Are innovations in technology at the moment providing criminals with great incentives than deterrence?

This blog is aim at bringing to public domain for comments, contributions and criticisms an important question that motivated my work in seeking a solution to the growing trends of crime and their successfulness. The question is: Are innovations in technology at the moment providing criminals with great incentives than deterrence? While it may be easier to answer a straightforward ‘YES’ or ‘NO’, a more critical aspect will be making an attempt to also provide answers for the WHY, HOW and WHAT then is the solution in support of whatever is your answer to the initial question.  

To allow you an insight into my own frame of mind, I will be making available bits and pieces of my CPTSIA’s framework components focused on strategic application of WEB 2.0 tools and relevant internet forensics techniques against crime. Don’t forget, I have earlier submitted that the CPTSIA framework is aimed at setting up an agenda for enabling the effective application of technology in creating sustainable and potent deterrence against crime. The deterrence is to be derived from unrelenting exposure of suspected or actual criminal acts through strategic and timely information sharing using community-oriented collaborative approach. The vehicle for delivering this is set to be a structured web-based crime-prevention platform that uses WEB 2.0 tools to efficiently support multilayered interaction and collaboration in very dynamic ways.   

Vital to the framework also are finding efficient ways of addressing challenges and steps for ensuring forensic readiness of our contemporary internet. This aspect is aimed at allowing proactive preservation and effective application of valuable digital evidential materials to efficiently support investigation and prosecution in a manner that could significantly help in raising crime deterrence bars. Ultimately, CPTSIA is set to provide an avenue for critically examining the feasibility of providing our communities with a strategic crime reporting and tracking platform accessible to all in the most convenient and safe to use manners.

Now, the issue:

The principal motivation for this work is derived from the fact that the competition between the positive and the negative impacts of ICT innovations in our society have so grown to the extent that even the most naive individual in our midst is beginning to ask critical questions as to whether the good brought to us by Information and Communication Technology truly outweighs the bad resulting from its misuses and abuses. These resounding questions are now giving credence to the arguments that innovations in technology are at the moment providing criminals with great incentives than deterrence (Adams, A. A et al, Pandora’s Box 2007, page xxvi).

However, in addressing the above, there is need to defined specific actions required for improved efficiency in tackling present day crime waves using the same technology that has aided them. This will in turn deliver practical ways of repositioning current technological innovations to better serve society. All of these are supposedly enveloped in the framework. On the web technologies, the focus will be on WEB 2.0 and the rightful application of its interactive and collaborative tools for supporting a purposeful social movement against crime. This is modeled after the present-day social networking phenomenon.

It is however important to note that beyond examining technology in the context of the material artefacts surrounding us, ICT must also be examined as a system: its relevant components’ evolution, its ever-growing embrace by contemporary society and its impacts on society, lifestyle and crime. There is need to also shade light on how ICT is reshaping our lives; how ICT can be used in bringing about a paradigmatic shift in the traditional crime prevention approaches; why criminals tend to be quick in taking undue advantage of these and; why long-standing crime prevention approaches are no more delivering desirable results in all cases.

A solution that will work will be one that can make a practical demonstration of how it can take advantage of WEB 2.0’s interactive and collaborative tools that currently drive the trending social media/networking phenomenon to overcome the current challenges of crime prevention. This should culminate into a feasible guide for harnessing the Internet WEB2.0 solutions in creating a purposeful, assessable, interactive and collaborative platform for communities against crime in their neighbourhoods.

For a valuable contribution, it will be good to take a bit of time to appreciate  what nature of crimes that have become the greatest challenge of our time, and the current prevention endeavours in your localities. This should include x-raying the setbacks and probable solutions. Of course, the study of these cannot also make much meaning without deep appreciation of the following:

 

Ø  Our fast changing socio-cultural lifestyles as seen to have been influenced by the growing trends in society’s embrace of ICT;

Ø  The visible roles of technology in the growing magnitude, complexity and successfulness of crimes;

Ø  The extent to which ICT have actually aided crime perpetrators in their planning, execution and concealment of their act;

Ø  What real incentives that today’s pervasive use of Information and Communication Technologies is offering to criminals.

 Ø  The prospects and challenges of the former and prevailing approaches for crime prevention by interest groups;

Ø  What are the key challenges of the Police or Crime Prevention  authorities in the use of technology in their work

Overall, in structuring my framework, substantial space is dedicated to determining how crime-deterrent-bars can be raised against the seeming incentives provided to criminals by ubiquity of information technology and their pervasive uses. Here is a few of the considered escalating crimes which have found incentives in ICT: Terrorism and its financing, Corruption, money laundering, economic and financial crimes, Electoral Frauds, illegal drugs syndication and human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, and other heinous crimes. In consideration of all of these, the framework is then structured to deliver a more efficient and tactical solution that strategically empowers our communities and relevant authorities (police, etc) to efficiently fight crime in our ever-growing technological age.