Abstract

Police authorities in a number of countries have recently started to use body-worn cameras. Un-like stationary surveillance cameras, body-worn cameras are maneuvered by the individual offic-ers and can be used in a variety of different circumstances and even brought into private settings such as people’s homes. This means that personal and, in some cases, even sensitive information can be captured and must be correctly managed and stored within the organization. Hence, not only actual camera usage but also management of the collected material need to be properly reg-ulated. Previous studies, however, have shown that technology - and the new practice it affords - changes more rapidly than do the regulative mechanisms governing it. Therefore, our study aims to understand how individual police officers cope this uncertainty during their everyday prac-tice of using body-worn cameras. Using the Swedish police as a case, and based on qualitative interviews with individual representatives of both police and legislative authorities, we draw on Lessig’s four modalities of regulation - law, norms, architecture, and market - and our preliminary results shows that the modalities of norms and architecture dominate with quite clear regulative effects whereas law and market have only marginal impacts.

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