The ‘future Internet’ and crime: towards a criminology of the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to revolutionise the way we live and communicate and the manner in which we engage with our social and natural world. In the IoT, objects such as household items, vending machines and cars have the ability to sense and share data with other things, via wireless, Bluetooth or Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. ‘Smart things’ have the capability to control their performance as well as our experiences and decisions. In this exploratory paper, we overview recent developments in the IoT technology and their relevance for criminology. Our aim is to partially fill the gap in the literature by flagging emerging issues criminologists and social scientists ought to engage with in the future. The focus is exclusively on the IoT, while other advances, such as facial recognition technology, are only lightly touched upon. This paper, thus, serves as a starting point in the conversation, as we invite scholars to join us in forecasting—if not preventing—the unwanted consequences of the ‘future Internet’.