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Monday, February 5, 2024

Criminal Investigation in the High Tech Surveillance Era

Not that long ago, criminal investigators had fewer tools to work with than today's detectives. Investigators who enter the field this century have so many more ways to solve crimes and gather evidence for court. Rapists, for example, can be incriminated by their DNA. A suspect's movements at the time of the crime and afterwards can be tracked through GPS technology. Crimes committed in public are almost always recorded on surveillance cameras. Quite often suspects incriminate themselves on social media, or are incriminated by others on Facebook and other sites. In the old days investigators didn't have Google or latent fingerprint, forensic ballistics and DNA databases. And many criminals today, through their email, give themselves away. Advances in science and technology and the emergence of the surveillance state have not been friendly developments for criminals. Nevertheless, overall crime solution rates have not improved since the 1930s. This is because criminal investigation has never been a law enforcement priority in this country. 

1 comment:

  1. I am not sure if this article infers that the lawyer you choose makes the difference, or if people were more easily convicted in the older decades on less evidence. It's an interesting statistic.

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