How can police officers obey the rules? Research links legal norms to technology
It’s not something the police force wants to see, but it still occurs: racist and misogynist police conduct. Human rights specialist Dr Linda Louis has studied how technology could help police officers behave correctly and comply with the applicable legal norms.
On Tuesday 17 September 2024, Linda Louis was awarded a PhD for her research into how to implement the applicable legal norms in technologies we already use every day, such as smartphones and fitness trackers. ‘Considering technology that police officers, investigators, enforcers and other policing staff already use for their work,’ explains Dr Louis. ‘What if it could be used to track and nudge their behaviour in a positive way?’
Dr Louis adds that police officers can unknowingly engage in behaviour they are supposed to be combatting and preventing. At times, they discriminate or make sexist or racist remarks aimed at female victims, minority groups or against citizens in general.
It's not coercive, yet you are influenced. It's like having a little angel on your shoulder
Practice not aligned with theory
This is a subject that Dr Louis has been working on since her legal studies at the top-ranked National Law School in Bangalore, India – the country where she was born. She opted to specialise in human rights and humanitarian law in Geneva and worked for various NGOs, including Tulir and UNICEF in India and the Red Cross in Geneva. As a result, she helped develop better legislation and training programmes to improve police effectiveness so that cases did not collapse due to malpractices such as sexist or inappropriate behaviour.
‘I started to wonder whether our work as human rights lawyers made sense. We write lots of reports about what's right and wrong, but it’s not actually helping to change things on the ground,’ says Dr Louis.
Effective tracking with technical gadgets
The natural thing for a legal scholar to do is to seek ways to redirect undesirable behaviour using legislation. Dr Louis came up with the idea of linking this to universal, emerging technologies. In particular, by applying technical and behavioural psychological methods to steer people towards desirable behaviour – known as ‘nudging’. ‘That was my starting point,’ she continues. ‘What if we had a mobile app that could guide the police and give them appropriate reminders or prompt reflection? They might then make fewer biased decisions. Police officers already wear bodycams and voice recorders – everything’s already digitised and fully intelligent. So the capacity is there and my hope was that we could use it and bring it all together.’
The fitness tracker is a classic example
Influencer technology, known commonly as ‘persuasive technology’, is the gentle influencing of people using technological gadgets and software that surround us in our daily lives. Dr Louis shows the wristband she wears on her left arm – a fitness tracker. ‘It’s a classic example of influencer technology,’ she says. ‘It tells you by the number of steps whether you’re doing well. It tells us to get up and move. It tells us when we're doing well and whether we’re reaching our targets. It's not coercive, yet you are influenced. It's like having a little angel on your shoulder.’ Following this principle, she investigated whether this method could be used to correct undesirable behaviour among police officers. Partly because these are not offences or crimes in the context of criminal law, and that is not what Dr Louis' method focuses on.
‘When I started looking into it, I realised there was no literature on the subject. So, it soon became my task to integrate the theoretical ideas and establish the feasibility of further research.’
Research into behavioural standards
She approached Professor Simone Van der Hof and Professor Bart Custers at Leiden Law School with her research idea and they recognised the creativity and innovation of her approach. The research she conducted at Leiden Law School focused partially on establishing the norms that underpinned legislation. Norms that agents could internalise through apps, software and devices such as smartphones and bodycams through reminder notifications, pop-ups and subsequent feedback.
She drew from experiments on the application of virtual reality to encourage desirable behaviour. These were always small technical extensions to pre-existing technology that was already in use. Similar extensions to software could give police officers instant feedback when their tone or choice of words is wrong and they are unknowingly triggering sensitivities within the victims.
Practical application
Dr Louis' legal research has yielded six practical applications that policing staff can use to change their behaviour so that it no longer comes across as racist or sexist.
This month, Dr Louis started working at the research group Centre of Expertise Cyber Security at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, where she has now been teaching for three years. This research group is already collaborating with the police. She adds: ‘I’d love to collaborate with the police force in order to continue developing influencing technologies and to find out whether it's working as we want it to.’
Jan-Willem Oomen
Image at top: Zach Lisko through Unsplash