(Institution Name)
Abstract
The use of information technology in the matter of justice provision has enabled the law enforcement agencies to ensure that the criminals are effectively captured and put behind bars. The technological tools that have notably contributed towards the cause are surveillance and cameras, forensic equipment for detection of criminals and communication means. These technology items have helped in making the law supreme and to make the criminals afraid of the law. Gun control has been made possible largely with the help of these technology tools as the people are being monitored and managed much more effectively with the use of these tools. There are still limitations in these technology tools. However, their effectiveness and use in the judicial and crime prevention system are notably visible. These tools have also helped towards the reduction of corruption in the law making and enforcing departments of the state and have improved the transparency in these systems.
Introduction:
Criminal justice is a system that comprises of practices and actions that are directed towards ensuring the rule of law and to make sure that the rogue elements in the society are served with punishment and examples are set for the society to see that whoever commits offense against the society will meet the same fate (Siberman, 1978).
However, there have always remained challenges confronting the criminal justice system making the work challenging for the lawmakers and the implementers. The dimensions of crimes have changed and concealing crimes and using anonymity whilst committing has become far easier.
Therefore, there has emerged a need to introduce information technology aided measures into the system of criminal law and justice to ensure that the criminals can be captured and apprehended. The criminal justice system and the police have greatly benefited from the information technology tools that they are provided with to help them fight crime (Bean, 1999).
A dilemma in this issue is that the criminals, who are to be captured by the criminal justice system, are also not far behind in using this technology and after some time they also develop the ability to take measures for neutralizing the advantage of the information technology tools held by the law enforcement agencies.
Hence, the only way for the law enforcement agencies to remain effective is through ensuring that they progress their technology quicker than the criminals. However, ensuring this, the police and the justice department has been able to benefit greatly from the fruits of
the modern day technology in several ways ranging from capturing the criminals to keeping a record of their previous offenses and making a centralized system that helps the related departments to coordinate with each other.
Discussion:
Centralized Police Information System:
The modern day police are the biggest beneficiary of the latest information technology tools because the policemen work on the executive level of the justice system. The police are provided with a centralized system that keeps a record of all the people who live in a particular city so that they can scan any person through their identification number and get a view of their entire history in the recent and distant past (Foster, 2005).
This is a commonly used technology by the patrolling and highway police that can scan and test any driver on the road for prior charges and offenses in order to estimate their innocence. What is even fascinating about the possession of this technology by the police is that the systems provided to them are very compact and manageable.
There is no need for the police officers to make a call to the central headquarter to ask for the details of a person who has been stopped for interrogation; instead, they simply look into the database and judge the person by themselves.
Cameras and Footages:
Urban crime and disorder have been reduced further, with the use of information technology tools such as surveillance cameras and footage recording facilities. With the help of this, the justice system is able to produce valuable and undeniable proof against the criminals. Previously, the criminals used to get away with their crimes only because none had seen them committing the crime (Slobogin, 2002).
However, now the dimensions have changed, and the law system is much more resourceful to prosecute to criminals and to put them to justice. Now that the criminals are presented with solid and tangible proof of their crimes in the court of law, there is no room for denial by the criminals or their lawyers.
Police car Cameras:
There are also installed cameras on the front side of police vehicles to ensure that the proceedings and actions of the police are recorded in the camera. It was reported many times that the law abiding citizens get harassed by the police for no reason as they are stopped and checked.
This was viewed as a very prominent chink in the armor of the justice system and raised serious questions about the credibility and integrity of the police department and many times it worked in the favor of the criminals that they got away with accused mistreatment from the police.
Furthermore, it was hard to tell if the members of the police force were at fault in the process or not. However, with the presence of hard evidence in the form of videos and footages, it has become very easy to tell who is at fault and who is innocent. The belief that footages are being made of their actions on the executive level makes them more dutiful and disciplined and enables them to perform their duties better.
The interview that they conduct of the accused is always in line with the guidance, and the reactions that they are expected to give on certain actions from the interrogated are always strictly in line with the guidance.
Tracking Systems:
One of the most recent inventions that have aided the criminal justice system is the introduction of tracking bracelets that are used for monitoring the movement of people. The prisoners who are released on parole or are given conditional freedom from the prison that restricts their personal movement are braced with such devices that feed their location to the centralized systems all the time.
With the help of this, the law implementing officials and monitors get to know exactly when a person has broken parole (McCurdy, Doyle & McLaughlin, 1995). Advanced devices made of this sort are such that they sound the alarm and send notifications to the related departments if the devices are removed or are tampered with. This has helped the cause of law a great deal.
The people who had been accused to have attempted murder of someone are limited to stay away from them with this technology keeping an eye on them. Should something bad happen, the offenders can be easily apprehended based on their physical presence at the crime scene at the time of the crime.
Prisoner Recording and Coordination:
The prisoner records are kept and maintained with ease. Formerly there used to be manual entry registers of prisoners and each time a prisoner got shifted from one prison to another; it required updating with all the related departments manually.
Now, with the help of information technology tools, it has become very easy for the justice department to find a prisoner and his or her whereabouts by searching for an ID in the centralized database of the prisoners.
This makes the task very easy for the related departments as they are able to simply put in the identification number and find the location of a certain prisoner and issue relevant orders and as soon as an action is taken about a prisoner, the entire system gets updated with just one entry in one attached system in a related department.
One of the most helpful information technology tools and facilities that have been induced in the criminal justice system is in the field the information exchange. The communication between the different parts of the justice system has improved in a way that the local police stations, upon having arrested a person who is accused of having committed a crime simply generate an email message to the local court that they have made an arrest (Alter, 1990).
Court-Police Coordination:
Similarly, the courts can issue orders to the local police stations demanding them to arrest a person who is sought in the court of law once again by means of technology tools that make the communication take place in the blink of an eye. Once these orders are issued, the concerned police station is notified, and the arrest is made.
What is even more important is that all of this activity becomes very easy to monitor from the central office from where power and authority are designated to these departments. The ministry or secretariat of law can be an example of such a centralized structure that is responsible for regulating and accounting for the distribution of justice in the jurisdiction.
Forensics:
In many cases, it becomes very difficult to derive a conclusion without using appropriate technology. Rape cases can be considered examples of such cases. DNA testing facilities are aided with technology that is not only biological in nature but also software supported.
This technology enables the court of law to gather evidence that can be used for putting a person responsible for crime behind bars. With the advent of technology, not only can this technology memorize the DNA print of a person but also single that person out, out of several people to help zero down on the actual culprit (Wish & Gropper, 1990).
The modern day forensics owe huge thanks to the technology that has introduced the ability to recognize and recording fingerprints of the accused people from the crime scenes. The only limitation that this technology has is that the fingerprint of the person who is being sought has to be in the system for it to be able to search it.
When only a fingerprint in finding at a crime scene, the print is run through the database of the agencies that checks for possible matches in the entire population. In case that does not happen, the police have to capture the possible culprits and present them to the labs that collect these prints from them and run their tests (Moss, 1988).
Once in the system, the computer software that have been designed to follow patterns and to match them against each other work their trick and present the law officials with results that serve to be ample evidence in the court of law.
Robotics:
With the advent of the technology, there has been introduced robotics and advanced intelligence that serves to be almost an equally effective alternative to a human being. With the help of technology aided items like drones and robots, the risk to life factor has been reduced a great deal.
The diffusion of the bomb is a practice that is considered to be highly dangerous and amongst the duties of bomb disposal squads. With the help of robotics, which is designed to diffuse the bomb from a distance lives are saved in case the bomb still goes off.
Previously, a person wearing safety gear used to diffuse the bomb but it was still too dangerous as the bomb could still cause serious injury and even death to the operator if it went off (Jones, Rock, Burns & Morris, 2002).
Drones:
Airborne tools like flying drones with cameras installed in them have enabled the police to have an aerial view of the crime scene. Previously as has been recorded in the history of police around the world, when the criminals who are in between shootout against the police always look for safe grounds to execute their plans.
This involves that they hide in the upper stories of a building from where they have a clear view of the people coming from below. In life and death situation, holding a strategic position can save life and if the position is occupied by the enemy, endanger it. With the help of flying drones and such technologies, the police are able to have a proper view of the places where it is very risky to send a person (Cavoukian, 2012).
Amongst the latest technology tools that have been made use of by the police include gunshot detection systems. These systems are responsible for detecting the firing of gunshots and are usually planted in the areas where there is a high prevalence of crimes.
These systems are sensitive to the noise created by firing gunshots, and they send a signal to the local police station from where police can instantly respond. These detections systems are very well concealed so that the criminals cannot damage or tamper with them before committing a crime.
Because these alarms go off exactly when they hear gunshots fired and also give up the location of the event, the police are able to cut off all the ways coming and going from and to that area and apprehend the criminal. This has greatly helped against crime and homicide particularly in the areas where injury and murder through gunshot are common.
GPS and GIS:
The police pursuit vehicles are equipped with state of the art GPS systems that enable the police cars to not only follow the vehicles of the criminals but also to find the shortest way to the crime scene. When such technology was not introduced, the police officers were reliant only on their eyes and the helicopter flying above their heads to direct them in the pursuit. This was very dangerous as the cars at such high speed and with so much going through the mind of the driver could easily get into a crash. However, as the technology got introduced, the police officers were able to develop certain expertise in the pursuit purposes as they cut the roads off from the routes that could serve as escape routes for the criminals. This was made possible through real life map following. Furthermore, the GIS systems have enabled the police departments to accurately know the whereabouts of their pursuit vehicles so that they can direct them in the desired localities based on logical reasoning i.e. the closest vehicle to the marked crime scene gets assigned the duty to check the scene out.
The police have gained access to such powerful scanners that they do not have to stop a vehicle or go after it in order to read its number plate, instead, they simply use a gun type scanning device that reads the bar code from over the number plate of the vehicle and displays the figures of the plate on the screen of the police held monitor. This way, the police officers are able to record the identification of any vehicle without having to pursue it or stop it. This technology has helped a great deal to reduce the events of car theft, and the events of over speeding as the plate that is marked to have over speeded in one junction will be stopped at the next as the monitor of speed communicates the next monitor to stop the identified vehicle.
Many times, crimes are committed by online means and are hence concealed in anonymity. For example, the criminals email spam to their victims, and if their prey falls for the trick then they benefit from it and if not, then no harm is done. However, with the advent of cybercrime and cyber laws, there has been made much progress in the field of apprehension of people who commit such crimes. Emails can be traced back to the use of technology, and the justice department now takes the services of computer experts who are particularly proficient in hacking emails and social media accounts as well as looking for their codes to get their location, position, and IP addresses.
Cyber criminals hack into the websites and other accounts of people and corporation and cause them the loss of fame and money. In order to capture these criminals, the justice system takes the services of experts who can trace the hackers back and identify who undertook the activity. It is not guaranteed that the efforts would pay off, but it still holds true that it give the justice department the ability to apprehend any kind of a criminal. It at least discourages the cyber criminals that if they get caught, they will be severely punished. It is worth mentioning here that the frequency of cyber crimes keeps on increasing throughout the
the world and the means of undertaking these crimes are also changing very quickly. This has confronted the justice department with serious challenges about how to catch the criminals who are so slippery.
The presence of such technology tools has made the function of the justice departments and the police very effective and efficient, but it does not mean that the job of the law officials has become any less challenging. The criminals are increasing in number, and the natures of crimes are also changing so quickly that the justice departments find it very difficult to comprehend with the challenges that they are faced with. The recognition of law as a well provided and the well-equipped entity has established an image of the law as a comprehensive and unbreakable force that everyone has to abide by. This ensures that the prevalence of crimes is reduced greatly in the society and that people are discouraged to trick the law and justice.
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