Automated Suspicion: Algorithmic Workforce Surveillance and the Erosion of Internal Legitimacy in the Metropolitan Police Service

Paul Ford

No ftq74_v2, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Abstract This article examines the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) pilot deployment of Palantir analytics for internal workforce monitoring, announced in April 2026 as part of the force’s post-Panorama standards programme. The force defends the deployment as lawful, since it brings together data it already holds; this article argues that defence repeats a known mistake in policing legitimacy research, treating legal compliance as the ceiling of consent rather than its floor. Drawing on procedural justice theory (Tyler 2006), the dialogic and twin-track models of legitimacy (Bottoms and Tankebe 2012; Tankebe 2013; Bradford and Tankebe 2014), Beetham’s (1991) account of institutional legitimacy, and the author’s earlier work (Ford 2021, 2026), it audits the deployment against the four pillars of procedural justice and finds it deficient on voice, neutrality, respect, and trustworthy motives. It argues that the pilot inverts Sherman’s (2007) power-few hypothesis, fails the targeting—testing—tracking discipline of evidence-based policing (Sherman 2013), substitutes a technical fix for what Heifetz (1994) calls an adaptive challenge, and entangles culture reform with surveillance in ways that risk delegitimising Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) work and, through a mirroring effect, damaging public-facing encounters. A subsequent disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, including the pilot’s Data Protection Impact Assessment and Equality Impact Assessment obtained in redacted form, tests these claims against primary evidence: it confirms an algorithmic yield of 2.6 million flags with a further-action rate of 0.075 per cent, corroborates self-acknowledged risks to trust and equity in the MPS’s own equalities analysis, and shows the force cannot establish what became of the cases its own system flagged. The article closes with implications for chief officers, police and crime commissioners, and professional standards leads. Keywords: algorithmic management, workforce surveillance, police legitimacy, officer self-legitimacy, procedural justice, psychological safety, organisational culture, EDI, Palantir, Metropolitan Police Service.

Date: 2026-09-12
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:ftq74_v2

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/ftq74_v2

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