Human Rights and Algorithmic Impact Assessment for Predictive Policing

Abstract

This paper explores how algorithmic rationality may be considered a new bureaucracy according to Weber’s conceptualization of legal rationality. It questions the idea that technical disintermediation may achieve the goal of algorithmic neutrality and objective decision-making. It argues that such rationality is represented by surveillance purposes in the broadest meaning. Algorithmic surveillance reduces the complexity of reality calculating the probability that certain facts happen on the basis of repeated actions. The persuasive power of algorithms aims at predicting social behaviours that are expected to be repeated in time. Against this static model, the role of law and legal culture is relevant for individual emancipation and social change. The paper is divided into three sections: the first section describes commonalities and differences between legal bureaucracy and algorithms; the second part examines the linkage between a data-driven model of law production and algorithmic rationality; the third part questions the idea of law production by data as a product of legal culture.