New directions in prevention: Security and emergent technologies

Question 1

What do enthusiasts say technology is useful for?

Answer 1

• surveillance
• data analysis
• predictive policing
• communication and coordination
• forensic information e.g. DNA analysis
• community engagement

Question 2

Critics of technical policing

Answer 2

• political feasibility e.g. ethics, info the technology produces may reflect bias of the people that programmed them
• infringement of individual privacy
• consequences of hyper connective communications for generating new security threats
• risk of being hacked and leaked

Question 3

What are critics of the feasibility of the technological policing?

Answer 3

• key distinction between the small range of mimeomorphic actions like rapid dialling of numbers and polymorphic actions which requires contextual and cultural competence
• technology can lack the ability to accurately predict polymorphic actions
• not enough human learning to be able to predict and intervene in human relations as complex as deviance e.g. domestic abuse

Question 4

How is emerging technology disrupting responses to crime?

Answer 4

despite technology rapidly advancing or experiencing breakthroughs:
- significant economic value could be affected
- economic impact is potentially disruptive

Question 5

What are examples of potentially economically disruptive technologies?

Answer 5

• mobile internet
• automation of knowledge to work
• cloud technology
• advanced robotics
• human enhancement
• social media

Question 6

How can criminology be adapted towards a security society?

Answer 6

• avoiding narrow, self-referential specialisation
• promoting inter-disciplinary dialogue and learning with cognate disciplines
• recognising the subject-specific expertise of criminology makes this subject more relevant certainly if major injustices are to be averted