Digitalizing the police: internal and external challenges for the police organization in an inclusive society (DIGIPOL)

The DIGIPOL research project, funded by Belgian Science Policy, includes researchers from the National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology (coordinator), the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. This project aims to study how the process of digitalization – through technologies like body-worn cameras, multi-tenant platforms and analysis software – affects the everyday work of the Belgian local police. Specifically, it wishes to gain insight in how this process changes the workplace and working conditions, the internal working relationships and police-public relations. In addition, it will concern on how technology should, on the one hand, contribute to police’s efficiency, and on the other hand, contribute to police legitimacy. Finally, in this context of expansion of technology-mediated interactions, the organizational and police legitimacy will be questioned.

Six police zones will participate in the project: two in Flanders, two in Brussels and two in Wallonia. An inductive approach will be used through which activities of frontline police officers and executive officers (supervisors) will be studied in situ. Qualitative methods – such as (policy) document analysis, participant observations, semi-directive interviews and focus groups – and collaborative methods – such as workshops with field officers, meetings of professional guidance committee and ad hoc steering meetings with each police force involved in the project – will be used to fill in the objectives. The observations will focus on neighborhood police officers, patrol officers of the intervention team and the direct supervisors of these actors, i.e. middle management. The semi-directive interviews and focus groups will focus on management, middle management and some frontline officers. The fieldwork will continue over two periods of seven months, two months in each police force and time to allow the researchers to withdraw from the field. Forward, these research methods should give insight in the Belgian local police experiences with the process of digitalization.