Special Edition on Crime Science
P. A. J. Waddington, P. Neyroud · Policing A Journal of Policy and Practice · 2008
Technology has transformed all our lives and does so ever more rapidly. It was only 20 years ago that the first word-processor appeared at the University where I then worked. Kept in a lockable office to which access was carefully controlled, it consisted of a box about the size of a two-drawer filing cabinet, plus screen and keyboard, and devoured 8-inch floppy discs. We thought it was wonderful! Now it is a relic. My mobile phone has more computing power than that venerable device! So too in policing, radio technology has transformed the deployability of officers; weapons technology has improved their protection; helicopters keep watch from on high, but, most of all, forensic science has made enormous strides in recovering and analysing physical evidence from crime scenes (and in this volume Morgan et al. describe further advances). One might expect that the power of science would have been harnessed to identify the patterns in, if not the causes of, criminal behaviour, so that it could more effectively be controlled.