- Modern Era (continued)
- major push for computerization
in early '90s:
- 2/3 of local depts.. using computers
in 1993, vs. 1/2 in 1990.
- using them more appropriately:
not just "expensive filing machines," but criminal
investigations, crime analysis, and budgeting, and, in some large
depts..., fleet management, manpower allocation and research.
 Community
Policing Era
- A variety of starting dates
and names are assigned to current era by various scholars, but
agree that it marked transition from "professional style
of policing" and toward more police contact and involvement
with community."
- "The central premise of
community policing is that the public should play a more active
and coordinated part in enhancing safety ... A full-fledged program
incorporates:
- community-based crime prevention;
- a reorientation of patrol activities
to emphasize non-emergency services;
- increased accountability to
local communities;
- decentralized command (Bailey,
1995)."
- more emphasis on problem-solving:
battered wives, runaway kids, etc. "Under this approach
to citizen needs, the police should define the problem and look
for its underlying causes (Cole, 1995)."
- Computers
critical to this approach: "The use of high-technology equipment
and applications is essential to the efficient practice of community
policing. Without high technology, officers would find it difficult
to provide the level and quality of services the community deserves.
Computer-aided dispatching, computers in patrol cars, automated
fingerprinting systems, and online offense-reporting systems
are but a few examples of the pervasiveness of technology in
agencies that practice community policing" -- Chief Lee
Brown.
- "The most important, most
significant, change in technology has been the whole development
and use of computers that can store and search and analyze vast
amounts of data. It increases our effectiveness and our ability
to manage people and resources....It makes the people we have
more efficient (interview)." --Darryl Stevens.
- The Sara
Sidle angle, or new emphasis on crime labs
- the "crime laboratory has
been the oldest and strongest link between science and technology
and criminal justice." -- but there were only about 100
crime labs at the point, 17 states had to depend on FBI
lab. "For the majority of felony crimes, there is little
or no attempt to collect or analyze physical evidence,"
Police Magazine 1979.
- 1979 about 240 labs, due to
LEAA funding. "It has also funded the first real research
in the field - research designed to define the forensic sciences'
role in the criminal justice system, to foster new scientific
and technological developments, and to assess the proficiency
of the labs' equipment and personnel," Police Magazine
- More labs also required by upsurge
in drugs and drug-related crime beginning in the mid-1960s, requiring
analysis.
- also a renewed police interest in forensic sciences.
"Some say the increased contact with the labs in the course
of processing drug cases made the police more aware of the services
the labs could provide. Some say the increasing education and
sophistication of police executives made them more inclined to
approach law enforcement as the "science" it is sometimes
purported to be. Others say that the increased use of the laboratories
is merely the consequence of the Miranda, Escobedo, and other
Supreme Court cases that placed heavy restrictions on the ability
of police to solve cases by extracting confessions from defendants
during interrogations." -- Police Magazine
- 1990: more than 300 crime laboratories.
- National Institute of Justice
research developments:
- Body armor (Kevlar)
- 1972: invented to replace steel
belts in radial tires, cj researcher asked if it would also stop
bullets. It did, and that launched new industry.
- Substitute test for DNA
- Beginning in 1971, started to
create objective standards for various police equipment, such
as weapons detectors, communications equipment, handcuffs, hearing
protectors, night-vision devices, etc.
- "It was not until the 1990s
that NIJ began to approach research and development in technology
with a comprehensive game plan."
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Issues in Criminal Justice and Technology