Attorney General Candidate Plans to use Technology to Fight Crime
Written by daniel.solid Friday, 11 December 2009 02:20
In what feels like a breath of fresh air to crime investigators and analysts, California Attorney General Candidate Chris Kelly released A Plan to Use Technology to Fight Crime. Kelly is currently the Cheif Privacy Officer for Facebook, so he has a lot of experience working with law enforcement from across the country to prosecute predator’s on the world’s largest social networking site. Solid Forensics thinks his plan sounds good on the surface, but that actually implementing a cost-saving technology development plan is harder than he makes it sound.
Point number one on Kelly’s plan outlines the need to update crime labs throughout California; both DNA and tech labs, in his opinion, need to be implementing better technology and standards accompanied by better training. The second point on Kelly’s criminal investigations technology plan is to create a “standardized crime mapping system across California”. This would allow agencies to collaborate on geo-crime data for incidents, suspects, and even live tracking. The other points are rather vague or somewhat irrelevant for the content on this blog – so we will focus on these two.
We at Solid Forensics think that Mr. Kelly’s plan to improve lab technology and provide cross-agency mapping sounds great – but the “devil is in the details” as they say. He claims that implementing new technology will reduce costs for an economically struggling California budget. But in our opinion, which is based on extensive experience in actually providing this technology to law enforcement, their are plenty of systems out there that will not save anyone money. Why? Because they are developed and selected by government bureaucrats.
Kelly’s plan that is missing is the partnership with the private sector to needed accomplish these developments. Kelly mentioned “improving the DNA labs” across the state. Good luck with that. You may be able to speed up the processing of DNA samples from high-profile crimes, but you will never reach the level of effectiveness that is possible with a local partnership with a private firm.
Take the Palm Bay, FL successful implementation of a Local DNA Indexing System, for example. They have managed to reduce their crime by 20% by partnering with DNA:SI labs to develop a LODIS system for use throughout their department. We will write more on this development in the future, but the point here is that they saved residents millions of dollars in lost assets with a minor investment in a small firm to provide a service that – like the local PDs in California – is also provided by the state.
But the state – just because of it’s size – will NEVER be able to handle the volumes of DNA collection, identification, and analysis required to reduce crime like Palm Bay did. It takes collaboration with private firms on the local level. Any state-wide programs will be inhibited by red tape, lack of support for the systems, and sheer sluggishness due to size.
So, although Chris Kelly may have the right intentions, his state-wide, government-based solutions will ultimately end up costing taxpayers even more dollars that in our opinion, will never produce the return on investment that simply promoting local crime-fighting partnerships would generate.
New post: Attorney General Candidate Plans to use Technology to Fight Crime (http://cli.gs/pXDHe)