Critique of Software Programs (Essay Sample)

Critique of Software programs
Law enforcement agencies rely on some software to ensure that their activities are effectively and efficiently accomplished. A law enforcement agency can be referred to as an agency of the government that takes part in the enforcement of laws in that country. The agencies could be; police services or sheriff's departments. Besides, they could be bureaus like the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration. Therefore, law enforcement agencies need well-developed software programs that help with investigations and other law enforcement activities. This paper will critique the Automated Tactical Analysis of Crime (ATAC) and the Crime Analysis Spatial Extension (CASE), two effective applicable software programs in law enforcement.
First, the Automated Tactical Analysis of Crime (ATAC) is primarily a groundbreaking program for crime analysis activities. ATAC offers the relevant tools of crime investigation, which help isolate, identify, and defeat crime trends and sequences using a convenient graphical interface. That is to say that the software program allows the police to draw clear lines between the criminals, the victims of the crimes, the witnesses, and the non-participants in the occurrence (Movchan et al. 2018). Subsequently, ATAC allows the investigation department to track the crime patterns with ease. For this reason, the software program has been used over time and gained widespread application in the United States.
Additionally, the software program provides material instruments in conducting strategic and administrative analyses of criminal offenses. In this, it helps produce COMPSTAT reports, approximate the number of officers that may be needed according to the demand, and offer patrol, which includes problem-solving techniques and analysis. Besides, ATAC helps all of an organization's levels, including the line-level officers, crime analysts, investigation officers, and administrators in charge. The software program works at an efficiency rated as ten times better than most of the programs. That analysis was vindicated at a primary agency of the police in the United States.
However, despite the efficiencies created through the ATAC software program in the enforcement of laws, agencies have encountered many faults in its application. The functions and suitability for the requirements of law enforcement are not entirely satisfying. The following discrepancies make the ATAC program inadequate in its application:
First, the ATAC software program applies the strategist's geographical information systems (GIS) based on unrealistic assumptions to analyze criminal offenses tactically. The greatest challenge with the system is that the analysts assume that the police managers and line managers of the police officers will receive the information on crime issues timely and that the information will be accurate. As a result, the set objectives fail to materialize since the assumptions therein are very critical and delicate to take care of (Gelera et al., 2021). For example, real problem solving, countering traditional policing shortcomings, total crime prevention, and maintaining enforcement activities are the goals that always go begging when using ATAC programs.
Second, the program uses time series analysis which is based on past trends. The analysts use the past trends to forecast the future crime trends in a geographical area or a technological environment. In this, varying methods apply whereby there is the application of linear techniques, models involving exponential smoothing, and the average methods autoregressive. The challenge with this application is that most past trends are based on unreliable data that cannot predict the future. Again, circumstances change with seasons. Due to this, the situations and the circumstances that existed during the record of crimes may differ from those that shall come in the future. For example, in the
past, there could be only a few sources of lights along the corridors in the estate, but with time, more come to light up the areas. They would therefore be few cases of burglary in the future. However, the ATAC software program will not consider that. It is, therefore, true that ATAC is not entirely reliable in law enforcement.
Further, tactical analysis of crime requires correlating one criminal or criminal offense to others, an activity primarily based on guesswork, assumptions, and erroneous calculations. The analysts try to match the information kept in the suspect database like modus operandi against similar attributes concerned with criminal incidences. However, there is a great challenge associated with this mechanism. That is because suspects of the crimes tend to move within some geographical range before committing crimes (Movchan et al. 2018). Since the range is usually vague and unpredictable, it is pretty difficult to trace the track, final destination, and even criminal act that the suspect commits. Due to this reason, it is difficult to match the suspects' move with the secondary data cases in the suspect databases.
Finally, ATAC is a tactical approach that considers hotspot areas that may confuse information concerning crimes. The software program develops a profile for targets within an area considered a hot spot for residential crimes. The most common residential crimes for which a hot spot area emerges include burglary. At first, it seems simple to come up with a profile for the targeted suspects; however, the process is complex. Later, it usually counts to a giant cloud of suspects, so there comes confusion as to which suspect to pursue in the course. That poses a challenge to the law enforcement agencies as the matching comes to fail. Therefore, Automated Tactical Analysis of Crime is a software program that remains inadequate for law enforcement activities.
Another software program applicable in law enforcement agencies is the Crime Analysis Spatial Extension (CASE). That is the most basic way of conducting crime mapping. Notably, the crime also uses Geographic Information System (GIS) to create visions and develop spatial data to realize more official statistical analyses. The mapping enables the researchers and analysts to understand crime patterns, serial crimes, and offender mobility over time and space. In other words, the CASE is a program incomplete without crime mapping contained in GIS. It is noteworthy that crime mapping is technically a combination of methods shared among spatial data analysis, spatial analysis, and mapping (Gelera et al., 2021). In simple terms, it is a tool in visualization that is applied in displaying raw geographic data from analysis. Again, GIS remains applicable. The CASE program, therefore, is essential in analysis.
Despite the efficiency which comes with CASE, it has the advantage of the vulnerability to manipulation. The software program is open, and so it is reachable by everyone making it insecure. That means that even adversaries or hackers can easily access the information and change or wipe them away altogether. Due to this, the enemies can easily target the locations given the unreliable baseline security standards from the residents, target locations, and the local police (Townsley et al., 2017). That means that the adversaries can determine the most active location of the police forces. In the same view, crime mapping, which is used in CASE, is manpower intensive, and so it needs additional help to update the software systems with the current information.
Again, CASE intensively uses GIS which stores large volumes of data. Notably, GIS hosts substantial amounts of information at any given point in time.