Criminal justice Tends Paper - Essay Example

Law enforcement has revolutionized a great deal from its early practices. Intelligence in law enforcement basically depended on the dossier system which involved a collection of files of people suspected of being criminals and their accomplices, referred to as red files (McElreath et al., 2013). But there was soon increased evidence of law enforcement officers keeping files of people who had no records of criminality, hence the subsequent separation of law enforcement and national enforcement intelligence that saw the development of a more reliable intelligence-led policing.

The period between 1881 and 1945, as documented by (Grant & Terry, 2005) saw the mobility of law enforcement agents increased by introduction of motor vehicle patrols and improvement of communication through use of radio and telephones. It was during the same period that identification of criminals was made effective with forensic laboratory being set, pioneering the use of polygraph, handwriting and fingerprint systems of classification. Subsequent years up to 1959 saw traffic law enforcers introduce speed violation and blood-alcohol detection instruments to detect crime.

This was further boosted by computerization in the period between 1960 and 1979 and the introduction of the 911 emergency code systems. The technological advancement saw easy retrieval of data in the period after 1980. The current trend in law enforcement borrows so much from the capabilities of technology to ensure public safety in the modern highly technological environment facing transnational threats. According to Schultz (2013), crime prevention relies heavily on surveillance which has greatly improved with the use of the Geographic Information System, GIS technology for purposes of mapping the location of aliens and drug traffickers, away from the ancient push pins approach.

Used together with this has been the Global Positioning Systems, GPS. The use of closed-circuit television, CCTV for public surveillance has found application in various public areas including airports and public buildings. Nonetheless, despite the capabilities brought by the use of such a technology, a legal debate has been raging on particularly with regard to respect to citizens’ privacy (Grant & Terry, 2005). To identify criminals, biometrics technology provides real-time automatic identification of individuals based on such persons’ behavior or physiology.

These include fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, retinal scanning and DNA profiling among others. The current law enforcement system has seen greater efforts made towards developing efficient technologies to overcome barriers in information sharing across various jurisdictions. Such has seen the employment of Automated Regional Information System, ARJIS, use of cross-jurisdictional radio communications and encryption for information security. The Internet has been used by various law enforcement agencies for community policing which makes it more intensive than traditional policing methods.

In the future, one thing is certain according to Schultz (2013); technology will continue to advance in nearly all the facets of law enforcement. Technology will be used to prevent, solve and also facilitate crimes. Following the past criminal incidences including the September 11 2001 terror attacks, law enforcement a