Technological Advancements And Law Enforcement: A Dynamic Duo

Technological Advancements and Law Enforcement: A Dynamic Duo In a world where advancements in technology continue to occur daily, there have been many useful impacts on law enforcement, as well as challenges. Technological advancements have made drastic changes to law enforcement’s effectiveness and efficiency, the impact on the role of law enforcement, as well as challenges in bringing justice. In addition, offenders have found new ways to use technology to commit many crimes, such as phishing and scamming, and law enforcement has many challenges in bringing these crimes to justice. It is essential to take a deeper look at the impact of advanced technology on law enforcement. Changes in Law Enforcement due to Technological Advancements Effectiveness

Advancements in technology allow policy agencies to improve their connections with their community, ultimately changing the effectiveness of how their jobs are done. For example, “new social media technologies enhance communication between themselves and citizens to strengthen[en] that relationship” (Lum et al., 2016, p. 2). Efficiency Alongside effectiveness, the second noticeable change in law enforcement is efficiency. With the amount of calls law enforcement responds to on a daily basis, efficiency is a crucial factor in successful operations. Technology, such as license plate readers, has aided in working efficiently for many departments. Police have “adopted license plate readers to detect stolen vehicles because the readers enable them to automatically scan hundreds of vehicle license plates in mutes, as opposed to manually entering selected plates into computer databases one-by-one” (Lum et al., 2016, p. 2). Another beneficial change for law enforcement is how records are now kept. Use of computerized record keeping “replaced the hand reporting, shelving, and analysis of police reports so that information could be more easily searched, retrieved, and analyzed” (Lum et al., 2016, p.