Technology

Technology

1. Blockchain

   • Blockchain provides a way to incorporate a variety of data from multiple sources, anonymize it, track it, and ensure its authenticity without the need for third-party validation. The public safety implications of such technology are enormous.
   • The challenges policing faces is that with banks and other financial institutions cut out of the loop, the police lose vital source of information on financial transactions that often help them build cases aganist criminals and to secure conviction.
   • Also, given that the identities of those conducting the transactions, and the transactions themselves, are encrypted, it is also very hard for the police to be able to link specific payments to specific individuals.

2. Artificial Intelligence

   • The National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, is investing in artificial intelligence-based tool to track how "digital drug dealers" and illegal internet pharmacies market and sell opioids.
   • As with most technical innovations, these tools pose concerns, too. For instance, drug policy experts caution that in the case of online opioid sales, such AI tools- depending on how they're ultimately used by law enforcement.
   • Risk enabling the over-criminalization of low-level drug sellers. They also emphasize that these tools won't ultimately help reduce the demand for these substances.

3. Algorithms

   • Algorithms draw links between places, events, and historical crime rates to predict where and when crimes are most likely to happen. The tools identify hot spots, and the police plan patrols around these tip-offs
   • The problem lies with the data the algorithms feed upon. For one thing, predictive algorithms are easily skewed by arrest rates. According to the US Department of Justice figures, you are most likely to get arrested if you are Black than if you are white.

4. COMPAS

   • Draws on data about people, such as their age, gender, marital status, history of substance abuse, and criminal record, to predict who has a high chance of being involved in future criminal activity.
   • These person-based tools can be used either by police, to intervene before a crime takes place, or by courts, to determine during pretrial hearings or sentencing whether someone who has been arrested is likely to reoffend