Does data count? The politics of complaint, data and police accountability.

Abstract

 Advances in technology have expanded the possibilities of state surveillance, but they have also expanded opportunities for citizens to collect data on the state.2 At present, cell phone videos, WhatsApp monitoring groups and crowdsourced mapping of real-time events are producing a raft of new data to add to older forms of civic data gathering. In the wake of global mobilisation around issues of police wrongdoing and accountability, it is important to reflect on the impact that data may have on the pursuit of justice, redress, and transformation.3

While not discounting the rich policing literature that exists on police accountability and change, we have opted in this article to draw on the work of Sara Ahmed, who explores complaints in the United Kingdom higher education sector.4 Her work, we argue, can help us understand why counting people does not always make them count. In other words, Ahmed shows how the effectiveness of data in securing redress and reform is often curtailed by the same patterns of oppression and stigma that facilitate police wrongdoing in the first place. In this article, we explain Ahmed’s concept of a ‘complaint biography’ and her exposition of complaint work more broadly. We also apply her ideas to incidents of complaints against the police, and interrogate the role and importance of physical violence in this regard.