Technology and Communication Free Essays

Technology has affected all aspects of life and the criminal justice system is no exception. There are so many ways where technology has been incorporated in the criminal justice and police departments that I really do not know where to start. The invention of the lie detector test was huge in my opinion. We will write a custom essay sample on Technology and Communication or any similar topic only for you Order Now It can be given in the criminal justice system to try to get to the bottom of the truth. In police departments you have the use of closed circuit televisions for property security, cameras in police units, tape recorders used in police units and when conducting investigations and so forth.In my opinion technological advancements enhance the effectiveness of communication. Let’s take emails for instance. Some will argue that it replaces traditional face to face communication thus lowering the effectiveness. I believe this to a certain extent but the convenience of email as an effective way to communicate outweighs the cons in my opinion. To be fair however, a look at opposing viewpoints shows that the advancement in technology and different ways to communicate open the gateway to activity that it illegal and frowned upon.A look at the school’s library generated an article entitled â€Å"Cyberbullying†. The author explains â€Å"Cyberbullying can take many forms. It may include repeatedly sending emails to people who have said they do not want contact with the sender. It can also include sending threats, making sexual remarks, using offensive language or labels, or posting humiliating photos or videos, as well as spreading rumors or lies about the victim†. (apollolibrary. com) With the advancement of technology it paves the way for new and improved software.One of the new advancements is that of facial recognition. Facial recognition in the criminal justice system allows for officers or other law enforcement personnel to enter into a database a picture of a person. This picture is then cross referenced to see if they have a match of the person in question. If a match is found then the criminal’s record will come up with their previous crimes and any information regarding warrants. In my opinion this is an excellent technological advancement that saves time and improves accuracy. Facial recognition technology makes use of unalterable features of a face, such as the distance between the centers of the pupils of the eye. It then uses an algorithm, a finite set of steps for solving a problem, which converts the image to numbers†. Weiss, Davis (2004) Live scan is a fingerprint system that can be used in the criminal justice system and also for non-criminal justice use. Most law enforcement departments require all officers to be fingerprinted using live scan technology. Once an officer is fingerprinted, his or her records are sent into varies databases.The officers are required to be free of a criminal background so the prints are checks for previous crimes. The prints are then sent to Sacramento (California) to various departments for processing such as BSIC which is the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. Because live scan is inkless it saves paper and time because it’s electronic which is better for the environment and more convenient for law enforcement agencies. When a criminal is arrested his or her fingerprints are taken with the live scan system and cross referenced for a match in a number of systems including the FBI.If there is a match then the information is sent to the police department which includes the suspect’s weight, height, sex, and date of birth. In conclusion technology has dramatically changed many aspects of the criminal justice department. It has made communication and detection more easy and convenient for law enforcement. Technology is not without its drawbacks however. The use of technology can be seen in a negative way if it makes the officers and the department dull and lazy with its tactics.Nothing will replace traditional hard work so if this is remembered then sufficient training should still be implemented to keep the officer or department fresh. If I had to choose a specialized technology to invent it would be along the lines of facial and iris recognition. The technology that I would invent would make it possible for a machine to scan a person and detect if that person has been involved in a crime and if so will display everything about this person to law enforcement during questioning.So in short if a person is pulled over for suspected driving under the influence not only will the officer be automatically able to pull up the person’s information on a computer screen but it will display any other DUI charges automatically and instantly.Reference â€Å"Cyber bullying. † Current Issues: Macmillian Social Science Library. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 25 Nov. 2010. â€Å"Facial Recognition Technology in Law Enforcement† (2004) Jim Weiss, Mickey Davis Hendon Publishing Company How to cite Technology and Communication, Essays Technology and Communication Free Essays We know that communication is important in every part of our lives and technology is forever changing the different ways we are able to communicate. Because technology is continuously being advanced the way people communicate in the criminal justice system must evolve to keep up with the current trends. It is important that we keep up with the changing technology in regards to communication because effective communication is the direct result of a successful investigation. We will write a custom essay sample on Technology and Communication or any similar topic only for you Order Now The communication capabilities of specialized data bases within the criminal justice system have been affected in a huge way by technology. Some of the current technologies used in the criminal justice system today are mobile data terminals, automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS), live scan, facial recognition, and iris scan. The two modern technologies that will be discussed are the automated fingerprint identification system and facial recognition. The positive and negative effects of AFIS and facial recognition will also be discussed. Fingerprints and facial characteristics have been used by the criminal justice system to indentify criminals for several years. The patterns found on a person’s fingers and unique features found on their face have several distinguishing characteristics that separate them from the rest of society. These two systems, though effective have been known to take hours or even days to come up with results. Because time is so valuable to the criminal justice system these comparisons need to be done expeditiously because in many cases the time it has taken to match a set of fingerprints to a single person has been the difference between life and death for the accused. Modern technology has helped in a huge way to speed up this comparison process and has resulted in the setting free of wrongly accused persons and the locking away of the guilty party. Let’s break these two systems down starting with AFIS. AFIS is basically a database where mass amounts of fingerprint images have been stored after being collected from several different sources. There are two different types of sources, known and unknown. Known sources are fingerprints that have been collected from law offenders, military personnel, police officers, banks, and more. These fingerprints are normally collected when a person is hired by a company or agency that requires a background check as a part of the hiring process. The most common unknown source is those prints collected at a crime scene to be compared with known samples, also known as latent prints. Each set of fingerprints have their own distinct patterns which are determined by a technician that enters them into the database. â€Å"Each fingerprint image is ‘filed’ based on its pattern type. † (Ridges and Furrows. 2004. Par. ) By doing this it speeds up the process because it helps to eliminate all the prints that do not have a similar pattern type in comparison to the sample. Once the matches are made using the database they are reviewed one more time doing it manually and if a match is made those prints are used to identify individuals. It is very important that the matches found by the computer database are manually reviewed to ensure an exact match. Facial recognitio n is also a very important aspect of communication in the criminal justice system. Facial recognition is known as â€Å"the automatic recognition of a person using distinguishing traits. † (Woodward et al. 2003. P. 1) Criminal justice professionals load photographs into computers and use these photographs to compare facial characteristics in an effort to make potential matches. There are also those who have acquired the talent of creating sketches of suspects from a description given by a witness. These sketches are then used in place of a photograph to obtain a positive match. The first step in this process is to capture the image either by camera or sketches. The second and third steps are to identify the face seen in the image and extract several features to create a template that can be used to make a match. The fourth step is to take the templates and make comparisons that will eventually lead to potential matches. There are several features found on and or around the face that make it possible to make a positive match. Some of these features are likely to change and others are not. Those features that are not likely to change are scars, moles, burns, and bone structure. There are also those features that could possibly change, one of which is tattoos. The only real similarity between the use of facial recognition and finger prints is that they must be manually compared to obtain the highest percentage of accuracy. Using both the database and the naked eye will eliminate all chances of misreading the results in most cases. As beneficial as these new technologies are there are always positive and negative effects to everything in life. The biggest positive effect that AFIS and Facial Recognition have on the criminal justice system is that they save large amounts of time during an investigation. Technicians are able to save large amounts of information to these databases so that when they process a search for comparison the computer does most of the work by eliminating all of the samples that are far from being the correct match and leaving only those samples that could possibly be the correct one. These databases also reduce the amount of human error that can occur when trying to make a match. The job of operating these databases can be extremely stressful and technicians tend to get rushed as a result of this stress and overlook things that may have lead to the result they were looking for to begin with. Now let’s go into the negative effects of these technologies. We know that as humans we are imperfect and anything created by humans has the potential to fail at any given time. It is also widely known that computers and servers use large amounts of electricity and have the potential to heat up very fast. If these data bases exceed the allowed temperature at any given time they will go down and this will result in the slowing down of any investigation that may be going on at the time. Another negative is the fact that these databases do not come with all of the information already installed. Uploading all of the samples takes a substantial amount of time and use of funds that could be used for the completion of other very important tasks. One last negative is the fact that these systems not only cost money to buy and operate, but people must be trained and paid to keep these databases up and running at all times so that progress does not stop in any form. Having well trained technicians is the most efficient way avoids having to deal with any of these negative effects. If the decision had to be made as to which one of these two databases contained the most reliability it would have to be the automated fingerprint identification system. I say this because we know that there are other technologies out in the world that can be used to make those technologies used by criminal justice professionals less effective. The technology that is being referred to is plastic surgery. It is possible for a person to have their facial features altered in such a way that they cannot be identified as who they truly are through the use of facial recognition databases. As for fingerprints, the only way that they can be altered is if a person were cut or burned so badly that scaring resulted. There have been several attempts by people over the years to erase their fingerprints, but these attempts have been unsuccessful. Fingerprinting has also been around a lot longer than facial recognition and has been proven to be more accurate than facial recognition. As we know technology is always changing as technicians find new ways to improve the systems that these databases run on. As technology improves the accuracy of AFIS, Facial Recognition, live scan, iris scan, and mobile data terminals will also improve. One thing to remember is that information must be manually uploaded into these databases so that they can be saved for current or future use. Another thing to remember is that when a potential match is made by using any of the before mentioned databases they must also be manually checked for accuracy. The reason for this is that the odds of two people having identical features is very low which means that results are not guaranteed to be perfect. The best way for agencies to ensure that these databases are used to their full potential is to continually train their technicians on the latest technology and keep the databases current. References Ridges and Furrows. (2004, April 15). Ridges and Furrows – AFIS Page. Retrieved April 5, 2010, from http://ridgesandfurrows.homestead.com/afispage.html Woodward, J., Horn, C., Gatune, J., Thomas, A. (2003). Biometrics: A Look at Facial Recognition. Retrieved April 5, 2010, from www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB396/DB396.pdf Hayeslip, D. (2008, February 1). Evaluability Assessment of Mobile Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). Retrieved April 5, 2010, from www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/afis.pdf Lennard, C. J.  ().  The Thin Blue LIne.  Retrieved from http://www.policensw.com/info/fingerprints/finger15.html How to cite Technology and Communication, Essays