Technology as a source of complexity and challenge for special victims unit (SVU) investigators
| Author | Laura Huey,Colin Watson |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461355720962525 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Technology as a source of complexity
and challenge for special victims unit
(SVU) investigators
Colin Watson
Victoria Police Department, Canada
Laura Huey
Western University, Canada
Abstract
Although therehas been significant public and academic interest in the ability of police to harnessnew technologies in order
to solve crimes, there has been significantly less focus on how the proliferation of new technologies has impacted police
workloads. In this exploratory study, we begin the process of rectifying this oversight by exploring some of the challenges
mobile technologies pose to investigators working in a specialinvestigations unit. Our work is informedby an analysis of data
collected through in-depth interviews with police investigators to address the following research question:“To what extent
has the complexityof special victims (sex crimes) investigations changed over time?”.Our findings indicate that technology is
the most prominent factor leading to increased complexity of investigations. Specifically, technology adds to the volume of
evidence that must be examined and managed, rapid advances in technology require additional training and expertise, and
despite technological advances to assist in investigations, the process remains largely manual.
Keywords
Policing, technology, special victims unit, internet child exploitation, investigation
Submitted 27 Sep 2019, Revise received 15 Jun 2020, accepted 08 Sep 2020
Hamilton Police find thousands of child porn images
(O’Reilly, 2011)
Police eventually uncovered hundreds of cellphone texts that
revealed Lund’s fixation with children (McLaughlin, 2015)
Abbotsford man charged with child porn; police say thousands
of images found on computers (Wong and Nassar, 2017)
Officers assigned to special victims units (SVU) deal with a
range of sexual offenses that increasingly involve one or
more types of digital evidence. Although we might expect
that cyber-facilitated crimes, such as sharing images of child
sexual exploitation, would produce hundreds, if not thou-
sands, of pieces of digital evidence for police to comb
through, the role technology can play in other forms of sex-
ual offenses is less well known. For example, in sexual
assault cases in which the perpetrator is known to the victim,
there may be a strong possibility of texts, social media posts
and/or direct messaging through WhatsApp, Snapchat or
other applications that could be relevant to building a case
and may, in fact, provide evidence of offenses that would not
have been available were it not for the prominent role tech-
nology now plays in everyday social interactions. As with
sexual exploitation cases, and threats to publicly release an
individual’s personal images obtained through consent,
screengrabs or hacks, police investigations may also require
the tracing of Internet Protocol addresses, as well as comb-
ing through phones, tablets and computers. In short, as the
capacity for new and increasingly more accessible technol-
ogy has expanded, so too, we argue, has the workload—and
its complexity—for police investigators.
Unfortunately, what has not kept apace is research in
this area (see Henry and Powell, 2015; A Powell, 2015).
In relation to the work of SVU investigators in particular,
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2020, Vol. 22(4) 419–427
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355720962525
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