Technology & Police Work
According to the research conducted under essay order The Innocence Project, the current total of post-conviction DNA exonerations is 218. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and policy organization devoted to American criminal justice system reformand the exoneration of the wrongfully convicted. Sheck and Neufeld (2002) assert that in light of that figure, there is an alarming concern that needs to be raised regarding wrongful convictions within the American justice system. They assert that concern should not center solely on wrongful convictions but the shortcomings of techniques which criminalize individuals that permit such wrongful convictions in the first place. While one should not blithely subscribe to an uncritical confidence in the justice system, it is also not productive to rail against injustices post hoc. Instead, essay services emphasize what is needed is the means to address its weaknesses in the first place so as to reduce, if not eliminate, future wrongful convictions.
In this paper, team of professional writers speaks as essay editing service and draw your attention to a great potential to remediate such weaknesses lies in technological advances that can help more accurately identify criminals. Between biometric analysis, surveillance technologies and DNA identification lies the potential for empirical consistency in criminal identification. This is not to suggest that technology makes criminalization infallible, as they all require a judicious understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, but rather developing the wisdom necessary to proper implementation. As The Innocence Project notes, some wrongful convictions result from a misunderstanding of the limits of science.
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DNA profiling and analysis is currently used within the context of law enforcement in order to identify the individual origin of genetic matter. The purpose is to determine whether individuals may be considered suspect based on the qualities of genetic matter obtained. Although DNA sequences among individuals are highly matching, the process of DNA profiling relies on variances which occur on the level of their alleles (National Institute of Justice, 2008).
Intra-agency databases are crucial to the efficacy of DNA profiling and analysis. In the United States, the COmbined DNA Index System or CODIS, with 5 million records as of 2007, fulfills this role. The CODIS is an electronic database of DNA profiles, quite similar to that of the AFIS or Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It holds the aggregated data of DNA profiles obtained by individual states from those convicted. In effect, it gives law enforcement officers quick access to a nation-wide sample of DNA profiles and assist in identifying possible suspects However, reliance upon the CODIS and other such DNA databases can be problematic.
Still, DNA profiling and analysis is of highly significant use in bestowing some level of empiricism to the discipline of criminology, as far too often the process is confounded by many problematic variables or poor implementation which has led to the aforementioned wrongful convictions. As Alex Steffen (2004) notes, police methodology is fraught with judgment and subjectivity; these two attributes do not necessarily invalidate the entire protocol, but they are frequently left unchecked by careful scrutiny. For example, without proper video or audio documentation of interrogation procedures, it is impossible to review, identify and flag confessions whose results are invalidly obtained through baiting promises, coercive pressure and leading questions. Furthermore, police informants are not measured according to their reputation for providing useful or accurate information. In effect, there is a complete lack of ‘soft science’ consistency in the investigative process.
DNA testing is also not perfect. In the case of Herman Atkins, who was convicted of robbery, oral and genital rape, a criminalist linked him to the crime on the basis of semen sample that revealed that Atkins was part of the same genetic demographic of the perpetrator. Even though it could not be proven that Atkins was inarguably the rapist, he was convicted. The prosecution admitted this as much by noting that the evidence “excludes a large percentage of the people, and does not exclude him, and that’s corroboration.” The case of Atkins might have gone differently had the jury been sufficiently informed by the areas in which the science is inexact, or of all the variables of doubt existent in the evidence presented. While hair samples and semen stains are valuable evidence, it is not without thorough and comprehensive testing that they can be held as inarguable evidence of guilt, as the innocent may sometimes overlap with the perpetrator in these factors.
However, at the very least, DNA profiling and analysis is a step in the right direction in advancing the reliability and validity of criminology. As one Filipino senator opines, “[DNA testing] is not a panacea for all of society’s ills … [but it places] a human face on the statistical probability of error that has always existed in our criminal system” (Balana, 2008).
Another important part of modern criminology is surveillance. Biometric techniques such as DNA profiling and analysis and other forensic disciplines allow identification of suspects through physical means, but video recordings and photographic records are useful because they allow visual identification. Surveillance is useful beyond the context of commercial establishments on the receiving end of robberies or rapes in video monitored parking lots; it is effective within the context of white collar crime.
The United States Congress passed the first major surveillance law in 1968, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, whose intent was to properly define the legal use of electronic surveillance in a law enforcement context while balancing it against the individual interests of privacy. Title III initially lacked a provision for video surveillance but this was corrected in the mid-80s when Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Like Title III, this act balanced the needs of law enforcement against the individual’s right to privacy under the terms of video surveillance. (Nieto, 1997)
Video and photo surveillance is useful because it provides on-site visual testimony of the crime that has been surveilled. However, law enforcement officials face must recognize the limitations of these videograms and photographs. They cannot elaborate on the nature of events which they record and they cannot provide the depth that can be obtained by witness testimony nor can they comprehensively cover all angles of a crime, even if the evidence is a triangulation of additional photographs and/or video angles or obtained from pan-mounted cameras.
Furthermore, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act limits surveillance cameras by denying them the ability to record audio, unless law enforcement individuals are able to obtain a warrant which explicitly permits them to do so. Fortunately for law enforcement individuals, public spaces are open game, premise being any event or transaction occurring in such spaces must be recognized as having been “knowingly exposed to the public,” and not subject to Fourth Amendment protections. As such, it is not necessary for a warrant to be obtained should anything illegal transpire on public space such as sidewalks and parks. (Nieto, 1997)
However, the criminological implications of surveillance are becoming increasingly complicated in an age when media recording technologies have become widely available to the average individual. Ian Kerr and Steve Mann (2006) dub this, “sousveillance” or inverse surveillance, in which the individuals who are empowered with surveillance technology are direct participants or observers of an activity. Sousveillance as inverse surveillance emphasizes the need for watchful vigilance to be maintained on the actions of individuals of authority or public figures for the sake of legal protection. It is here where Gibson’s chestnut applies.
Perhaps the best known example of a case of sousveillance as inverse surveillance which predates the advent of mobile phone camera technology is the Rodney King scandal, in which law enforcement officials were suddenly being scrutinized by the same techniques which they use to implicate others. Jamais Cascio, who currently trades on the neologism ‘the participatory panopticon,’ provides a good example of this:
“At the 2004 Republican convention, … citizen media groups videoed [the] police arrests of protestors. The New York police videotaped the arrests as well, but … the citizen media recordings proved that the police had edited many of their own videos to make the protestors appear guilty. Up to 90% of the arrests were thrown out.” (Cascio, 2006)
Surveillance and sousveillance, the ability for institutions and individuals, authorities and average Joes and Janes to monitor each other effectively means that a more vigilant culture can arise, making it possible for criminal identification to happen on both ends of society.
REFERENCES
Balana, C. (2008, August 17) “Bill pushes DNA testing in crimes.” The Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved October 23, 2008 from: http://services.inquirer.net/print/print.php?article_id=20080817-155137
Cascio, J. (2006, November 15) “The New World: The Rise of the New Culture of Participation.” Open The Future. Retrieved October 24, 2008 from: http://www.openthefuture.com/2006/11/the_new_world_the_rise_of_the.html
Federal Bureau of Investigation. “CODIS – National DNA Index System.” Retrieved October 23, 2008 from: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/codis/national.htm
Gibson, W. (2003, June 25). “The Road to Oceania. The New York Times.
Innocence Project: http://www.innocenceproject.org/index.php
Kerr, I & Mann, S. (2006, January 3) “Exploring Equiveillance.” On The Identity Trail. Retrieved October 24, 2008 from: http://www.anonequity.org/weblog/archives/2006/01/exploring_equiv_1.php
Mann, S., Nolan, J. & Wellman, B. “Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments.” Surveillance & Society 1 (3): 331-355. Retrieved October 24, 2008 from: http://wearcam.org/sousveillance.pdf
National Institute of Justice. “What Every Law Enforcement Officer Should Know About DNA Evidence.” Retrieved October 24, 2008 from: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/bc000614.pdf
Nieto, M. (1997, June) “Public Video Surveillance: Is It An Effective Crime Prevention Tool?” California Research Bureau. Retrieved October 24, 2008 from: http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/97/05/
Scheck, B.C. & Neufeld, P.J. (2002, September-October). Toward the formation of innocence commissions in America. Judicature. 86(2). Retrieved October 23, 2008 from: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Innocence_Commissions_Judicature.pdf
Steffen, A. (2004, May 15). “The Innocence Project.” Worldchanging. Retrieved October 23, 2008 from: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//000715.html
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