Join the Data, Algorithms, and Social Justice working group for an online event featuring Dr. Jackie Wang (New School, Culture and Media Studies, author of Carceral Capitalism).
Today's criminal legal system has increasingly turned toward data-driven technical approaches to manage and commodify risk. Yet this turn began nearly a century ago, with the introduction of insurance industry actuarial methods into the domain of crime and punishment. This conversation will explore the history of risk assessment, crime statistics, and the turn to algorithmic governance. Focusing on the postwar US, we will discuss the rise of what Wang calls "technocratic reform": a penal reform agenda based in risk assessment and the deployment of technical knowledge, which ultimately accelerated the buildup of mass incarceration. The discussion will conclude by exploring contemporary critiques of data-driven (in)justice and activist efforts to abolish carceral technologies.
Jackie Wang is a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, trauma monster, and Assistant Professor of Culture and Media Studies at The New School. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018), a number of punk zines including On Being Hard Femme, and the forthcoming poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (Nightboat Books, 2021).
