Crime in 2030.pdf

Published on June 2016 | Categories: Documents | Downloads: 102 | Comments: 0 | Views: 576
of x
Download PDF   Embed   Report

Comments

Content

By Gene Stephens

Crime in the Year
Emerging technologies have always had effects on
criminal activity as well as on crime detection and
prevention. A futurist specializing in criminal justice
assesses his previous predictions about crime in the
year 2000 and looks ahead to potential outcomes
in the decades ahead.

2030
ILLUSTRATIONS: © ROLFFIMAGES / DREAMSTIME

B

oy, was I ever wrong about
some of my predictions for
“Crime in the Year 2000,”
published in the April 1981
issue of THE FUTURIST.
Almost all of the biomedical and
communications advances I forecast
have arrived (some a little later than
2000), but many of their predicted
uses to thwart crime have not materialized. As usual in visioning, the
human variable had been the most
difficult to grasp.
While correctly predicting that
better methods of fertility and birth
control would be available, my subsequent extrapolation that genetic
scanning and other tools would allow some couples to produce “super
babies” who then might be reared by
other couples especially suited to
provide “love and compassion”—
thus leading to better child development and less inclination to crime—
hasn’t occurred. It seems that society,
at least in the United States, is not
ready for my conclusion that “child
breeding and rearing, then, may be
considered too important to be left to
chance.”
I predicted that more terrorism
would occur in the latter part of the
twentieth century, but would sub-

side by 2000 as genetic scanning and
engineering, plus other technological
advances, would be used to identify
and change “budding terrorists.”
One problem here was my optimism
that the major causes of economic inequalities would be alleviated, reducing a major motive for terrorism.
But I was also right in some predictions:
• Traditional crime would decrease (now at its lowest point since
the FBI began keeping crime statistics) while cybercrime and other
high-tech crimes would increase.
• Crime would increasingly be
recognized by some as a means of
reaching a socially “legitimate” goal
(e.g., material success). Officials of
some banks, mortgage companies,
stockbrokers, and others willfully
violated numerous laws and regulations to gain huge monetary rewards, sometimes paying millions of
dollars in fines and penalties to reap
billions of dollars in profits.
• New laws and enforcement
methods would be required to cope
with the evolving “cashless society”
(e.g., illegal programming of computers and misuse of automatic
transfer-of-funds machines).
• Data from many different agen-

cies and systems would be computerized and cross-referenced and then
used to identify suspects in criminal
events.
I also forecast in the 1981 article
that “advances in communications
will make it possible to keep people
under constant audio and visual surveillance. Thus the extent to which
people will allow infringement of
their privacy, even for the purpose of
controlling crime, will be a major
philosophical and legal issue.”
At least a couple of forecasts are
behind schedule, but remain in my
future facts file:
• Most “crimes without victims,”
such as gambling, drug use, public
drunkenness, and prostitution, will
be decriminalized and handled outside the criminal justice system.
• Cooperation “between the criminal justice system and other systems
in society will likely be much
greater,” as society recognizes that
schools, teachers, community leaders, and others are vital to preventing crime and disorder. Economic
hard times are also leading to this
cost-saving approach.
So this is an opportunity to see if I
can do better after 30 additional
years of studying the future and

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST January-February 2013 27
© 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

trends impacting the world of public
safety. In this article, I look at the
major issues evolving or likely to arrive between now and the year 2030,
their impact on public safety, and the
alternatives likely to be taken by offenders and public safety protectors.
This time I have more information
and more experience, plus guidance
from my colleagues in the Futures
Working Group (FWG), composed of
police futurists, academics, and FBI
officials.

The Evolving 21st
Century
Having taught in leadership programs for the brightest and best in
the public safety arena for more than
four decades, I have seen a major
shift in the last decade. Once dominated by officers, agents, and officials steeped in tradition and highly
resistant to change, the field of public safety is now populated by a generation raised on instant access to
information, fast-changing communications, and recreational technologies (computer games, puzzles) that
encourage them to seek answers

“THE FIELD OF
PUBLIC SAFETY
is now populated
by a generation
raised on instant
access to information,
fast-changing
communications,
and recreational
technologies.”

(e.g., via Google) immediately to all
issues. They demand access to evolving technologies as soon as possible.
They do not feel threatened by
change; they relish it and become
bored in its absence.
The challenges to effective public
safety and law enforcement are enormous, and the only path through
28

THE FUTURIST

this future will demand the type of
cooperation and dedication to public
service that has been in short supply
in recent years. Deliberation and due
process considered necessary to ensure safety and justice will have to
be delivered at a pace not seen before in the systems developed to provide public safety. Years, months, or
even weeks of consideration normally required to enact a policy
change or react to a new threat simply will not be available; the evolving system must include the capacity
for hyperdrive.
Again, evolution may come to the
rescue, or at least provide a partial
solution, as Ray Kurzweil and others
posit that the “Singularity”—the
melding of humans and machines
with advanced intelligence and capacities—will arrive in this century,
probably well on its way by the 2030
target of this forecast. A post-Singularity public safety officer may well
be capable of hyperdrive and of juggling hundreds or more developments at the same time. We can only
hope. Meanwhile, we humans must
muddle through, as the following
twenty-first-century change drivers
continue to evolve or begin to arrive.

The Technology
Conundrum:
Balancing Security
and Civil Liberties
An avalanche of emerging technology is transforming crime and crime
control worldwide and will launch
snowball effects in the lives of all.
Technology is amoral; it will be put
to good use and to evil use. Technology will provide means to commit
crimes, to thwart crimes, to cover up
crimes, and to detect crimes. The offender can surveil targets and prey
from afar with high-tech gadgetry,
just as a detective can surveil the
suspect (or the area in general), full
time and in real time. And this is
technology that is improving exponentially.
As a surveillance technology,
microscopic cameras will soon give
way to nanoscopic body implants.

January-February 2013



www.wfs.org

GPS will be replaced or supplemented with internal tracking systems, making it possible that every
living creature will be “findable”
anytime, anywhere.
Body odors and essences will join
fluids as difficult-to-refute evidence
of culpability for any personal crime,
and digital forensics will provide scientific proof in cybercrime cases.
All types of transportation—from
driverless cars to flying vehicles to
public-access moving sidewalks and
roadways—will require identification of all users via chip-augmented
cards (and eventually implanted
chips). This technology will add to
our ability to account for all movement of all individuals. Being “off
the grid” will be seen as deviant behavior and likely will become a
criminal offense.
As chips replace personal computers and even mobile devices for receiving, processing, and disseminating data, the intrusion into personal
space will increase, especially after
the chips become organic and are
implanted into the individual’s neurosystem. Again, the opportunistic
offender will find hacking into these
chips to be both challenging and
profitable (e.g., “I’ll scramble your
data and drive you crazy if you
don’t do what I say”). Public safety
officials will use the same chips to
collect and use massive amounts of
data to identify, track, arrest, and
convict these offenders and to uncover plots and deter others from
similar threatening behavior.
Eventually, trillions of unseen
nanochips may be unleashed to permeate every cubic inch of airspace
worldwide, providing a constant
and lasting record of all activity on
earth. Already, it is unwise to assume that any action—whether in
public or in supposedly private
space—is unnoticed or even unrecorded.
The overriding challenge for the
next decade and beyond is how to
balance safety and civil liberties in
the face of this omnipresent surveillance. Is there a level of usage where
sufficient safety is assured while a
modicum of privacy and freedom of
thought and action is preserved?
In the United States and the European Union, the courts have already

UNITED NATIONS PHOTO BY KIBAE PARK

Preventing resource crimes: Scarcity of
reliable electricity (left: in Vietnam) and
potable water (right: in North Darfur, Sudan)
make these resources vulnerable to criminal attacks, including theft and blackmail
through threats to destroy infrastructure.
Possible tools for preventing these crimes
include improved surveillance technologies
such as nano-sized sensors.

begun to struggle with this dilemma;
so far, the tendency has been to allow law enforcement officers to use
new technologies, sometimes without specific evidence of a crime. The
conundrum can be expected to swirl
indefinitely; some observers believe
that the result will be “the death of
privacy” as we know it.

Acquiring
Sustainable,
Affordable Energy
How is energy an issue in the
future of crime? The control of energy sources and the possible theft of
energy are major emerging dilemmas, due to the increasing cost of energy, as well as to the fear that major
sources are either in short supply or
in danger of being priced out of
reach of most consumers.
Until abundant, affordable alternative sources of energy are further developed, the world will continue to
depend primarily on fossil fuel; yet,
oil, natural gas, and coal are not
equally available and distributed
worldwide. Have and have-not energy source nations are often quite

UNITED NATIONS PHOTO BY ALBERT GONZÁLEZ FARRAN

different from have and have-not
wealth nations, creating a worldwide scramble for dominance. Joining governments in this scramble
will be syndicates and cartels, as
well as renters and homeowners, all
determined to share in the energy
wealth via whatever means deemed
necessary.
Bypassing or tampering with
power supplier meters is a growing
problem, costing an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide and accounting for 10% to 40%
of all energy use in various countries. Theft of gasoline by “drive
offs” at the pumps and siphoning
from trucks and storage tanks increases as the prices rise. Domestic
and international pipelines to carry
oil and gas can be expected to face
more breaks and diversions by
thieves and sabotage by terrorists
seeking to spread panic or gain
­leverage in the coming energy wars.
Again, technology will aid both offenders and protectors. Low-cost
and almost undetectable explosives
will emerge, along with devices providing constant surveillance and detection. This is a war that will be
fought at macro and micro levels, requiring multinational task forces and
international partnerships as well as
local public safety agencies.
By 2030, many alternative fuels
will be further developed (e.g., solar,
thermal, wind, wave), along with
some new possibilities (e.g., compressed air, pneumatic). The struggle
for control of these energy sources,
and the methods of theft and of protection, will evolve in ways that are
difficult to envision today.
www.wfs.org



Water Wars Erupt
as Supply of
Essential Element
Dwindles
As with energy, control over water
supply has the potential to attract
criminal or terrorist activity. Potable
water is in short supply worldwide,
and acquiring it and controlling it
has already become both a business
and a criminal enterprise around the
globe. Taken for granted by most
Americans, water is going to become
even more costly in the future, more
valuable and more essential than oil,
gold, or any other precious mineral.
Blue Planet Network reports that
1.1 billion people today have no access to potable water, that 2.2 million
people a year die from waterborne
diseases, that half of the world’s hospital beds are filled with patients
suffering water-related maladies,
and that, in the developing world,
80% of all disease results from contaminated water.
In the developing world, individuals use an average of 2.64 gallons of
water a day for drinking, washing,
and cooking, while in the United
States, daily use averages 100–175
gallons.
Meanwhile, 90% of freshwater
(including that which is polluted)
goes to support agriculture (e.g.,
1,000 liters for a kilogram of potatoes, 1,450 for wheat, and 3,450 for
rice). More than 97% of the world’s
supply is salt water, but current desalination costs are out of reach for

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2013

29

Scenario:

Criminal Traffic Control Center, 2030

I

n a future high-tech international
public safety call center, much
like one of today’s international
air traffic control centers, the following may be overheard.
“This is the 30th new Internet
scam report this morning. Besides
that, they’re all different and all new.
Better call in everyone!”
“Anyone with a line on so-called
free software to provide blueprints
for nanotech production, or for an
easy-to-assemble flying cyclotron,
please reply now. Need source and
location immediately.”
“Here come the messages, 392 in
the last 10 seconds. We’ve got suspects and locations on 25 of this
morning’s scams so far. Make that all
30. Now if we can only keep up;
we’ve had 17 more reports in the
past seven minutes.”
“I know it’s a full-time war on cybercrime, but we’re keeping our
head above water, thanks to the
worldwide citizen network. Who
would have guessed that our number-one crime-fighting source would

be a clued-in international citizenry?
No way we’d even be in the game
otherwise.”
“Gus, who are those guys streaking across the desert at hyperspeed
in our new supersonic land rover?”
“Don’t know yet, but we’ve got
them stopped. Our revitalized Hell’s
Angels took them down 30 seconds
ago. Interrogators are already scouring their brainbots for the 411.
Should be just a matter of nanoseconds before we have the full story.”
“Whoa! That was a nifty takedown
in Budapest. Some precrime scanners just intercepted a thought pattern concerning a plot to destroy the
world’s largest refinery and depository so they could flood the market
with the petroleum from the storehouse they raided an hour ago.
Good thing the citizen-supplemented energy force was nearby to
forestall the explosions and grab the
plotters.”
“We’ve got some really unhappy
p a re n t s i n Wi c h i t a . S o m e k i d
brought a capsule of a new synthetic
drug to school and the security

scanned the thoughts of all students,
searching for evidence. They didn’t
find much contraband, but someone
put video reproductions of some
very embarrassing thought patterns
on the universal social network. One
kid shot himself, and a dozen others
have left school and are missing. We
may get a lot of grief for this one.”
“Guess what? Now the crazies are
on the move—attaching nanobombs
to water pipelines to destroy the
public supply so they can corner the
market with their diverted rivers
and stolen tankers. Luckily our citizen specialists sighted them immediately and are already patching the
lines remotely. Still, if it’s not one
thing, it’s another. What’s next?”
“Well, Ma’am, you’re not going to
believe this one!”
“Stop right there. I’d believe anything at this point. Luckily, I also
have confidence that we are well
connected to deal with anything. At
least so far.”

most of the world’s citizens.
Water theft has preceded water
wars in many locations worldwide,
and as attention turns to protecting
this commodity, new laws and new
enforcement emphasis will begin to
emerge. In the United States, many
cite the Owens Valley–City of Los
Angeles water deal of the early
twentieth century as the first major
theft of water—a story dramatized
in the 1974 movie, Chinatown. Australia has had numerous types of
water theft and enforcement campaigns in the face of sustained
drought. Crimes have included making unauthorized connections to
public water supplies, siphoning
from dams, tapping rainwater containers, emptying water tanks on
ranches, and diverting streams and

rivers. Fines of up to $1.1 million for
farmers and $2.2 million for corporations have been levied, along with
prison sentences of two years.
Some even cite international conspiracies to acquire and control water, such as an alleged attempt by the
World Bank and major multinational
corporations—known as the Water
Resources Group—to place “governance” of water into private hands
worldwide. In Blue Gold (Earthscan,
2002), authors Maude Barlow and
Tony Clarke posit that bottled-water
companies are trying to corner freshwater rights to dry up outlets and
control supply.
Turkey is under pressure to ensure
that its dams still allow sufficient
water from Asian rivers to reach
Middle Eastern countries. Similar

conditions exist in many other countries, such as the United States,
where the Colorado River becomes
depleted before it flows into Mexico.
As the water supply becomes even
scarcer, these conflicts likely will
erupt into regional battles, possibly
even armed conflict, as well as entrepreneurial theft. Control of water
will replace control of oil as the
world’s biggest prize.
Again, emerging technology could
provide both the means to commit
these thefts and the means to protect
supplies of water. Soon, altering the
directions of rivers or emptying
pipelines or containers could be accomplished with explosives so small
that they cannot be seen with the naked eye and possibly cannot be detected by any machine. Thus, pre-

30

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2013



www.wfs.org

—Gene Stephens

vention of such attacks will be
increasingly difficult; however, developers of technology usually rise
t o t h e o c c a s i o n , a n d c o u n t e rmeasures are likely to emerge.
Possibly the best hope is that
lower-cost desalination technology
will provide much-needed freshwater. A possible threat here is that
converting the salt water may alter
the world’s ecosystem in unanticipated ways.

Global Economics
and Future Crime
As markets become interdependent worldwide and operate on a
24-hour-a-day real-time cycle, it will
become difficult for many cultures to
isolate themselves and live by their
own customs without interference
from the outside world.
With this high-speed, high-tech
market economy, new types of crime
and crime prevention will also
emerge. Problems such as price fixing, market manipulation, insider
trading, and other types of fraud
and deception will be magnified as
they affect people across the globe.
Since laws are enacted in a political
environment, the first crisis may
well be deciding what types of activities (including those that are culturally accepted in some locations but
taboo elsewhere) should be allowed
and what should be illegal in this
new economy.
Methods of committing these economic crimes will continue to center
around the Web and its increasing
access to every nook and cranny of
the globe. The Nigerian bank and
lottery winner scams of today are being joined by hundreds of new ventures each week, burdening lawmakers to define these approaches as
criminal and then find ways to enforce the new laws.
Since the harm of a local, regional,
national, or international breakdown
in any part of the world economy
could put millions or even billions of
people at risk, preventing and mitigating such crimes will take on new
importance. It will require a type of
law enforcement specialist in short
supply today and likely will change

the standards for entry into the field
as well as for training and deployment. One option would be to continue privatization, hiring experts in
economic fields to work within the
public safety agency or to become
part of a partnership arrangement.

Promises and
Threats of
Omnipresent Media
Transparency is an increasingly important issue in public safety. More
rather than fewer eyes will be on the
field in the near future.
The 24-hour news cycle of cable
and satellite television has been
joined by the same cycle of blogging
and social networking on the Internet. And information dissemination
has become more immediate and intimate with the cameras and listening devices on almost all handheld
electronic devices (plus GPS to pinpoint location), creating the omnipresent media. The definition of media has been expanded from people
employed by media companies to
anyone and everyone. Increasingly
there will be no hiding from the public eye.
This plethora of surveillance of
public safety officers (and everyone
else for that matter) will multiply exponentially as the micro and then
nano dots saturate every square inch
of air in urban and later all areas of
earth. These self-contained spyware

recording devices—when networked
by emerging supercomputer systems—could provide an unbroken
record of all activity worldwide, the
ultimate in omnipresent media.
These technologies and their use
hold the promise of deterring crime,
detecting crime, and providing evidence to prosecute and convict offenders. They also threaten privacy
and all other civil liberties of all living persons. For the falsely accused,
this “permanent record” can provide
exoneration, or at least compelling
evidence for the defense. For the
tech savvy would-be offender, elaborate disguises (such as appearing to
be another known person) may beat
the system until more sophisticated
identification systems are acquired.
Having a co-conspirator within the
system to “edit” the record may also
be an adaptation.
Public safety officials already are
beginning to wear tiny cameras on
their person to record all interaction
with the public in an attempt to protect themselves—or at least have
their own version to report—when
cell phone cameras and other devices record their public actions (e.g.,
an arrest accompanied by fighting
between police and suspect). In the
future, with the automatic recording
and storing of all movement, public
safety (indeed, all officials) will be
required to answer for all actions.
Thus, the omnipresent media
should reduce both crime and overzealous public safety responses, but
at a high cost to freedom of the individual in daily life.

“INFORMATION DISSEMINATION has become more
immediate and intimate with the cameras and listening
devices … creating the omnipresent media.”

www.wfs.org



THE FUTURIST

January-February 2013

31

Shaping the Future of Justice:
The Futures Working Group

T

he Futures Working Group
(FWG) is a collaboration between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Society of
Police Futurists International (PFI)
“to develop and encourage others to
develop forecasts and strategies to
ethically maximize the effectiveness
of local, state, federal, and international law enforcement bodies as
they strive to maintain peace and security in the twenty-first century” as
well as “identify and promote innovation for the future of policing.”
PFI was established at the end of
the 1991 International Symposium
on the Future of Law Enforcement
held at the FBI Academy by the 250
criminal justice practitioners and educators from 20 nations attending
the gathering. Dedicated to advancing the police profession, the organi-

zation was the outgrowth of a course
in the future of policing taught at the
FBI’s National Academy (which provides advanced educational experiences for leadership potential police
officers) and the course’s instructor,
FBI Special Agent William Tafoya.
In 1999, the Behavioral Science
Unit of the FBI resumed teaching the
futures course and began an ongoing
dialogue with PFI members that resulted in collaborative efforts. The
terrorist attack of 9/11 became the
catalyst for formalizing this relationship with a February 2002 Organizational Conference and an April 2,
2002, signing of the FBI-PFI Futures
Working Group Memorandum of
Understanding. FWG is now chaired
by Special Agent John J. Jarvis, the
latest teacher of the National Academy’s futures course.

Searching for a
Meaningful Life

ism and justice—is called into question by the nature of the emerging
society. If free will is a driving force,
we can expect massive revolts
against anticipated use of these technologies; whether the rebelling is by
large groups across the economic
and social spectrum of society or restricted to fringe elements, such as
survivalists and counterculture advocates, will determine the impact
this future has on public safety activity. It could range from all-out
citizen-versus-police warfare to simply a blip on the screen (such as recent Occupy movements).
In advance of the Singularity
(when humans become one with
smart machines), increasing numbers of individuals will join the
ranks of those who already have become bionic—the millions with body
implants (e.g., knees, hips, arms,
legs, and increasingly lungs, hearts,
and soon brains). Again, free will becomes an issue, as a defense against
criminal charges, already used in a
few cases, will be that the implant(s)
transformed the recipient from a

How will humans and later transhumans (humans with enhanced
abilities via genetic manipulation
and/or bionic implants) find meaning and worth in a world where constant surveillance reduces criminal
activity while also capturing and
preserving all individual faults?
It may well be that privacy and
similar civil liberties will not be as
valued by coming generations as
they were by our forefathers and elders. There is some evidence that
current young people are more willing to share intimate details of their
lives with others (e.g., Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn) and less protective of their privacy—to the extent
that many public safety agencies
(police, parole, probation included)
daily scan these sites for self-proclaimed evidence of criminal activity
or violations of regulations.
Still, the very belief in free will—a
basic concept in support of capital32

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2013



www.wfs.org

In the first decade of work, the 30plus members of FWG have met numerous times, assisted law enforcement agencies in problem solving
and initiating future-oriented planning, studied several emerging issues or situations affecting law enforcement, and issued 14
publications on such topics as police
and augmented reality technology,
the future of law enforcement intelligence, Neighborhood-Driven Policing, Homeland Security, the police
and the military, and advancing police leadership.
As a member of this Delphi group
on the future of policing, I have
gained a great deal of perspective
about how these highly informed
practitioners/academics envision
the public safety arena evolving by
the year 2030.
For more information, visit http://
futuresworkinggroup.cos.ucf.edu.
—Gene Stephens

self-governing citizen into an individual controlled, at least in part, by
bionic implants or genetic manipulation. A philosophical crisis might be
expected.
When the Singularity does arrive
(2030?), concepts such as human, free
will, even life itself, will have to be
rethought, and within that transformative conundrum will lie the future
of the concept of public safety and
its implementation.


About the Author
Gene Stephens, Distinguished Professor Emeritus,
University of South Carolina,
continues to teach and write
about the future, especially
of public safety, as a working
member of the Futures
Working Group, the Public Safety Leadership Development Consortium, and the Law
Enforcement Management Institute of
Texas. He is also Criminal Justice Editor of
THE FUTURIST and a consulting futurist.
He can be reached at stephens-gene@sc.
rr.com.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Sponsor Documents

Or use your account on DocShare.tips

Hide

Forgot your password?

Or register your new account on DocShare.tips

Hide

Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link to create a new password.

Back to log-in

Close