Key Findings
- The criminal-justice arena faces an abundance of information technology opportunities. However, important barriers, including a lack of business cases; a lack of implementation plans and procedures; and a lack of security, privacy, and civil-rights protections, hinder its ability to take advantage of those opportunities.
- Agencies need to develop business cases and common processes for implementing new technologies.
- Research is needed to improve sharing of criminal-justice technology among practitioners and researchers.
- To prevent misuse of new technologies, security, privacy, and civil-rights protections need to be incorporated into common processes for implementing those technologies.
- Materials need to be developed to educate the public about emerging criminal-justice technologies.
- Research is needed on changing organizational cultures to better support field-wide information-sharing and safeguarding.
- The technologies and practices with the most potential for improving both public safety and community relations need to be identified.
- Unintended consequences of new technologies must be assessed.