2022 Theses Master's

Safety as a Smokescreen: The New York Police Department, Surveillance Technology, and Necropower

Worthington, Corinne

This paper draws on and situates itself within a large body of abolitionist scholarship that identifies policing and its use of surveillance technology as an intentional mechanism of the state used for social control. Following an interpretive approach, this research analyzes materials pertaining to the New York Police Department’s surveillance technology apparatus, primarily the Domain Awareness System, by applying Michel Foucault’s theories of panoptic surveillance and Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropower. In this vein, I argue that that the New York Police Department’s surveillance apparatus is designed not to increase safety but serves only to protect racial hegemony and the necropower of the State.