One Step Ahead

Perspectives: Research and Creative Activities at SIUC, Spring 2008

:: research survey ::

One Step Ahead

Even before the latest techno-gizmo hits the consumer mainstream, Joseph Schafer is trying to figure out how it could be used to break the law.

Schafer, an associate professor with the Center for the Study of Crime, Delinquency, and Corrections, is part of the Futures Working Group, a collaboration between the FBI and the Society of Police Futurists International.

Schafer recently edited two national reports prepared by the FWG—"Policing 2020: Exploring the Future of Crime, Communities, and Policing" and "Policing and Mass Casualty Events." The general goal of both reports, he says, is "lengthening the horizon."

"We take the long view," he says of the approximately 30-member FWG. "We're trying to get people to look a little further."

The FWG focuses on how to take steps now to deal with crime and justice issues that will probably develop in the future. The group researches predictable trends to prepare countermeasures to foreseeable problems.

This kind of foresight involves much more than just second-guessing the criminally minded. For example, it's not enough to know that online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook are a mainstay of today's teen-age and college-age populations, Schafer says. It's also important to understand how these networks affect the perception of community, and what that means in practical terms.

"We've got people who spend more time online and feel closer to people halfway across the country or even in other parts of the world than they do to their actual physical neighbors," Schafer says. "It is a community, and for some people, their cyber identity is an important part of who they are."

It's also important to study demographic trends to prepare for other potential problems or significant shifts in a community. How is a given area likely to be affected by immigration, by a rise or decline in minority populations, by a change in the male-to-female ratio, by changes in the median age of the population? Answering such questions and getting a sense of how a community defines itself is particularly important, Schafer says, in this era of community policing.

"Policing and Mass Casualty Events" focuses on "big events that influence a lot of people and interrupt government services," Schafer says—events like hurricanes and wildfires.

Putting it simply, the researchers found that "bureaucratic approaches don't work particularly well" in emergency situations. That may seem obvious, with the problems of Hurricane Katrina so widely publicized. However, Schafer says, it is true on the microcosmic level of a community as well. And the solution isn't as simple as it might seem.

"Police officers are pretty well-conditioned to wait for orders," Schafer says. There is good reason for that. Police officers, and the municipalities they represent, have liability and civil liberty issues to consider.

A governing body doesn't want to be saddled with a lawsuit because a police officer exercised improper judgment—even during an emergency. Hence, Schafer says, handling emergencies cannot be about loosening authority, but rather about teaching police officers how to use discretionary authority.

"Officers use judgment on a daily basis—just not the type of judgment often needed in these types of situations," Schafer says. "Officers need to be better prepared to use their judgment properly in more extreme and unusual circumstances."

Generally, Schafer says, both issues—preparing for mass casualty events and policing for the future—require inquisitiveness.

"We need to be more curious," he says. "We need to think about the future and what we want it to look like. Then we have to look for a path and find a way to get there."

—by Andrea Hahn