Essay about Criminal Investigations Chapter 1 Questions

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1. Q: In what ways have our historic roots affected the manner in which criminal investigations are conducted in the United States today? A: The organizational structure of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, found in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton and the first of its kind in the US, was later adopted by the FBI. As with the Pinkerton Agency, the FBI began to take on cases that local law enforcement were too limited in resources to handle on their own. In addition, Pinkerton created what was called “the rogues’ gallery” which detailed the names and operations of known criminals and their associates. During the European Industrial Revolution, thief catchers (now known as informants, snitches, and a variety of other names) were hired to …show more content…
Yet another system the FBI has used in its investigations is face recognition technology, called ImAger, has been used to age photographs of missing children to give investigators and law enforcement of good idea of what the child would look like after all the time the child has been missing. A similar system is being used by police sketch artists to draw sketches or suspects. All of these are more are just some of the advances and improvements made in the criminal investigations field since the creation of the FBI.

4. Q: List and discuss promising developments in criminal investigation technology that have emerged in recent years. A: As mentioned previously, numerous computer systems exist today to aid law enforcement in investigations. These are called smart systems and relational databases. Among these systems are the national sex offender registry; ImAger, which age photographs of missing children to help locate them years after they’ve gone missing; the Total Information Awareness program, introduced by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, uses information sorting and pattern matching software to sort through numerous government and business databases in an attempt to identify suspected terror threats; and another promising new piece of technology is called the Combat Zones That SEE program, which is being developed for