“Project Green Light: Surveillance and the Spaces of the City” by Rebecca Smith is part of the “Detroit as a Carceral Space” collaboration between the Carceral State Project and the Michigan-Mellon Project on Egalitarianism and the Metropolis.
This investigative report assesses Project Green Light, a “public-private partnership” between the Detroit Police Department and local businesses that install surveillance cameras to transmit live video feeds to the DPD’s “Real Time Crime Center.” The report provides data visualizations of the six most common Project Green Light typologies—gas stations, apartment complexes, schools, shopping plazas, restaurants, and corner stores—and emphasizes the dangerous and pernicious consequences of this surveillance technology for civil liberties, freedom of movement, and freedom from criminalization. “Project Green Light” also demonstrates that the city of Detroit’s claims that surveillance technology has reduced crime and made residents safer is not based on any compelling evidence.
Read the full report here.
