminal and digital policing landscape. Said landscape is both dynamic and intricate, emanating as it does from crimes that are both persistent and transnational. Globalization, human and drug trafficking, cybercrime, terrorism, and other forms of transnational crime can have significant impacts on societies around the world. This necessitates a reassessment of what crime, national security and policing mean. Recent global events such as human and drug trafficking, the COVID-19 pandemic, violent protests, cyber threats and terrorist activities underscore the vulnerabilities of our current security and digital policing posture.

This book presents concepts, theories and digital policing applications, offering a comprehensive analysis of current and emerging trends in digital policing. Pursuing an evidence-based approach, it offers an extraordinarily perceptive and detailed view of issues and solutions regarding the crime and digital policing landscape. To this end, it highlights current technological and methodological solutions as well as advances concerning integrated computational and analytical solutions deployed in digital policing. It also provides a comprehensive analysis of the technical, ethical, legal, privacy and civil liberty challenges stemming from the aforementioned advances in the field of digital policing; and accordingly, offers detailed recommendations supporting the design and implementation of best practices including technical, ethical and legal approaches when conducting digital policing.

The research gathered here fits well into the larger body of work on various aspects of AI, cybersecurity, national security, digital forensics, cyberterrorism, ethics, human rights, cybercrime and law. It provides a valuable reference for law enforcement, policymakers, cybersecurity experts, digital forensic practitioners, researchers, graduates and advanced undergraduates, and other stakeholders with an interest in counter-terrorism. In addition to this target audience, it offers a valuable tool for lawyers, criminologist and technology enthusiasts.