Emerging Technology Trends and Their Impact on Criminal Justice

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.