Governing, Policing and Racialisation through POL-INTEL: An analysis of data-driven policing in Denmark

Abstract: In this thesis, I critically scrutinize the data-driven policing tool POL-INTEL, which was implemented in the Danish police in 2017. To better understand how we are governed and policed through POL-INTEL I look at the problematisations and forms of subjectifications constituted in the policies to acquire and implement the system in the police and through the technology of POL-INTEL itself. For this purpose, I subject a range of documents and an interview, that all relate to the acquisition, implementation and functions of POL-INTEL to a discourse-analysis inspired by Bacchi’s WPR-approach. Theoretically, I draw on race-critical, post-colonialist, feminist and foucauldian perspectives on technology and data-driven policing. My analysis shows how POL-INTEL was initially presented primarily as a solution to terrorism, while it later in the implementation process was presented primarily as a solution to crime. Based on this, I argue that POL-INTEL represents a militarization of the logics and technologies in the Danish police. I further find that the policies and technology present the problems of terrorism and crime as problems of the racialized other, and as increasingly complex yet increasingly predictable problems. This, I argue, draw on and make possible pre-emptive logics of policing where the prediction of future threats work to produce and justify police action in the present.