NCJ Number
225877
Journal
Federal Probation Volume: 72 Issue: 3 Dated: December 2008 Pages: 10-21
Date Published
December 2008
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study examined a wide range of new technological innovations that have applications in the areas of crime commission, crime prevention, and crime control.
Abstract
Results indicate that technological innovations will likely have both intended and unintended consequences for criminal justice organizations, and by extension the public. Given the weak empirical foundation for these innovations, and the potentially detrimental side effects, it seems reasonable to leave things unchanged. Currently, there is a long-term downward trend in crime, with violent crime rates down over 20 percent since 1995 and overall crime rate back to where it was in 1970. The need to innovate comes from a source more directly linked to criminal justice strategic planning and decisionmaking--the poor performance of the criminal justice system in several key areas. For example, police clearance rates for homicide have dropped from over 90 percent in the late 1960s to 60 percent today, with similar precipitous drops for other categories of violent crime. In addition, the court system has developed a variety of reforms designed to address the long-standing problems of race and class bias over the past two decades, including the introduction of actuarial-based pretrial and sentencing decisionmaking tools, but these reforms appear to have simply institutionalized race- and class-based disparity; and, the problem still remains. Table and references