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Running Head: The us of social media by criminal justice agencies 1

Social Media In Everyday Lives

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Literature Review

The use of social media by criminal justice agencies

Introduction

Social media today is a very major part of life. From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to snap chat to youtube among many other channels, social media has revolutionized the manner in which most things are done in the society today because of the ease of communication that has been provided by the social media platforms. Social media today is a big part of individual's everyday lives and its use in the society today has also revolutionized from being used only as a platform for entertainment to being used by business and very many agencies of the government including the criminal justice agencies(George, 2014). Social media platforms have developed to form one of the most influential channels of communication that ever existed in the history of human beings.

The impact that the social media has to the society is not all good, but there is no doubt that there is a lot of positive that has been brought by the use of social media in most institutions such as the criminal justice agencies. The issue of public safety today has become more sophisticated thanks to social media as communication has been made easier and also faster. The tools of law enforcement have evolved over time from making use of wanted posters to the broad use of the social media platforms. In this paper, we are going to look at the use of social media in criminal justice and the effects that this has had both the good and the bad. The law enforcement agencies today are finding social media a very valuable tool in their quest to protect individuals and to serve the public as we are going to discuss in this paper.

Use of Social Media in Criminal Justice

The Good

Use of the social media in law enforcement agencies has tremendously grown over the past few years, and this trend is as a result of more and more law enforcement agencies embracing and learning how to use the social media and to take advantage of the eased communication to carry out their operations and enhance safety. Below are the ways in which social media has been useful in criminal justice.

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1. Criminal investigations

Social media has become a very major tool of investigation for the law enforcers. The truth about social media is for every time we use it we leave clues all over the internet like our fingerprints (Brunty, Miller & Helenek, 2014). Following the trend of many individuals putting up a lot of details on their activities on social media investigating crimes has been made easier for police. Investigate target often have various information about them and their activities uploaded to their various social media pages which could help the law enforcers to have a clear picture of the suspects. It is surprising how much personal data can be collected through the social media platforms to help in convicting or pressing charges against a suspect.

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Social media also aids in the investigation since it allows the police to easily identify the various individual a suspected person associates with from whom they can collect information from. These associates could also be individuals whom they commit criminal activities with. Uploaded videos and photos of the suspect together with other individuals helps investigators to know faces of people associated with a suspect as well as names.

According to statistics, there are only 14% of criminal justice agencies who have not embraces the use of social media as an investigative tool (Brunty, Miller & Helenek, 2014). For most of them, social media has proved as an undeniable easy and fast way to gather information as well as evidence and build a case against an individual. Take for example a murder suspect. Assume that the investigators have a name for the murder suspect. If the traditional investigation process was to be followed it meant that the police needed to physical locate the individual and have a search warrant to search their private property in search of possible evidence.

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However in the face of social media with a possible name, the first thing that an investigator will do is search on the various social media platforms to see whether or not the individual is on social media. Since social media is a public platform, the investigators do not need to get a warrant to track the activities of a suspect on social media which could lead to possible evidence of the crime. The investigators can also make use of the victim’s social media platforms to search for the suspect by checking threat messages or images. Following the increased use of social media as a tool of investigation we have seen criminals post details of their activities which lead to them being apprehended.

2. Prevention of crimes and unlawful activities

There is no doubt that the various social media platforms have made communication easier. The ease to communicate has made it easy for people to interact across the globe both for positive reasons and also negative interactions such as crime organization. Many gang activities and terrorist activities today are being planned online, explaining the increased inter-territorial terrorist activities being experienced today. Police officers can be able to acquire information on a crime being organized from social media pages such as Facebook in advance and take action to ensure that the plan does not go through. Information on crime plans can also be found online by the public and send it to the police enabling them to intervene early enough to prevent the crime. Social media pages have also been useful in tracking unlawful activities. For example, there are cases that we have heard where individuals have posted images on terrorist recruitment activities and this gives the police information on the location and thus helping in the fight against unlawful activities.

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3. Community policing

Community policing is defined as a philosophy in policing that is characterized by decentralized policing and the collaboration of the police officers with the citizens in helping to identify and also solve various problems. For community policing to be very effective, there is needed to ensure that law enforcers go to areas where the public is. In the modern society, millions of individuals are on the social media platforms, and this, therefore, means that the law enforcers need to follow the public there to make community policing effectively in this age.

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Through the social media platforms, the police can easily share information on crimes which are being investigated such as images of suspects a car plate numbers among others through Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to reach out to the millions of individuals using social media (Surette, 2015). With the help of the public, it also becomes very easy to gain information on the wanted. The public also helps to solve crime through the social media platforms by answering to the witness appeals by the police on various crimes.

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Communications between the public through social media platforms also helps in ensuring proper community watch. For example is someone sees something suspicious in their neighborhood they can share with the rest of the individuals in the neighborhood and even draw the attention of the police. Even more importantly, social media has been used in community policing to help in sharing information such as that of a missing child. This has proven effective since such an alert to a mass number of individuals on social media makes the search more extensive, and this has helped find a lot of missing individuals.

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Other uses of the social media include:

• Tracking of location: The sharing of one's location in social media post has been useful in tracking the location of criminals (Surette, 2015).

• Public outreach: The social media platforms has also been used by law enforcers to educate the public on issues such as avoiding social media victimization by criminals and guidelines to follow when uploading things online to ensure they do not reveal too much information which could victimize them.

• Public relations: Just like in business the police also use the social media to interact with the citizens and build trust with them forming a strong foundation for effective community policing.

The Bad

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4th amendment controversy

The finding out of information through the social media through the social media platforms raises questions on whether or not it violated the 4th Amendment rights which protect citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. However according to law experts, justification has been provided for the use of social media to gather information in that when an individual puts up information on the social media platform, they do not do this with the intention of keeping the information private. This means that the information is open for any public use including use by the law enforcement officers. Storing information in a third party platform is not protected by the fourth amendment right provision.

2. Controversies of social media use in court

Even though social media is a god tool for sharing information there are boundaries to the information that needs to be shared to the public since some of the information in the criminal justice agencies is confidential (Hoffmeister, 2014). For example, information shared from courts needs to be highly vetted to ensure that too much information is not shared which could affect the proceedings of a trial as has been the case in various states or affect the case proceedings at large.

Conclusion

With the evolution of the social media platform more and more law enforcement agencies will be lured in adopting social media tactics to make their operations more effective and to take advantage of the opportunity that this platform provides them. With such great advantage and efficiency provided by the social media pages, it is becoming important for law enforcement officers to undergo training on the efficient use of the social media platform to help promote their safety goals.

The introduction of social media in the criminal justice agencies, however, does not mean that the traditional methods and efforts of policing should be reduced. This is because at the end of the day policing is a one on one business between citizens and the officers. The social media platform introduction in these agencies can only be used to make operations easier and more effective but not to replace the old policing approach. Even with the increased crime performance rates over the social media platforms, the increased use social media by the law enforcers will help keep up with online crime gangs and make criminal investigation much easier.

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References

Brunty, J., Miller, L. & Helenek, K. (2014). Social Media Investigation for Law Enforcement. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

George, P. (2014). Social media and the law. Chatswood, N.S.W: LexisNexis Butterworths.

Hoffmeister, T. (2014). Social media in the courtroom: a new era for criminal justice. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger.

Surette, R. (2015). Media, crime, and criminal justice: images, realities, and policies. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.