Promising Policing Technologies: Experiences, Obstacles and Police Needs Regarding Law Enforcement Technologies

Police forces and law enforcement agencies in many countries are continuously trying to optimize the use of technologies in policing and law enforcement. Efforts are being made to remove existing technological, legal and organizational obstacles to create more opportunities of promising technologies, both existing and new. This contribution describes the results of a survey among 46 police forces and other law enforcement agencies in 11 countries. Their experiences with policing technologies and their needs and preferences in this regard are described. The prevalence and satisfaction of existing technologies, including wiretapping, fingerprints, DNA research, database coupling, data mining and profiling, camera surveillance and network analyses were investigated. Legal, technological and organizational obstacles for the use of technology in policing were mapped and the extent to which policing technologies are evaluated and yield success stories was investigated. The main obstacles, according to the respondents, are insufficient financial resources and insufficient availability of technology. One in four organizations is lacking any clear, appealing success stories and half of the respondents indicated they were not performing any evaluations on the effectiveness of using particular technologies in policing. As a result, the information available on whether technologies in policing are actually working is very limited.