Drugs and crime in the twenty-first century: new approaches to old problems.

Crime should have been added to "death and taxes" as inevitable facts of life. But in the twenty-first century, technology and new crime-management methods will be able to significantly reduce street crime - the theft and violence that frightens citizens most

There is no shortage of

scientific and technological advances that will help police in their efforts to curtail drugs, crime, and violence in the twenty-first century. In fact, breakthroughs in information technologies, medicine, new materials, and a number of other areas will have important implications for crime prevention and criminal justice.

According to the National Crime Victimization Surveys conducted by the Department of justice, the crime rate decreased significantly in the United States during the 1980s. The aggregate number of households touched by crime was down from one in three in 1975 to one in four by 1990. But the rate of decline leveled off in the early 1990s, and a few types of violent offenses increased somewhat. Today, U.S. prisons are filled to overflowing, and the fear of crime - particularly violent crime - continues to grow.

Law-enforcement efforts, no matter how skilled or effective, will never completely eradicate the problems of drugs and street crime. But these problems will be greatly alleviated by applying the technologies of the Information Age to the age-old problem of crime and justice. Crime itself can never be eliminated, but the number of crimes committed - and even the opportunities to commit crimes-can be dramatically reduced.

Fighting Drugs with Drugs

Much of the public's concern about crime - as well as an enlarged correctional population-can be directly attributed to the "war on drugs," as drug-related arrests have escalated rapidly during the pas decade. Twenty to forty-five percent of the new prison inmates are drug abusers, and a significant proportion of violent offenders are either drug suppliers fighting over territorial rights or drug abusers desperately seeking the means to feed their addiction.

Advances in our understanding of drugs and the development of new therapeutic medications - along with the redefinition of law-enforcement problems and a redirection of social policy - will assist in the war on drugs and crime in several significant ways. For example, while the drug problem in the United States is most often associated with "hard" drugs such as cocaine or heroin, most of the problem actually comes from alcohol use. A drug now being tested promises to alleviate the massive problems caused by alcohol. RO15-5413, first tested by a Swiss pharmaceutical firm, sobered up heavily intoxicated rats in two minutes. Later tests found that, if the drug was taken before drinking, the rats did not get drunk; if it was taken over a period of time, the rats lost interest in alcohol. Early reports indicate that the same results will be found for humans, leading to a "sober-up" pill.

Police have expressed concern that a driver might kill someone while under the influence of alcohol and then take a sober-up pill in an attempt to hide the "evidence," but since the drug works by blocking the impact of the alcohol on the brain rather than actually lowering the body's blood-alcohol content, the alcohol in the bloodstream should still be detectable with blood tests. Since half of all street crime and traffic fatalities are associated with alcohol, this should be a great boon to curbing the nation's biggest drug problem.

Similar impact-blocking compounds are already being tested and fect on amphetamine and barbiturate users and even crack-cocaine addicts.

Understanding and Controlling

Criminal Behavior

Another aid to curtailing dangerous drug use in the future will be the increased knowledge and new therapeutic medications that should result from the current Human Genome Project. Launched to discover the genetic causes and thus treatments for brain-related diseases such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy, the project is expected to result in a map of the chemical and electrical circuitry of the brain, as well as decoding the body's genetic structure.

In a few years, the genetic keys to understanding and controlling behavior - from apathy to hyperactivity, from gentleness to violence - should be known. Through synthesis of the body's own chemicals and time-release implants of powerful therapeutic medications, behavior could be kept in constant check: drugs fighting drugs.

The next step might be the use of nanocomputer implants to keep track of and control the behavior of public offenders. These implants could be placed in the brain and could be equipped with microscopic transmitters to constantly monitor behavior and to send subliminal anti-crime messages to the offender (e.g., "Do what the law requires" or "Help, don't harm"). The nanocomputer could also release control chemicals on a set schedule and even diagnose changes in behavior and take necessary action to calm the individual.

Such technologies raise serious questions about the invasion of privacy of private citizens and how broad the monitoring and behavior-modification powers of the police will be allowed to grow. But as long as the American public's concern about drugs and crime remains high, increased surveillance and behavior modification are likely to be viewed as acceptable crime-fighting measures.

Advanced Crime-prevention

Technology

The best approach to solving crimes is to anticipate them and prevent them from occurring in the first place. Advances in technology soon will make it far easier to deter or discourage property crimes such as burglary or theft.

For example, the "smart house," which features a central computer that controls functions ranging from heating and cooling to turning lights on and off, will likely play a major role in crime prevention. Today, smart houses are described in terms of convenience, but the security aspect is impressive. Intruders can be videotaped and police or security called by the central computer. A combination of retina-scanning equipment for identification an pressure-and heat-sensitive floors and walls could be installed in homes, allowing for the programming of "authorized" resident and guests in a smart house and the detection of "unauthorized" visitors. In the future, DNA "bar codes" - taken from a single drop of blood or other body chemical or cell - will make such identification even more certain.

With the cost of centralized home computers falling rapidly, millions of smart houses will be built in the next few years. To consider home security and crime prevention without taking these inventive homes into consideration would be a serious flaw in any future law-enforcement policy decisions.

Much technology that can deter crime is already on the market. Audio devices that can hear through walls are in use today and will soon be joined by heat-sensing cameras that can "see" through walls. And as satellite equipment becomes less expensive and easier to use, it will become an increasing part of the surveillance arsenal used by the police. And soon, the capacity of police to keep up with information on all citizens will be enhanced by universal dossiers keyed to genetic fingerprints taken from all individuals at birth. The dossier would include every incident of trouble in an individual's life - from fighting in school to posing a credit risk - and such data would be collected, stored, and disseminated from cradle to grave.

Other technologies will help police to solve mysteries and close cases. At the Medical University of South Carolina, a new technique called bullet cytology is being used to identify which bullet struck which body organ when the victim is shot more than once. By washing bullets in a saline solution, the forensic scientist can determine from the residue which bullet passed through the heart or which one passed through the liver, helping to pinpoint the cause of death and strengthening the case against an assailant.

The voice-stress analyzer may soon become a standard item that police carry. Such analyzers will be refined to the point where they can be placed in a shirt pocket and be voice-activated when the police officer questions a suspect or witness. The analyzer can be quickly checked to determine when the suspect or witness felt stress during the questioning (indicating that he or she might be giving a dishonest answer), much the way that polygraph machines or "lie detectors" are used today.

Another major problem for police - communications - will be overcome by two innovations: the "Dick Tracy" wrist communicator and the universal translator. The wrist communicator - an ultra-small, two-way cellular phone - will allow police officers to be "on duty" at all times and to be constantly in touch with headquarters, with fellow officers, or, indeed, with anyone around the world. The universal translator - a small computer that will instantly translate speech from one language to another - will allow police officers to question suspects, witnesses, or crime victims without the language barriers that they often encounter today.

Bionics, too, could have a dramatic impact on crime fighting in the future. Already more than a score of body parts, from arms and legs to hearts, can be replaced by mechanical parts that often work as well as or better than the original. In particular, two replacement parts - both of which are being researched today - could have far-reaching effects: bionic eyes that are powerful enough to see for miles and bionic eardrums that are so sensitive that they can hear a pin drop behind a closed door.

Such bionic eyes and eardrums would greatly enhance a police officer's surveillance capabilities, while redefining citizens' expectations of privacy. But a dilemma emerges. Just who would be allowed to have these bionic parts: only those police officers who needed to have their eyes or ears replaced due to illness or injury, or any officer who chooses to replace his healthy eyes and eardrums with bionics in order to improve his performance? And would other citizens - including potential criminals - be allowed to obtain high-powered bionic parts? No doubt the ethical implications of such replacement parts will be a part of any future law-enforcement debate.

These and other technological innovations can be expected in the decade of the 1990s or early in the twenty-first century. But innovations in the way the U.S. criminal-justice system operates will emerge as well.

Criminal-Justice Innovations

"Community policing" is an innovation whose time has come. It is in harmony with the American society of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: heterogeneous and culturally pluralistic. In this type of world, the police's role clearly must be to work with the community to tailor service to the community's needs. The "western marshal" or "gunfighter" approach simply is inappropriate for the modern world.

Closely aligned with community policing is the need to expand the scope of the criminal-justice system. If an offender is undereducated, poverty-stricken, medically or mentally ill, or mentally retarded, he or she often can be better dealt with by educators, social workers, doctors, or mental-health specialists than by western-marshal-style police officers. Police could coordinate crime prevention efforts with other social-service agencies and citizens in the community to develop truly pro-active strategic plans to provide the education, poverty assistance, medical attention, and mental-health treatment that would get to the heart of the crime problem.

Another innovation that has started to make inroads in the criminal-justice system is "participatory justice" - the use of mediation, arbitration, and other alternatives to the adversarial system of handling civil and criminal cases. Already, hundreds of small centers are settling disputes efficiently and effectively without the need for the threats and intimidation inherent in traditional criminal courts.

In Atlanta, for example, cases are referred directly from courts and social-service agencies to the Neighborhood justice Center, where they are usually mediated within 72 hours of the referral. The mediator, a trained volunteer, brings all parties to the alleged offense to the negotiating table and seeks to achieve a consent agreement among the parties. In most cases, such a consent is achieved, and remedies range from paid restitution or apologies to counseling. In an evaluation conducted by the Department of Justice, it was found that in 88% of cases handled both sides were satisfied with the process. This type of process provides the possibility of "win-win" justice and thus is in harmony with a heterogeneous world in which people increasingly will have social conflicts based on differences in lifestyles and expectations of their community.

Justice in the Twenty-first Century

Justice is in the eye of the beholder. Traditionally, neither the defendant nor the complainant has felt justice was done in the adversarial legal system. Defendants feel that the reasons for their actions are ignored and that the penalties are too harsh; victims receive little or nothing in repayment for their physical or financial losses and often feel that defendants don't receive long enough sentences.

In a more participatory system, using the mediation process, both sides must be satisfied or no agreement is signed, leading to a better understanding by both parties of why a sentence was imposed and a deeper sense of "closing the case."

Participatory justice can help victims - and victimizers - to achieve the understanding and empathy necessary to move beyond revenge to reconciliation. In the end, peace of mind as well as freedom from crime must be the result of any successful law-enforcement efforts.

From a crime-and-justice standpoint, the twenty-first century could be either heaven or hell. Police will have new tools that will allow them to better fight crime - or prevent crime from occurring in the first place. These same tools will have the potential for abuse - particularly in the area of invasion of privacy. One thing is certain: Both the technological and social innovations that can lead to criminal-justice heaven or hell are on the way.

Keeping People on the Right Side of the Law

In the Year 2025: A Scenario

"Is he thinking about committing a crime?"

Officer Jones had noted that his scanner indicated that one of the probationers he was monitoring was experiencing a change in his body's level of tension, often the sign of emotional upheaval caused by planning a crime. The probationer, in whose brain was implanted a nanocomputer to monitor his behavior, might simply be worried about something else, but Office Jones decided not to take a chance. Via a microwave transmitter, Jones sent an electronic message to the probationer's nanocomputer, ordering it to release a drug into the probationer's body that would calm him, while at the same time sending him a subliminal message ("It's good being on the right side of the law").

Jones smiled. He loved his job. He could hardly wait to get started each day. Often he woke in the middle of the night and couldn't resist electronically checking up on the probationers assigned to him to monitor. There was simply no escape from his surveillance.

One probationer took Jones all the way to the Supreme Court, charging that this sort of monitoring violated his right to privacy. But the Court ruled that, since the plaintiff was on probation in lieu of going to prison, he had no right to privacy.

Jones smiled with satisfaction at what the police had been able to accomplish, despite a half-century battle with the civil libertarians. Back in the 1960s, they had gained control of the Supreme Court and had created a nightmare of due process and injustice. Jones involuntarily frowned as he remembered seeing the videos of riots and disorders in that era and reading the statistics of how many Americans were in prison.

Only in the last few years had the police been allowed to use nanocomputer implants to monitor those people on probation or performing public service in place of going to prison. But what about the "pre-criminals," those who were liable to one day commit crimes? Shouldn't they be monitored as well? It would be possible to require universal psychological and chemical testing to establish the categories of pre-criminals and pre-delinquents. Those people also could be implanted with nanocomputers and their behavior monitored and controlled, virtually eliminating all crime.

Jones smiled again, thinking, "After all, if people aren't doing anything wrong, they should have nothing to hide."

Gene Stephens is a professor in the College of Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, and is criminal-justice editor for THE FUTURIST. His last FUTURIST article, "High-tech Crime Fighting: The Threat to Civil Liberties," appeared in the July-August 1990 issue.