System Component Technological Application
Crime Prevention -threat assessment instruments
--sex offender registration
Police
-criminal risk assessment /involuntary civil commitment
-bullying ID protocol
-facial recognition software
-residential and commercial property monitoring
-crime mapping (hot spots)
-crime analysis (COMPSTAT)
-criminal history data systems enhancement
-info sharing within CJS and private sector
-technologies to monitor cell and electronic communications amber alerts
-watch lists of potential offenders
-gunshot location devices

Threat Assessment: Among the more widely cited, and most controversial, crime prevention strategies over the past few decades are various threat assessment instruments tailored specifically to threats against a particular target.
Assessment instruments can be generally focused to examine an offender type
(MOSAIC) or can be offense-specific (i.e., SARA) and are used frequently by law enforcement, private protection services, and other government entities.
Research Findings to date :While the validity of threat assessment instruments can best be termed mixed (e.g., Campbell, Webster, and Glass, 2009; Reddy, Borum,
Berglund, Vossekuil, Fein, and Modzeleski, 2001), researchers and risk threat consultants have been developing and modifying these instruments for commercial use and profit.

What is MOSAIC?
A development team of experts in psychology, law enforcement, victims' advocacy, prosecution, mental health, and threat assessment determines what areas of inquiry will produce the highest quality assessments. MOSAIC poses those questions to users, accompanied by a range of possible answers. MOSAIC calculates the value of the answers selected by the assessor, and expresses the results on a scale of 1 to 10. MOSAIC automatically produces a full written report, describing the factors that were considered.
Video: MOSAIC https://www.mosaicmethod.com/?page=video_learning
Research on predictive accuracy of MOSAIC: https://www.mosaicmethod.com/documents/DOJ_Study.pdf
https://www.mosaicmethod.com/?page=what_is_mosaic

HTTP://WWW.POPCENTER.ORG/ABOUT/?P=SARA

Situational Crime Prevention
While the Problem Analysis Triangle helps to analyze problems, situational crime prevention provides a framework for intervention. By assessing the opportunities that specific situations offer for crime, situational crime prevention has identified five main ways in which situations can be modified. These are:
Increasing the effort the offender must make to carry out the crime.
Increasing the risks the offender must face in completing the crime.
Reducing the rewards or benefits the offender expects to obtain from the crime.
Removing excuses that offenders may use to “rationalize” or justify their actions.
Reducing or avoiding provocations that may tempt or incite offenders into criminal acts.

http://www.popcenter.org/25techniques/

Sex Offender Registration: All convicted sex offenders must register with the local/state sex offender registry
Sex Offenders: there are approximately 800,000 registered Sex Offenders nationwide.
Technology: As with general risk and threat assessment, sex offender registries pre-date and are not philosophically tied to technological issues; but as is common, technology facilitate the dissemination of information to a far broader audience.
Effectiveness: A growing body of research has demonstrated that sex offender registries are inaccurate and do little to impact offender behavior and that the harm to offenders may greatly outweigh the benefits to society (Tewksbury, 2006: Tewksbury, 2005).
Thus, as a crime prevention strategy, the evidence suggests sex offender registries do not influence offender behavior to a significant degree and may in fact exacerbate existing issues that hamper rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders back to communities.

Involuntary civil commitment has become more difficult due to changes in statutes beginning in late 60’s across the USA.
Mentally ill:
Since the tightening of criteria for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, the
United States has seen a trend of persons with mental illness being marginalized to unsafe and inappropriate settings. Since deinstitutionalization, there has been a tremendous increase in America's population of people with mental illness who are living on the streets. The latest estimates by the United States' Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration reveal that up to 25 percent of our country's homeless population is made up of individuals with mental disorders, despite the fact that only approximately six percent of the general population suffers from mental illness.
Statutory Shift:
Under treatment-driven criteria for commitment, these persons would have gained access to the system through hospitalization on an involuntary basis if necessary. However, under standards based on dangerousness, the medical system will not intervene against a person's wishes until he or she becomes suicidal, physically violent, or grossly unable to perform activities of daily living.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392176/

Potential Target Groups: Violent offenders , mentally ill offenders, sex offenders, and drug users
Involuntary Civil Commitment Statutes: used to hold individuals because they have been assessed as a significant threat to others or to themselves. Attention in recent decades to dangerous sexual predators (or the perception of) led to several US states loosening criteria for involuntary civil commitment; criteria that had been rather extensive and required a strict demonstration of evidence in most contexts.
Slippery Slope Argument:Technology bringing together risk assessment protocols and increased surveillance, coupled with an attitudinal shift in the general public (and lawmakers) to a punitive stance in dealing with sexual offenders has resulted in additional sanctions being imposed on offenders and, critics contend, an open door to extending this strategy to other types of offenders and even those deemed at risk for committing dangerous offenses in the future.

NGRI: insanity acquittees are not quickly released to society. Although these persons are technically acquitted by the justice system, they are almost always subsequently remanded to the medical system with the expectation that they will receive psychiatric care.
This expectation is met through civil commitment, and insanity acquittees remain hospitalized until they can prove that they have been sufficiently psychiatrically rehabilitated to no longer pose a risk to society.
The process of release from commitment for persons found NGRI can be very lengthy and complicated, and the time acquittees spend in psychiatric facilities may exceed the term of the jail sentence that they would have served if found guilty of the crime that they committed

Sexually violent predator (SVP) commitment laws exist in the legal statutes of 20 states as well as in federal law. Massachusetts is one of these states.
These laws allow civil commitment of individuals who have been convicted of sexually violent crimes provided that they have been diagnosed with a mental illness and are judged to present a risk to the general public because of their diagnoses.
Issue to consider:
The American Psychiatric Association formally opposed SVP commitment laws, and a large number of psychiatrists over the years have expressed professional concerns that these laws mandate physicians to serve the inappropriate, nonclinical function of incarcerating persons with criminal pasts in facilities that were established for treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Eating Disorders:
Despite the potential lethality of the disorders, the fact that an inpatient setting is often the most appropriate setting for weight restoration and intense psychiatric treatment, and the commonality of treatment refusal among those with the disorders, commitment of individuals with eating disorders is uncommon. Although many states have statutes that allow for commitment of patients whose behavior renders them gravely disabled, the behavior has to be so disabling as to create an imminent risk of harm to the patient.
Substance Abuse:
Currently, there are many states with systems in place that allow persons convicted of drug offenses to go to treatment as an alternative to going to jail. Research has shown that these individuals, who are coerced into treatment, have just as favorable outcomes as do voluntary patients. Because of limited access to programs and a widely shared belief that resources should be prioritized for people who truly want to be in recovery of their own accord, the practice of committing addicted individuals who have not broken laws is rare
Personality Disorders:
With regard to a personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, which predisposes individuals to dangerousness, there is controversy regarding the issue of civil commitment. Psychiatrists disagree about whether this diagnosis alone should be grounds for commitment, and there have been conflicting legal decisions on the matter.

About the Statute
Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 123, Section 35 permits the courts to involuntarily commit someone whose alcohol or drug use puts themselves or others at risk. Such a commitment can lead to an inpatient substance abuse treatment for a period of up to 90 days.
Under the law, the person can be committed to a licensed treatment facility or, if none is available, to a separate unit at the correctional facility at Bridgewater for men or
Framingham for women.
In 2006, a new system of care for women was established and in 2008, a similar one was established for men. The Women's Addiction Treatment Center (WATC) is in
New Bedford and the Men's Addiction Treatment Center (MATC) is in Brockton both provide intake and treatment for those civilly committed under this law.
http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/gov/departments/dph/programs/substanceabuse/addictions/drugs-and-alcohol/section-35-faq.html#treatment

Mental Illness:
For purposes of admission to an inpatient facility under Section 12, “Mental Illness” means a substantial disorder of thought, mood, perception, orientation, or memory which grossly impairs judgment, behavior, capacity to recognize reality or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life. Symptoms caused solely by alcohol or drug intake, organic brain damage or intellectual disability do not constitute a serious mental illness. Specify evidence including behavior and symptoms:
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
B).
Likelihood of Serious Harm
(check all categories that apply):
_____ (1) Substantial risk of physical harm to the person himself/herself as manifested by evidence of threats of, or attempts at suicide or serious bodily harm; and/or
_____ (2) Substantial risk of physical harm to other persons as manifested by evidence of homicidal or other violent behavior or evidence that others are placed in reasonable fear of violent behavior and serious physical harm to them; and/or
_____ (3) Very substantial risk of physical impairment or injury to the person himself/herself as manifested by evidence that such person’s judgment is so affected that he/she is unable to protect himself/herself in the community and the reasonable provision of his/her protection is not available in the community.
Specify evidence including behavior and symptoms:______________________________________________________

• One out of every four students (22%) report being bullied during the school year
(National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015).
• 19.6% of high school students in the US report being bullied at school in the past year. 14.8% reported being bullied online ( Center for Disease Control, 2014 ).
• 64 percent of children who were bullied did not report it; only 36 percent reported the bullying (Petrosina, Guckenburg, DeVoe, and Hanson, 2010).
• More than half of bullying situations (57 percent) stop when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student being bullied (Hawkins, Pepler, and Craig, 2001).
• The reasons for being bullied reported most often by students were looks (55%), body shape (37%), and race (16%) (Davis and Nixon, 2010).

School Bullying Identification Tools: In developing a risk profile for students who may be at risk of becoming/being victims of bullying, a host of individual-level variables relative to students themselves as well as contextual variables relating to the school environment have been analyzed to determine significance.
Causes of the Problem: Prior research has shown that institutional culture (e.g., a school’s anti-bullying protocol, level of security, staff training) is a significant factor in determining bullying risk (Sweeney, 2007; Gottfredson, 2001).
Prevention: School-based bullying prevention programs decrease bullying by up to 25%
(McCallion and Feder, 2013). http://www.pacer.org/bullying/about/mediakit/stats.asp
Massachusetts Response to Bullying and Cyber Bullying: http://www.mass.gov/ago/about-the-attorney-generals-office/communityprograms/bullying-and-cyberbullying/

NEW TECHNOLOGY: COMPUTER RECOGNITION OF BIOMARKERS, INCLUDING FACIAL
RECOGNITION, PALM/FINGERPRINT DETECTION, AND RETINAL/IRIS SCANNING
The technology of access control has been evolving in our midst for some time and individual identifiers hold the potential to make mechanical forms of access control
(i.e., keyed locks and access cards) obsolete in the very near future.
Identification Technology: Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that newly created computer algorithms designed to recognize human facial features did so with greater accuracy than humans themselves, thus demonstrating that machines can in fact substitute for human eye witness identification.
Access Technology : Fingerprint scanning has been in use for current generations of smartphones produced by companies such as Apple and Samsung and those corporations are experimenting with retinal and iris (with iris scanning thought to be the superior and more secure) scanning technology for the next generation of their devices. Many private and public sector entities are using these advances to eliminate key and key card access to restricted locations within their facilities.

Home/ Commercial Security is Big Business:
Worldwide, property security systems (or
‘alarm systems’ as they are colloquially referred in many locales) are a nearly 3 billion US dollar market, of which roughly 40 percent is spent on the security of private homes (Knott, 2013). While this figure represents but a fraction of the monies spend annually around the world on crime prevention strategies, it nevertheless is a significant amount that is projected to increase at roughly a five percent rate annually through 2017 (Knott, 2013).
The epitome of the controlled environment is the fully secured gated community (also typically known globally as a Common Interest Development, or CID). Such a community plan takes the notion of residential security to the next level by effectively isolating an entire planned development, layered with both security personnel and technology, with a cost-structure only feasible for a select subset of the wealthiest citizens (Le Goix and Webster, 2008).