How Technology Advances Influences Crime Rates?
In the last few decades, the world has embraced rise of many technological changes in almost all aspects of life. Many benefits have come up due to these developments as well as endangerment of people’s lives. The internet, cell phones, and ATM machines are some of the new technologies that have graced the new century. The technological changes have taken place so fast that there has arisen a cultural lag as well as social discontinuity (Zastrow, 2009). However, it is notable that technology has a great effect on the level of crime today.
The effects that technology has on crime today are dual effect: that is it has both positive and negative effects. Technology has broadened the mind of individuals to such a state that they want to try new ways of committing crime. The fact that the there is a lot of information that is share through the new technology: for example, the internet has so much information about weapons like guns, criminals may use such information to know where they can acquire them. In turn, the level of crime may increase due to having knowledge of such information. However, some studies have revealed that carrying of guns does not mean an increase in crime (Lanford, 2011).
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An ATM card is one of the new technologies that have a high risk of being involved in a scam. Criminals have devised new ways of committing crimes, sometimes without the knowledge of the victim. Lebanese loop is one of the ways the scammers use (Lanford, 2011). An external device is put on the slot where the card is put to confiscate it. At the same time, someone maybe watching the victim insert the pin number and when the victim leaves without the card that is when they engage to action.
In some sectors of the economy, especially the banking sector, new technology has led to increase of crime, the fact that banks usually have a data base network of sharing information among themselves makes them vulnerable. The fact is someone can hack through the system and access through the system means that someone can also be involved in criminal activity of illegal transactions.
Money earned in criminal ways can also be laundered in the system, a good example of such incidents have been reported in Ukraine (Polivanyuk, 2009). Crimes like phishing have also arisen due to the new technology; fake websites have been created where mostly people who are not knowledgeable about computers stand a chance of being conned. Some of these websites offer a chance to people to filll their details as well as their credit cards details and in turn defraud the public. The hackers sometimes send viruses to the defrauded individuals so as not to recover that information again.
Technology changes have not only increased the ways but have also increased the effectiveness of apprehension crime offenders. Police have incorporated new technology that see to it that the crime offenders do not go away with their actions. Creation of a database used on tracking and analyzing data is one of the improvements; other ways that have improved the system are establishment of a computer system in patrol cars and also putting up of surveillance cameras.
The system works in a way that the surveillance cameras detect incidence of crime by detecting any quire behavior like an attack on someone. The information is then recorded in a database. Then the information is transmitted to the police officers who send an alert to the patrol cars. The resultant of this is the response time of the police division is high and they are able to handle crimes faster than before (Porter, 2010).
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Reducing the crime rate can best be solved by countering the criminals’ actions by using technological advances as well. Using the Mii-channel can be one of the ways the crime perpetrators can be caught. The method is a replacement to sketching the perpetrator unlike sketching an unknown person. The Mii-channel is more effective since it produces a higher level of likeness to the crime perpetrator. Crime solving robots can also be another way of fighting crimes, the method was first used in Chile by the Chilean police to discover a murder crime. However, the method is not common since it is a new technology.
Tracing the callers’ location can also be another way of fighting incidences of crime, a database of a communication company records all the calls within the network. The crime perpetrators will shy off