Should legislation, laws and policing predict and resource against imminent new crime frontiers, or must they wait to see evidence of them before we legislate, enforce and police against them?

This conundrum has been with us since time immemorial and doesn’t look to have a resolution soon, but what we do know is that crime has long jumped beyond the physical world into the digital world and the combination of the two and the incredible array of new technologies ahead has made trying to answer this question even more important and ever more time sesnitive.

In our regular on air segment Tony Delroy of ABC Radio Nightline and I chatted with Victoria Police’s Chief Forensic Scientist Bryan Found about Policing in the Future, the opportunities and problems facing our society, the changing nature of crime and law enforcement and the Victoria Police Department’s innovation around the use of Forensics.

There’s so much to  cover in this topic that we could only scratched the surface, but here are the notes I took into studio with me:

• Internet of things: if we continue to put all our objects online and make them searchable and discoverable how does this change the notion of theft and search and rescue;  with increasingly connected houses will police be able to digitally and remotely look inside our homes (and cars) when alerted to; what is acceptable street surveillance, what is acceptable personal surveillance?
• Big data: technology is getting better at mining and interpreting information that’s online – how far do we go, do we start to predict incidents, accidents and thefts in advance of their occurrence?
• Robots: usage of drones and robots in police work – what for and how?
• Self-driving cars – will we need new road laws, who will be liable for accidents and compensation, what will a licence be and who will need one?
• Wearable computers – Google Glass and others gadgets are imminent – what can we use them for, which laws cover them, can we use them for face recognition, what is acceptable to record and by whom, these devices will be able to track and record our every movement – who can / will have access to these recordings, can police access it, if so where and when?
• Bio Metrics – fingerprint recognition/ facial recognition, iris and DNA have all become important policing tools– increasingly we are moving from a decentralised system  to an in-situ possibility for the policeman on the beat can use these tools in real time – is this acceptable?
• 3D printing – trademark issues, copyright issues, using it for niceness not gun printing; using it for 3D printing of face composites for law enforcement

The answers to these questions and lots more, the fascinating advancement in the use of Forensics in Policing and a great range of listener questions all make for an incredibly lively and provocative segment, so have a listen now and then share your thoughts with me on the Future of Policing.

(length: 40 minutes)