Ethical Issues in Crime Analysis
Ethicality is defined in two interconnecting constructs: 1) a rule or habit or conduct with regard to right and wrong or a body of such rules and habits and 2) the moral quality of a course of action. Issues on ethical governance are a challenge to virtually all the industries and sectors. Law and morality, to wit, do not always overlap or easily substitute for one another. However, ethics goes above and beyond laws and is not restricted to specific acts and defined moral codes as it encompass moral ideals and behaviours. Ethics and morals are akin to each other because of the fact that ethics denotes the theory of right action and greater good while morals are the indicators of practice (1993). As such, ethics guide the companies to make the right decisions and to act responsibly.
Crime analysis, on the other hand, is defined as a law enforcement action which involves a systematic analysis of identifying and analysing patterns and trends in crime and disorder. Crime analysis is also useful when it comes to designing solutions to crime problems while also formulating crime prevention strategies. Some of the ethical issues surrounding crime analysis are:
1) Access Control Violations – These violations are now extended to all of the members of a crime analysis unit since they may have access on various data. A common knowledge is that there is the wealth of data and that controlling access to all of this will be a serious challenge.
2) Integrity Violations – Since the data on the information about a crime is subjected to limited modifications, corrupting them is easier. Apart from this, data originates from those who are directly involved in the crime, making the producers of the data as well as the data as both vulnerable.
3) Confidentiality Violations – We all know that security, confidentially and integrity always come together at least in this business and thus protecting them must be a holistic endeavor. Nevertheless, there are security levels to protect such but these may not be enough especially when crime information are mishandled.
4) Privacy Violations – In the crime analysis scheme, all informations about anyone can be obtained and collected. In addition, there are tools that could exacerbate the situation such as the usage of same computer that can make all kinds of unauthorized associations about individuals.
5) Inference Problem – The process of posting queries and deducing unauthorized information from the legitimate responses are known as inferences. The problem lies in the issues on privacy and authenticity to which the solutions are perceived to be the constraint processing and the use of conceptual structures for the analysis of the crime.
6) Insider Threats – These are considered to be relatively common among crime analysis units but could be also considered as the most dangerous as it can swiftly damaged not the operation but also the capability and reputation of the crime unit. Poignantly, these are the persons that the crime analysis units dearly trusted.
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