Technology: Police and Criminal Justice Essay

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Technology
Freemason Jackson
CRJS291-Criminal Justice Administration

Introduction Over the past 200 years, there have been over a hundred major technological advancements that have been made within the US criminal justice system, almost all of which have greatly benefited the system by either improving the methods used to identify and pinpoint criminals or analyze evidence that has recovered as a part of a crime scene. As science continues to expand and influence the methods behind the criminal justice system, it will continue to create technological advancements that will benefit the system and bring criminals to justice. However, much like the two sides of a coin, there will always be a negative aspect to whatever positive effect is brought by a newly implemented form of technology. While most of the time this effect is minimal and at most contained, there is always going to be a chance of a negative effect occurring. In the following short paper, I will give my own opinion on the technology that I believe has created the most problems for the criminal justice system and also give my opinion on the technology that has proven to be the most beneficial to the system. While it is not a technological advancement per se, the technology that I believe has caused the greatest problems for the criminal justice system as a whole is the usage of lethal weapons, specifically guns, which have been used by police officers since the 1850s when revolvers were originally used by the first police departments (Dempsey, Forst, 2013). While there are many different ways police have killed suspects either intentionally or unintentionally whilst in the line of duty, there are two primary reasons why I say that guns present the biggest problems to the US criminal justice system. The first being the fact that now more than ever, police seem to be more likely to kill a suspect rather than use non-lethal force against them and this has resulted in a record number of police homicides. Since statistics are not available to show the number of police homicides that have occurred recently, in the year 2012, almost 410 people were killed by police officers with about 409 of them being killed by firearms. (FBI.gov, 2012). Since police are armed with non-lethal weapons most of the time that can subdue a suspect just as easily as a bullet can, there is absolutely no need for there to be such a high number of police killings. On the other hand, the technological advancement that has proven to have the most benefit to the criminal justice system is the development of the technology used by forensic science. To me, this is by far the greatest technological innovation that has occurred and it has proven to be extremely beneficial to the criminal justice system. The reason why I say this is because of the fact that the advancements made in forensic
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