Use of Technology in Justice System Essay

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Technology and Criminal Justice System

The American prisons are known to be hosting some of the highest number of prisoners in relation to the entire population. The criminal justice system has over the years proven to be punitive and offenders have often found themselves incarcerated upon presentation of evidence. With the improvement of technology, there have been even more people getting convictions, increasing the number of people behind the prison walls. The overcrowding at the prisons has severally prompted the use of alternative means of correction rather than sending people to the prisons. This has seen increased paroles and offenders being put under probations as a means to decrease the congestion in the prisons.

The challenges that the criminal justice system has faced over the years have prompted the initiative towards inculcating the culture of more technology use within the criminal justice system. The use of technology in the criminal justice system has been over the years geared towards both bringing safety to the public, clamping down on offenders and decongesting the prisons. Generally, it is meant to aid in the efficient working of the criminal justice system within the U.S.

This paper will focus more on the technological changes or improvements have helped in the process of entrenching the objectives of criminal justice and expedited the delivery of the justice needed to the citizens.

Thesis

The new technological improvements within the criminal justice system have seen significant improvements in the criminal justice process and expedited the dispensing of criminal cases in a safer environment and a more accurate level that it was a decade ago.

There has been an increasing publicity over the parolees, sex offenders and probationers committing crimes while out of incarceration, a fact that has attracted the scrutiny of the public at large. The criticism of the continued offences committed by the same people who had been in contact with the government justice system prompted the emergence of the GPS leg monitor that is meant to make known the position of the wearer in real time. This is a technology device that enables the implementation of the criminal justice system safety measures and prevention of recidivism or re-offending. It will also be instrumental for such data from the monitors when it comes to producing evidence in court incase the offender commits a crime and is taken to court (Navaro R., 2007). The GPS systems have also enabled the police to pursue criminals from a distance while keeping an accurate location of them and yet not endangering their own lives. The Police vehicles are also fitted with GPS devices so that command center would always know their location and in that manner, they can readily be assigned to the closest crime scene when the need arises, apart from the safety of the officers being assured.

The other technological development that has helped improve the criminal justice system is the use of computer database to store the information on individual citizens, the crime records, fingerprints, image, DNA and all other critical information. This has helped in matching evidence collected from the crime scenes to the possible offenders and pinning them to the scene hence helping solve crime puzzles much faster than before (Lazer D., 2015). The database is not only used by the criminal justice system to keep data of the citizens but also the outsiders who may have security connections that are of interest to the U.S. like the terror groups, hence the databases serve to protect the nation from external aggressions as well. Unlike decades ago when information was impossible to easily access, the current databases have enabled the justice system to be universally accessible hence the enforcement agencies and professionals can easily find the information and affordably hence making the connection between people and events becomes easier for the enforcement officers. This has enabled the lowering of the crime rates in the contemporary time as compared to the 1960s.

The development of the database technology brought about the improvement of the related or corresponding technology. For instance, the technology of finger printing drastically unproved with the onset of the database technology and is currently much better than it was decades ago. There have been developed image enhancing systems that make prints to be much clearer, biometric equipment that can analyze finger prints more efficiently have been developed, officers are also able to collect prints from the field using technology related to the databases and there are several other areas, away from finger printing that have seen technological improvement with the advances in database technology, all working towards strengthening improving criminal justice system (Richard S., n.d).

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There are other technological inventions that have assisted the police officers and other law enforcers to effectively dispense justice and still be safe. The robots, robotic cameras and the flying drones have over the years been used and constantly improved over the years. With the rise of terrorism, instead of an officer going in person to check on a bomb and diffuse it, robots have been used to do such jobs or even study through liked video transmission the kind of bomb that is being handled before a bomb expert going to handle it. The drones have been used of late to take pictures and videos of a possible crime scene and any areas of interest to the investigative agencies. With the aerial data, the officers will then go in prepared for the situation as previously studied from the drone images.

The gunshot detection system (GDS) has also been used by the criminal justice systems especially in areas where the crime rates are high. These are electronic sensors which are located in areas deemed to be high crime areas and they help the police to easily and promptly detect where the gun shots came from. These devices are known to reduce the time taken to detect the criminals and arrest them.

The automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) is yet another technological development that has boosted the field of criminal justice and the related agencies. These are cameras in the police cars that can countercheck or run the license plates that the camera detects and tell the holders of the plate or the owners of the vehicles. This enables the police to easily tell whether the car is a reported stolen car or if the owner has a warrant on his arrest. This makes the work of the police officers easier and faster in identifying possible offenders and hence preventing crime within the community.

The video recording technology has also proven to be central in fighting crime and it is one of the most affordable technologies to be used by the law enforcers. The police cars are fitted with video cameras and of late the body cameras among police have also been adapted into wide use where small cameras are worn on the buttons of the shirts as they conduct their duties. There are video recording devices that have been fixed within the recording rooms that help in ensuring the information tapped from the person arrested is accurately captured for possible use in the court of law (National Institute of Technology, 2012). The videos are then presented before the prosecuting court and are widely used as evidence to carry out convictions in many courts of law. Even further improvement is the fact that most video cameras in police cars have been connected to a system that enables immediate and automatic downloading of the footages to the central system, a measure that makes the data more reliable and devoid of any editing or manipulation and hence more credible to be used in processing cases in court. Once the data is downloaded into the system, there are people responsible for processing evidentiary data as soon as is required.

There are several police cars that have computers fixed into them with a complete printer and all the necessary accessories. These are used for everyday functions. The computers are used for type the arrests made, traffic citations are also typed into the computer once they have been hand written and a copy of the citations is printed and given to the violator immediately. The time reporting and the payroll are also handled online with the help of the computers. The records and the citations are not only printed electronically at the site, but they are also transmitted electronically since many departments now try to be as paperless as is practical and possible.

The rapid identification is yet another technology that has made criminal justice system more efficient. The information of a driver and the history, records can easily be accessible to the law enforcers who may have stopped an individual. The online database, as indicated above gives a quick access to the information and photos of an individual hence making it easier to verify the name especially if the individual does not have his Identification card or license at the spot. The rapid IDs enable the law enforces to get biometric information from the individual….....

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