10 Lessons from the past: policing and technology

The police have always sought to research, develop and deploy the latest technologies in the pursuit of their core aims: preventing crime, catching criminals, protecting the public. The history of the police and technology is thus on the one hand a history of innovation and progress. But, it is also a history riddled with setbacks, malfunctions, and budget cuts. What lessons, then, can we draw from the history of science and technology in policing?

Figure 13: An early police radio mounted to a police horse saddle [Description: A black and white photograph showing a police officer in uniform standing in front of a white horse. The officer holds a saddle to which is attached a large radio. He also wears earphones and has round his neck a horn-shaped mouth piece.] Source: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/an-ingenious-pocket-wireless-attached-to-the-horses-saddle-news-photo/1053487678?adppopup=true

Three main conclusions can be drawn from any study of the integration of science and technology into policing:

1. Science and technology do not just provide ways to undertake policing more efficiently. On occasion, they change the nature of policing itself. A good example of this is the development of mobile radio technology. This allowed police officers to be more responsive and moved policing away from a focus on prevention by walking pre-determined beats. This took officers away from the pavement and into radio-equipped cars. While it may have been more efficient but was not always viewed as such by the public. Thus, the introduction of new technologies should be undertaken carefully and with a view to possible side effects.
2. Just because a new technology appears efficient or desirable to the police, it does not necessarily seem that way to the public. For example, the development and use of CCTV systems by the police was certainly innovative, and viewed positively internally, but at times the public has seen the use of this technology by the police in a negative light.
3. The full implications of the adoption of new technologies within policing sometimes take decades to understand. A good example of this are the technologies for fingerprinting and DNA testing. With respect to both, cases have been thrown out or overturned because the limitations of the technologies, and/or the implications for the use of certain techniques as evidence, were not fully understood by those deploying them. Thus, limitations to new technologies should be expected from the outset and their use deployed with caution.