Policing and Body-Worn Cameras

I have been conducting research related to police adoption of body-worn cameras, and the legal regulation of such camera use, since 2013. This page provides organized access to the results of that line of research (updated Nov. 2024).

Academic publications

Books

Cover of "Police Visibility" (book) “Police Visibility: Privacy, Surveillance, and the False Promise of Body-Worn Cameras” (University of California Press, June 2021) [link].

  • Awarded the 2022 Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) Book Prize for outstanding monograph on surveillance published in 2021.
  • Read reviews by Skinner-Thompson (JOTWELL), Miranda (Information Polity), Tabor (Surveillance & Society), and Bohigian (Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books).
“Police on Camera: Surveillance, Privacy, and Accountability” (edited by Bryce Clayton Newell). Routledge: Routledge Studies in Surveillance book series, 2021) [link].

Articles and chapters

Newell, Bryce Clayton, and Eleni Kosta. 2024. “Apples, Oranges, and Time Machines: Regulating Police Use of Body-Worn Cameras in Europe and the United States.” In Privacy, Technology, and the Criminal Process, edited by Andrew Roberts, Joe Purshouse, and Jason Bosland, pp. 196–221. Routledge. [link to book]

Newell, Bryce Clayton and Marthinus C. Koen. 2023. “Painting the Narrative: Police Body-Worn Cameras, Report Writing, and the Techno-Regulation of Policework.” First Monday 28 (7). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v28i7.13243 [link (open access)]

Koen, Marthinus C., Bryce Clayton Newell, and Melinda R. Roberts. 2023. “The Pennybridge Pioneers: Understanding Internal Stakeholder Perceptions of Body-Worn Camera Implementation.” Journal of Crime and Justice 46 (2): 194–210. [link]

Newell, Bryce Clayton, “Interpreting Police Video: A Pilot Study.” In Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)  58 (1): 499-503 (2021)

Koen, Marthinus C., Bryce Clayton Newell, and Melinda R. Roberts. 2021. “Body-Worn Cameras: Technological Frames and Project Abandonment.” Journal of Criminal Justice 72 (1): 101773. [link]

Newell, Bryce Clayton. 2019. “Context, Visibility, and Control: Police Work and the Contested Objectivity of Bystander Video.” New Media & Society 21 (1): 60–76. [link]

Newell, Bryce Clayton, and Ruben Greidanus [student]. 2018. “Officer Discretion and the Choice to Record: Officer Attitudes Towards Body-Worn Camera Activation.” North Carolina Law Review 96 (5): 1525–1578. [link]

Newell, Bryce Clayton, Ricardo Gomez, and Verónica E. Guajardo. 2017. “Sensors, Cameras, and the New ‘Normal’ in Clandestine Migration: How Undocumented Migrants Experience Surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Surveillance & Society 15 (1): 21–41. [link]

Newell, Bryce Clayton. 2017. “Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study of Police Body Camera Adoption, Privacy, and Public Disclosure in Washington State.” Indiana Law Journal 92 (4): 1329–1399. [link]

Newell, Bryce Clayton, “Context, Visibility, and Control: Contesting the Objectivity of Visual (Video) Records of Police-Citizen Interactions.” In Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T 2017) 54 (1): 766–767 (2017)

Randy K. Lippert and Bryce Clayton Newell. 2016. “Introduction: The Privacy and Surveillance Implications of Police Body Cameras.” Surveillance & Society 14 (1): 113–116 (editorial introduction to special section). [link, PDF]

Newell, Bryce Clayton. 2015. “Transparent Lives and the Surveillance State: Policing, New Visibility, and Information Policy.” Doctoral thesis. University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

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