Overview (From Visions for Change: Crime and Justice in the Twenty-First Century, P 1-4, 1996, Roslyn Muraskin and Albert R. Roberts, eds. - see NCJ-158451)

• NCJ Number: 158452
• Author(s): R Muraskin; A R Roberts
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 4 pages
• Sale Source: Prentice-Hall, Inc
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter discusses possible trends in criminal justice that will emerge in the next century and that will shift the public focus from a preference for punishment to a preference for treatment.

Abstract

Technologies will become available that can reduce the likelihood that people will commit crimes in the first place. The beginning of the 21st Century will see police using digital technology for automated fingerprint image capture, storage, and retrieval; enhanced procedures for crime laboratories in the fields of DNA analysis, the detection of drugs and explosives, and missing person identification; the widespread use of computer-based technologies and artificial intelligence systems; and the use of expert systems to analyze criminal behavior patterns among serial killers, rapists, and terrorists. Criminal justice policy makers will be compelled to commit additional human and financial resources to strengthen the criminal justice system; to plan, implement, and evaluate crime prevention and criminal justice assistance projects; and to review the role of criminal law in environmental protection, urban crime prevention, and the management of juvenile and violent criminality.