Week 6: Policing and technology

Introduction

Rapid technological change is posing new challenges for policing. Cybercrime is constantly evolving. New forms of crime including digital fraud (both corporate and personal), ransomware attacks, online sexual abuse and ‘sextortion’, put police forces under pressure to adapt their training and operational structures to respond effectively.

Advances in technology – including new technologies of communication and surveillance, and sophisticated forensic techniques – also offer significant opportunities for policing. Sometimes, however, it feels like police forces are continually playing ‘catch up’ – struggling to adapt to new forms of crime and to harness new tools for crime control.

Figure 1: A West Yorkshire policeman uses a new mobile fingerprint scanner [Description: A photograph of two police officers wearing high visibility jackets – only their middle section are visible – no heads or lower limbs. The officers’ ‘Airwaves’ radios can be seen clipped to their lapels. One holds a digital mobile fingerprinting device towards the camera. The screen shows an image of 2 hands and a fingerprint. The other is presenting a touch pad. A third person, not in uniform, has a finger held on the pad.] Source: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-west-yorkshire-police-officer-holding-a-new-mobile-fingerprint-scanning-174098105.html?imageid=00D5CB92-91B2-4D90-9526-40248A248EDB&p=309348&pn=1&searchId=34a92a87ec6a15ec6f2fd1f68ae82af3&searchtype=0

In this week you will learn about how police forces have dealt with technological change in the past. Since the early nineteenth century, UK police forces have often been at the forefront of the adoption of the latest technologies. Thinking about what has worked well in the past and looking at instances where the adoption and use of new technologies has not worked so well provides perspectives useful when considering the challenges of today.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• appreciate how new technologies have affected both crime and its control in the past
• analyse how the police have historically embraced new technological advances
• discuss the insights this history may give to contemporary debates in policing.

You’ll start, however, with an introductory video which outlines the issues the British police are grappling with and provides a brief overview of the history relevant to these complex present-day problems.

Video