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Paper Topic:

21st Century

Running Head : 21st Century Criminal Identification

21st Century Criminal Identification

[Author 's Name]

[Institution 's Name]

According to the official website of The Innocence Project , a national litigation and policy organization devoted to the reformation of the American criminal justice system and the exoneration of the wrongfully convicted , the current Sheck and Neufeld (2002 ) assert that in light of 110 post-conviction DNA exonerations within ten years leading up to September of 2002 , there is an alarming concern that needs to be raised regarding wrongful convictions within the American justice system

. What is to be concerned with is not merely the exoneration of the wrongfully convicted but the possible areas of weakness within the justice system that have permitted such wrongful convictions in the first place . It is impossible to blithely subscribe to the notion that the justice system still works but it is not productive to rail against injustices post hoc either Instead , what is needed is the means to address its weaknesses in the first place so as to reduce , if not eliminate , future wrongful convictions

Great potential to remediate such weaknesses lies in technological advances that can help more accurately identify criminals . Between biometric analysis , surveillance technologies and DNA identification lies the potential for empirical consistency in criminal identification However this is not to suggest that technology automatically makes criminalization infallible , as they all require a judicious understanding of their strengths and weaknesses , and the wisdom of knowing how to implement them for their application to be truly legitimate . As The Innocence Project notes , some wrongful convictions have occurred due to a misunderstanding of the limits of science

DNA profiling and analysis is currently used within the context of law enforcement in to identify the individual origin of genetic matter . The purpose is to determine whether individuals may be considered of suspect involvement in a crime scene from which said genetic matter has been obtained . Although DNA sequences among individuals are highly matching , the process of DNA profiling relies on variances which occur on the level of their alleles (National Institute of Justice , 2008

Intra-agency databases are necessary to the application of DNA profiling and analysis to the discipline of criminology . In the United States , the COmbined DNA Index System or CODIS , with 5 million records as of 2007 , fulfills this role . The CODIS is an electronic database of DNA pros , quite similar to that of the AFIS or Automated Fingerprint Identification System . Its contents are derived from the aggregate data of DNA pros obtained by the individual states from individuals convicted of rape , murder and child abuse . As such , it gives law enforcement officers to have quick access to a nation-wide sample of DNA pros and identify possible suspects even when no suspect has previously been implicated

However , reliance upon the CODIS and other such DNA databases can be somewhat problematic

Still , DNA profiling and analysis is of highly significant use in bestowing some level of empiricism to the discipline of criminology , as far too often...

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