Assignment task: Consider the role of current and future technologies in efforts to improve police accountability through the exploration of various source scenarios.
View the list of sources as follow:
- An article published in the past five years in the British Journal of Criminology. The article discusses body-worn cameras in the United Kingdom.
- An article published forty years ago in Criminology, a US journal, about an audio recording of police interviews of suspects.
- An article published last year in the Journal of Criminal Justice. The article discusses body-worn cameras and their effect on accountability within a single police department.
- An article published in the past five years and is a meta-analysis of twenty years worth of studies on technology and police accountability. The article appeared in Justice Quarterly.
- A report from the Department of Justice discusses the options available to police departments regarding technology for recording and monitoring police-public interactions. The report was published last year and was written by staff in the Department of Justice.
- A newspaper article in the Wall Street Journal from this year discusses recent research from various universities regarding how technology can improve police accountability.
- An article from the online news media site, Huffington Post, that discusses an incident last month where a body-worn camera was not activated during a police-public encounter where the police officer was assaulted and severely injured.
- An editorial in the New York Times from a prominent professor argues in the editorial that all police cameras should automatically feed to an external, independent agency for storage and potential review.
- A conversation you have with an aunt who is a senior police officer at a state police department. Your aunt has three decades of experience in law enforcement and holds a senior rank.
- An interview you conduct with a representative from a police association or police union. This representative was employed as a law enforcement officer for three decades before retiring and now works full-time representing police officers in labor negotiations and disciplinary issues.
- A blog by a graduate student whose research analyzes polygraph interviewing for police misconduct investigations.
- A documentary on Netflix about police arrests. The documentary argues that current technologies do not prevent police abuse of power.
- A politician's speech following a police-public shooting, where body-worn camera footage captured the incident.
- A university blog post. Posts are written by faculty members who work across the university. This post was written by a faculty member from the university's seminary and discusses police-public interactions in the community where the university is located.
- An article in Police Quarterly, which is an academic journal, discusses the stresses and traumas that police officers encounter when working.
- A local newspaper article that discusses the local police department's budget shortfall due to recent cuts from the City. Police leadership must decide what technology can be retained to comply with state regulations.
- You have had a personal experience of being questioned by police. During this interaction, you recorded it with your phone and published it to YouTube. You would like to discuss that incident and the comments people made on your video.
- The textbook you have for the class includes a chapter on policing and technology. The textbook was selected by your professor and is published by a textbook publisher.
- Two weeks ago, your professor gave a lecture on police, technology, and accountability. You took considerable notes and also have the lecture slides available.
- An infographic that looks very professional. It provides facts and figures, with tables and graphs, regarding policing, technology, and accountability. You are not sure where the infographic has come from, or where the sources of information in the infographic have been sourced.
- A Salem Press Encyclopedia entry about police accountability and use of force that you found when you searched through FPU's Hiebert Library databases.
- A Wikipedia article titled 'Police Use of Force', which has a subsection about technology and an increase in accountability that references research, media articles, statements from justice-oriented advocacy groups and other sources.
Question
Q1. What is the role of current and future technologies in efforts to improve police accountability?
Q2. Why are the sources described above more or less credible and reliable than other sources?
Q3. Why are the sources described above more or less relevant than other sources?
Q4. What are the strength and weaknesses of the sources described above that were identified?