How algorithmic policing challenges fundamental rights protection in the EU: lessons from the United Kingdom

Police forces in the United Kingdom are quickly emerging as global pioneers in the design, deployment, and use of algorithmic tools for pre-trial decision-making purposes: i.e., the prevention, detection, and investigation of criminal offending. Technologies enabling live facial recognition, geographic 'hotspot' mapping – and the predictive risk assessment of an individual's likelihood of future offending – can, and are, being used to make police decisions about whether to initiate surveillance and intelligence-gathering activities, whether to stop, question and/or search specific persons or their property, and/or whether to arrest and detain individuals suspected of criminal offending or of having significant risk of future offending.