CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND TECHNOLOGY

Criminal Justice and Technology

Criminal Justice and Technology

Thesis Statement

It is important to remember that technology is only good if the dispatchers and other agencies personnel are trained properly and understand how to use the system and equipment in their daily operations. To achieve interoperability for all agencies; such as, police, fire and ambulance personnel, it requires addressing operational and technical obstacles to include common procedures and governance agreements

In my opinion advances in criminal justice technology can help police to be able to respond faster to help control crime, maintain order, and responding to emergency 911 calls by regulating the flow of traffic on radio systems. By the use of technology, it can enhance the police agencies, fire departments, and ambulance services response time. When the response time is faster, the public safety and well-being is being met.

Interoperability is important to law enforcement agencies and other emergency agencies to be able to talk and share data in real time. Having real time data is critical to keep the public safe and have faster response time for all agencies involved. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), through its CommTech program, works to develop solutions to these problems facing all the agencies involved in keeping our public safe (NIJ, 2006).

I know few of the softwars software applications and hardware assist in the way management dispatches calls for service to law enforcement agencies and other agencies, this is called Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) (Foster, 2005). Computer-Aided Dispatch system is a technology that can:1.capture and retain information2.field-generated incidents3.where and when the police have responded to4.access deployment needs5.provide information on problem locations6.provide an incident number(Foster, 2005).

A dispatch center is the public safety answering point (PSAP), and can do a number of things simultaneously. The design of the PSAP/CAD is important in displaying the automatic identification number (AIN) and automatic location information (ALI) that tells the call for service, the police agencies various resources, and how many police officers are on duty and their current location (Foster, 2005).

Statistical analysis software is also used in the deployment of law enforcement, firemen, and ambulance personnel. This software collects, reports, and analyzes the trend of a crime. This can help police agencies to forecast crime to some degree of accuracy (AIU Multimedia, 2006). Crime analysis is a tactic used by police to make their efforts in preventing crimes, investigating, and apprehension easier and better (Foster, 2005).

When dispatchers manually relay communication between two different radio systems, the response and deployment of officers is slowed down and the public?s safety is at a higher risk. Even if all police agencies purchased compatible equipment that will operate on a single frequency band, what might be a good solution for one agency may not work for another agency (NIJ, 2006). A 700MHz band, allocated by The Federal Communication Commission, can provide agencies additional channels with more capacity, but can also make another incompatible band. When the 700MHz band becomes available to police agencies, it is still not a complete solution to interoperability ...