Anticipatory Governance and Datafication in Transnational Policing: The Case of Europol

Building on insights from transnational policing and security studies, the sociology of numbers and recent studies of datafication, this paper develops an assemblage theoretical framework to explore the turn towards what has come to be termed ‘precime’ policing. We highlight two distinctive developments that are interrelated in contemporary precrime policing efforts - plural policing and datafication. Using Europol as an illustration, we demonstrate how these developments are intimately related to digital transformations and the production of ‘techno imaginaries’ of anticipation and prediction in transnational police work and interventions.