Going to war against crime

This Week’s backing by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair for identity cards equipped with biometrics systems underlined the hopes UK law enforcement agencies are pinning on advanced technologies of all types.

With sophisticated organised crime on the increase, and the perceived threat from global terrorism, police forces are stretched as never before. Police both here and overseas are therefore calling increasingly on the kind of technology more usually associated with hi-tech military operations to monitor, tag, track and apprehend criminals.

Last month Cambridgeshire and Hampshire police forces began trialling a marking material that is expected to make it easier for air support police to tell the difference between the pursuer and the pursued (The Engineer 11 March).

Designed to be used alongside thermal imaging cameras, the material was adapted by Qinetiq from stealth technology used in military applications.

But while the demand for law-enforcement technology is soaring, methods of finding, developing and deploying it varies widely from country to country: a difference in approach that’s perhaps at its most marked when considering the US and the UK.