You are warmly invited to a BSC Wales Seminar ‘From Control To Care: Using AI Tools To Improve Positive Safety’ delivered by Professor Marc Schuilenburg.
Who: Professor Marc Schuilenburg’s – Professor of Digital Surveillance, Erasmus University Rotterdam
When: 28th October 2026, 5-7pm
Where: This is a hybrid seminar here:
Online via Microsoft Teams.
Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/393141889157002?p=voShIEFQMo6SEJVo78
Meeting ID: 393 141 889 157 002
Passcode: GU3EV3ni
In person here: Committee Room 2, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University
About: From Control To Care: Using AI Tools To Improve Positive Safety
The growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in public safety has largely focused on addressing ‘threats’ and ‘risks’. But can AI tools be used in ways that go beyond the politics of ‘law and order’ and its war-like language of ‘fighting’ and ‘combating’ crime? And can this be done in an ethically and legally responsible manner?
Grounded in empirical research of AI tools in policing, Marc Schuilenburg challenges the dominant approach to AI that prioritizes a control-oriented focus, while overlooking classical sociological concepts such as ‘care’ and ‘belonging’ – key elements of a ‘positive safety’ perspective. Moving away from enforcement-driven AI tools and their inherent risks – such as discrimination, stigmatization, self-fulfilling prophecies, and the overpolicing of minority neighbourhoods – Schuilenburg highlights how engagement-based AI applications can support care, trust, and well-being at the neighbourhood level. In doing so, he draws on insights from two action-based research projects in the Netherlands, aimed at solving practical problems in local contexts.
The first project took place in the city of Zaanstad, where two asylum boats have recently been put into operation, housing more than 1,500 asylum seekers. Language and cultural barriers, along with negative experiences in their countries of origin, undermine asylum seekers’ trust in local police. In this project, AI tools have been developed to help build trust between asylum seekers and police officers. The second project focuses on Lombardijen, a low-income neighbourhood in Rotterdam facing challenges such as high crime rates, unemployment, debt, and welfare cuts. Here, AI tools were used to help residents and policymakers express their experiences and perspectives on the neighbourhood in ways that go beyond verbal communication.
On the basis of empirical findings of both projects, and of wider digital policing initiatives, Schuilenburg argues that AI tools – when designed and implemented within an ELSA-based and community-centred framework – can act as a facilitator of care rather than control. He concludes by reflecting on how criminological research can contribute to further developing and critically assessing the role of AI in public safety.
Marc Schuilenburg is Professor of Digital Surveillance at Erasmus University Rotterdam, with a current focus on the integration of AI and algorithms in public safety. Schuilenburg is the author of Making Surveillance Public (2nd edition 2025), in which he explores the deployment of AI applications, asking who is using them, what their aims are, what outcomes and societal impacts they lead to, and against whom they are used. Schuilenburg’s other monographs available in English include Hysteria (2021), The Securitization of Society (2015) and Mediapolis (2006). He has edited eight books, including The Algorithmic Society (2nd edition 2026) and Positive Criminology (2014). See: www.marcschuilenburg.nl.