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karantripathi.bsky.social
PhD at University of Cambridge, MSc at University of Oxford. Researching intersection of programmable computational infrastructures and criminal justice.
41 posts 104 followers 319 following
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Police tech providers in India are moving from “here’s our product” to “you can’t do it without us” - I’m guessing what would be the obvious next step!

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Indian state of UP spent 400 million INR to procure “AI crowd management tool” which was only used for counting footfall. Despite this, a tragic stampede took place where hundreds (still counting) lost their lives. Later, more money was spent in pushing positive ads for “digital kumbh”

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Senior police officers in India call themselves “data fiduciaries”, but in the same breath go on to share their visions of a data warehouse that integrates static and real-time data from both state and private entities (delivery apps, e-commerce apps, home IOTs).

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Funny how European scholars keep using “risk profiles” instead of “control profiles” to refer to group-based profiling of people. ‘Risk’ both sanitises and legitimises the deeply political, dehumanising, and subjugating logics (and legacies) of racialised group-based profiling.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Love archival research - as someone who does empirical research in criminal justice, archives (to an extent) are the least triggering, traumatising, and exhausting, source for data. Fun fact: colonial archives are more easily accessible than postcolonial ones 💀

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Digital infrastructures in policing - both materially and symbolically - are mobilised arbitrarily. ‘Efficiency’, thereby, both in its functional and discursive operation, is multivalent, fluid, contingent to the context in which it is invoked - becoming complicit in punitive-political policing

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

From the Field: “We don’t use them much, given Delhi’s traffic, we prefer bikes or our normal cars … they’re too big, if we use them, we’ll never reach the spot in time” … “but they look cool, right? mostly for the show, I’d say” - patrol officers on the new “mobile” high-tech fleet.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

My observations from the field reveals how a combination of road infrastructure, driving habits, ease of obtaining fake number plates, traffic, dust pollution, and monkeys, disrupt the seamless sociotechnical imaginaries of Automatic Number Plate Reader (ANPR) cameras in a Himalayan state.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

In India, it’s really difficult to do quant research on criminal justice decision-making. Not just due to access, but sheer terrible recording practices. Judges often omit vital details while recording orders/judgements - making secondary data analysis very unreliable

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

Honored to have my work on sentence review of lifers in India featured in this article by the Institute of Criminology @cambridgeuni.bsky.social Grateful for the opportunity to be interviewed for this piece and share insights on how my research contributed to the release of a lifer after 26 years!

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

Hybridisation of public/security/policing infrastructures is not just the question of efficiency, but also of politics of recognition, resistance, and redemption.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

Notes from the field: immune (so far) from race to algorithmic policing, this police station in a hilly state in India still uses pin-maps for patrol allocations

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Notes from the field: I was surprised to see how the neatly drawn boundaries of public-private divide collapse in digital policing projects. (1/2)

submitted 54 days ago • 1 comment

From the fieldwork: software engineers in India’s state-owned computing agency reveal the ‘boundary-work’ required to work on policing projects. One theme is the value of having a govt job - the prestige it brings. So one must focus on the task and not the “noise”, on the code and not the coded

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

Is researcher dysphoria a thing?

submitted 77 days ago • 0 comments

My paper in Punishment & Society discusses sentence review decision-making for life prisoners in India. Based on findings from quant-qual sequential design, I argue that SRB significantly violates lifers’ right to meaningful consideration for early release. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

submitted 98 days ago • 0 comments