CRIMKNOW Private knowledge, public issues: Digitalization and private economies of knowledge in criminal justice

• Lomell, Heidi Mork; Langeland, Camilla Løvschall & Franko, Katja (2026). CRIMKNOW: Digitalisering og privatiserte kunnskapsregimer i kriminalpolitikken. Full text in Research Archive
• Langeland, Camilla Løvschall (2026). ‘If only the police knew what the police already know’: The knowledge paradox in intelligence. doi: https:/www.digitresearchschool.no/conference-programme. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Contemporary police reforms increasingly emphasise data-driven decision-making and knowledge-based approaches. However, practitioners identify a different challenge. While data and information exist within and across police systems, access to them is limited and, in some cases, non-existent. Drawing on interviews with 35 police intelligence analysts in Norway and Denmark, this article examines how knowledge-based policing is experienced in everyday intelligence practice. Analysts often describe the most valuable knowledge as already present in existing registers. Accessing and integrating it across systems, platforms and agencies, however, remains difficult. Rather than calling for more data, they point to organisational and technological constraints that prevent available information from becoming actionable intelligence. Conceptualising this dynamic as a knowledge accessibility paradox, the article argues that the promise of knowledge-based policing in intelligence work is constrained less by data scarcity than by the conditions under which knowledge is accessed, assembled, and made usable. The article further distinguishes between data accessibility and retrievability, emphasising how information may exist without being practically findable or usable. The analysis identifies infrastructural, epistemic, organisational and imaginary inhibitions, alongside enabling conditions such as data integration and searchability, that shape how information becomes actionable. These dynamics are situated within sociotechnical imaginaries of data-driven policing that shape how problems and solutions are defined and pursued. This has consequences for decision-making, including delays, partial situational awareness, and the underutilisation of existing knowledge. By foregrounding analysts’ perspectives, the study shifts attention from data accumulation to the practical and organisational factors that shape what can count as knowledge in policing.

• Langeland, Camilla Løvschall (2026). The Pursuit of Knowledge: Translating knowledge-based models in police intelligence work. doi: https:/ccc.ku.dk/events/the-pursuit-of-knowledge/. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Contemporary police reforms aim to offer solutions grounded in data-driven decision-making and knowledge-based approaches. However, practitioners identify a different challenge. While data and information exist within and across police systems, access to them is limited and, in some cases, non-existent. Drawing on interviews with 35 intelligence analysts in Norway and Denmark, this article examines how knowledge-based policing is experienced in everyday intelligence practice. Analysts consistently identify the most valuable knowledge as already present in existing registers, yet challenging to access and integrate across systems, platforms and agencies. Rather than calling for more data, they point to organisational and technological constraints that prevent available information from becoming actionable intelligence. Conceptualising this dynamic as a knowledge accessibility paradox, the article argues that the promise of knowledge-based policing is constrained less by data scarcity than by the conditions under which knowledge is accessed, assembled, and made usable. By foregrounding analysts’ perspectives, the study shifts attention from data accumulation to the practical and organisational factors that shape what can count as knowledge in police work.

• Langeland, Camilla Løvschall & Myrvang, Thea (2026). Hvorfor bør vi bry oss om at dommere bruker Microsoft Copilot? doi: https:/rett24.no/articles/hvorfor-bor-vi-bry-oss-om-at-dommere-bruker-microsoft-copilot. Full text in Research Archive
• Lomell, Heidi Mork; Franko, Katja & Akhoundzadeh, Miriam Revheim (2026). Private numbers, public issues. doi: https:/nsfk.org/2025/11/27/nsfk-research-seminar-2026/. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Statistics have been traditionally seen as the hallmark of state knowledge production. However, in recent years, the production of numbers has been increasingly taken over by private actors, especially in the international domain. By producing global indexes, benchmarks and indicators, NGOs, consulting firms, think tanks and civil society organizations are gaining a central role in the production of statistics and knowledge about various forms of global crime and shaping national policies and the agenda of international organizations. Moreover, most criminal justice agencies are moving their data (i.e. state archives and statistical data) to commercial cloud services. Digital platforms offered by private providers have become an essential component of the state bureaucratic infrastructure, a trend that has been described as “platformization of the state”. This paper examines the trend towards the privatization of numbers production and examines how this may be influencing the organizational logic of the state and crime policy. The paper draws on interviews with those producing state and private statistics, top-level bureaucrats and criminal justice decision-makers as well as other actors who extract value from crime data as well as an analysis of new statistical “products”.

• Lomell, Heidi Mork & Ellefsen, Hjørdis Birgitte (2026). Visions of digital policing. doi: https:/dfrws.org/conferences/dfrws-eu-2026/. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  What is new, and what is old, in contemporary visions of what technology and digitalization can do for the police? While researchers have explored the many effects and consequences that digital information technology has had on policing, we know little about what happened when the very first digital policing tools were developed and implemented. In this presentation, we explore how digitalization was envisioned and introduced to the Norwegian police in the 1960s and 70s at the dawn of the digital age. We find that private tech-industry was a key agent in the computerization of the Norwegian police, promoting EDP (Electronic Data Processing) as a tool for more effective policing that could predict, control, and detect crime with scientific precision. Due to lack of technological competence and resources, the Norwegian police became highly dependent on the facilitation, training and advise of private tech-industry, which also affected how the police understand themselves and their function in society. Investigating how the visions of entrepreneurs were translated into collectively held reference points, our study gives insight into the origination and embedding of “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff, 2015) that has laid ground for how we today understand the fundamental nature of technology, crime and policing, and how we envision the future.

• Langeland, Camilla Løvschall (2026). Midway assessment: Making knowledge work. A study of how intelligence analysts adapt to knowledge-based policing. doi: https:/www.jus.uio.no/ikrs/english/research/news-and-events/events/midway-assessments/2026midway-assessment-langeland.html. Full text in Research Archive
• Lomell, Heidi Mork & Ellefsen, Hjørdis Birgitte (2026). Looking into the future of the past: Imaginaries of digital policing in the 1960s and -70s. Full text in Research Archive
• Myrvang, Thea (2025). Domstolenes arbeid i en digital tid. Full text in Research Archive
• Myrvang, Thea (2025). Judicial craftsmanship in a digital age. Full text in Research Archive

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