Computational procedures increasingly inform how we work,
communicate, and make decisions. In this talk, I draw on interviews and
ethnographic observations conducted within the Los Angeles Police
Department (LAPD) to analyze the organizational and institutional forces
shaping the use of information for social control. I reveal how the
police leverage big data and new surveillance technologies to allocate
resources, classify risk, and conduct investigations. I argue
data-intensive policing does not eliminate discretion, but rather
displaces discretionary power to earlier, less visible parts of the
policing process, which has implications for organizational practice,
law, and social inequality.