NCJ Number
138804
Date Published
1992
Length
50 pages
Annotation
The intent of this essay is to identify foreseeable effects of interactions between police organizations, practices, and traditions and new information technologies and to outline the potential assets and liabilities of the new technologies for transforming police work.
Abstract
Computers and related software emerge as the most important recent technological innovations and now are making their way into large police departments. Ways the police obtain, process, encode, decode, and use information is critical to understanding their functions. Innovations are reported in terms of the kind of information they process: primary, secondary, or tertiary. Each of these three types of police information, intelligence (prospective, retrospective, and applied), and operational strategies (preventive, prospective, and reactive) all interact in a complex fashion with technology. These processes are patterned by police work, particularly the role of the patrol officer, and the occupational cultures of policing. Technology, which is embedded in social organization, both shapes organizations and is shaped by them. 7 footnotes and 153 references