Today's police have an advantage over their counterparts of the 60's and 70's with the help of the invention of the computer, new processes, and new calculations being processed. Information stored in some form of database such as business code violations, burglaries, citations, demographics of age of residences, housing appraisals, utilities usage and many others aspects are used to create an educated guess on where police should focus their efforts on deterring crime. When predictive information is used appropriately this can bring about a great change to law enforcement such as was seen in Santa Cruz Police department that used the data to arrest five criminals. However, the adage of “Garbage in Garbage out” comes into play. Typically, a human handles all data entered into a database and there are always clerical mistakes with data entry.
A broad range of services provided a better hold on crime control in the community. Having a decentralized organization gave more authority to patrol officers and let them become more intimate with their community relationships. This era increased the use of foot patrols and an increased knowledge of problem-solving. Law enforcement became more concerned over citizen satisfaction. Today, it is known as Community Policing.
It requires change from conventional too tough purposefully methods shared with better aptitude. This primarily led to the improvement of predictive policing in 1994 by NYPD. Conventional methods include casual patrolling which has limited ability to discover crime because patrolling entire location may not be feasible. This would involve additional police personnel and lot of time. Exact expectancy, timely targeted action and reduce resources for casual patrolling turns into achievable goals.
What would happen of policing agencies adopted only one of these patrol styles? Reactive patrol is when the police would respond only to calls for service in that area then after the intervention, they would leave the area rather quickly so the random patrol unit would resume their roles. In significant areas of crime changes, the random patrols would be beefed up in numbers to proactive patrols to facilitate security of the neighborhoods, therefore shortening the response time in catching crimes in progress. If the policing agencies decided to go with one or the other I believe that the proactive patrol would suffice better than the reactive patrol. This is because the response time in the reactive patrol may take significantly longer, whereas the proactive patrol would be shorter because they are already there.
While the idea of this system is great, it has encountered some shortcomings in its development. Information-sharing initiatives are generally complex, which greatly increases the risk of failure. One problems is that many agencies do not have personnel with the required skills to facilitate data integration and information-sharing projects. This requires them to hire outside consultants, expending a substantial amount of financial resources that police do not often have. The Taser has become quite a well-known tool associated with modern law enforcement.
Essentially, the police will base their use of assets in a manner to reduce crime by building ties within the community and having a presence in neighborhoods. This can be an effective method because many argue that seeing the police in an area a majority of the time deters criminals from acting in those areas. A downfall of the COP theory is that political influence can force a department to pool resources in an area where crime is not as prevalent in order to keep good relations with a major tax base. Often times the poorer neighborhoods do not feel as though they are receiving enough of a police presence. The contingency theory is based on the approach to achieve specific goals, such as crime control.
Another important form of technology that has made a very big impact on policing is the computer-aided dispatch. This is very important in policing because is allowed police officers to have a faster response time and the departments are able to communicate with the officers that are out doing field work. The safety of the officers is enhanced by the use of this system because the department can monitor the officer’s status. Technology has changed policing and will continue to do so in the future. Weapons that are used in policing will also change in the future.
As technology advances, many new ways of communicating have opened. We live in the communication world of faxes, cellular phones, and internet access. The combining of communication and technology brings integration, immediacy, collaboration, and access. Technology within the criminal justice is nothing but good in fact I cannot find anything bad to say about it, criminals are easier to identify, find, and prosecute more than ever before due to essential forms of technology. The easier it is to identify the criminal the easier it is to get that criminal of the street essentially making the community a safer place to live in.
There are also other trends such as traffic cameras that monitor signals and lights when there are not police officers around. These trends are beneficial in many ways because of cutbacks on the need of a large number of officers on traffic, and allows them to focus on the higher crimes such as homicide and
In the United States, the promise of “justice for all” is for many citizens too often just a promise. At almost each point at which individuals enter the system – from the moment of initial arrest, to courtroom proceedings, and eventual re-entry, the criminal justice system badly needs reform. Though constitutionally entitled to counsel, many citizens charged with criminal conduct face court proceedings without benefit of reliable counsel. Defended rights are not equal, a wealthy defended has the resources to hire a private counsel and experts, where as the poor only have access to public defenders. Although equality of justice has long been an ideal of the American system of jurisprudence, it is manifestly impossible of realization.