Future Law
Enforcement
by Jia Wang,
Minseok Song
During the last few weeks, we have talked about the application
of data science in the law enforcement area and its positive impact. Now, let
us move on to talk about the future of law enforcement.
Future of Law Enforcement
In the future, criminal rate would reduce and law
enforcement departments would have more efficiency and higher productivity. Let
us discuss about how these can be achieved.
Public Safety with Internet of Things/Everything
The world we live in will soon embrace IoT and IoE,
according to an IoT report by Cisco (Cisco, 2014). Public safety in the future
will be managed by these two strong platforms - this combined platform can be
also called as a newly coined term, PSIOT (Tom Wills, 2016). Instead of working
within de-centralized systems or devices, law enforcement departments will be
able to work on the connected platforms. Everything will be connected from tiny
wearable sensors to centralized data centers. The following picture shows the
potential changes brought by PSIOT:
Four main changes brought by IoE
(Image from: http://www.nascio.org/events/sponsors/vrc/Public%20Safety%20Justice%20and%20the%20Internet%20of%20Everything.pdf)
PSIOT will enable police officers and agencies to
get and share real-time information. Mobile devices such as phones and tablets
harnessing telecommunication technology will become more powerful and more
responsive to incidents. For example, police officers can send incident data to
policing centers and judges by using tablets inside their police car. Data can
be accessed at any time and any places. Ken Boal, the vice president of Cisco,
stated in the report, Public Safety, Justice, and the
Internet of Everything (Cisco, 2014), that “Officers won’t be a
situation blind. Internet of Everything brings together people, process, data,
and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever
before.”
Law enforcement departments would understand data
better with the help of PSIOT. Instead of reading statistic data, rich video
data will be available for the officers. Moreover, data would be more secure
under the PSIOT umbrella. Only registered objects can access to data, which can
enforce the defense against criminal hacking (Cisco,
2014). However, will this technology be free from any
risk?
Potential Problems
Network Risk
As we discussed above, law enforcement is becoming more
and more dependent on the Internet and networks. This can be a double-edged
sword. Networks bring the information tunnels for the police to get a good
control on incident situations. However, the police would lose control once the
network or platform, which will become their daily working dependency, crashes.
Also, criminals’ hacking on the Internet would cause serious confidential
crisis.
Social Media
The police use social media to get data for
criminal analysis, to get control on officers’ actions and to post issues for
public safety. However, people post their daily life and personal information,
which can lead to a crime. People can post anything, even the prohibited, with
little fear because they are sitting behind the Internet. Police officers may
also threaten not only themselves but also their family. The article, Social Media and Law
Enforcement Potential Risks, has pointed that the
home satellite images of officers’ may be obtained by Internet players when
officers issue the posting citations (Gwendolyn Waters, 2012).
Benefits
Criminal & Cost
Thanks
to the technologies such as data science, cloud computing and telecommunication,
the criminal rate is expected to decline and working cost would go down thanks
to the growing productivity.
Reduced Officer Death
The
number of death of police officers will reduce. As Harris said in the article, Number
of Police Officer Killings Drops, Reversing 2014 Spike, FBI Data Shows, there is more and more training in the law
enforcement departments to potentially reduce bad situations and confrontations
(Jon Schuppe, 2016). The figure
below shows the declining trend of officers’ deaths.
Police officers’ deaths record
(Image from: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/number-police-officer-killings-drops-reversing-2014-spike-fbi-data-n574746)
Conclusion
The data science
technology will provide values to the law enforcement sector. But, external
factors might hinder the advancement. For example, a report about the impact of
economic downturn on the police explained that an economic downturn can stop
adoption of new technologies due to reduced investment (COPS, 2016).
We cannot clearly define
the future of law enforcement due to the external factors like economy. But,
throughout a series of our blogs, we have learnt that data science will always
provide a break-through solution for the police to step forward amid
difficulties. We should welcome data science in law enforcement.
References
Gwendolyn Waters.(2012). Social
Media and Law Enforcement: Potential Risks. Retrieved 6 9, 2016, from
The FBI:
https://leb.fbi.gov/2012/november/social-media-and-law-enforcement-potential-risks
Cisco.(2014). Public Safety, Justice, and the Internet of
Everything. Retrieved 6 8, 2016, from: http://www.nascio.org/events/sponsors/vrc/Public%20Safety%20Justice%20and%20the%20Internet%20of%20Everything.pdf
Jay Fortenbery, M.J.A..(2016, 2 10). Law Enforcement Organizations: Possibilities
and Challenges for the Future. Retrieved 6 8, 2016, from
The FBI:
https://leb.fbi.gov/2016/february/law-enforcement-organizations-possibilities-and-challenges-for-the-future
Tom Wills.(2016, 3 2). Anticipating criminal behavior: Data science and the future of predictive policing.Retrieved 6 8,2016, from IBM Big Data&Analytics Hub: http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/anticipating-criminal-behavior-data-science-and-future-predictive-policing
Jon Schuppe.(2016, 5 16). Number of Police Officer Killings Drops, Reversing 2014 Spike, FBI Data Shows. Retrieved 6 9, 2016, from NBC NEWS: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/number-police-officer-killings-drops-reversing-2014-spike-fbi-data-n574746
COPS. (2016). The Impact of the Economic Downturn on American Police
Agencies.Retrieved 6 9,2016, from COPS: http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=2602
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