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Archive for the ‘Social Media Innovation’ Category:


Could your Facebook profile get you acquitted?

Published on 9 February 2012 by in Social Media Innovation

Facebook has become a key tool in police investigations. Police routinely access suspects’ Facebook pages to look at recent activities and establish connections between offenders or offender and victim. Facebook helps police make arrests. Tracking on Facebook can often help police anticipate a wanted person’s whereabouts and expedite arrest. Facebook is the reason for collapse of a growing number of prosecutions. However, the use of Facebook by victims and witnesses has resulted in many identity parades being declared inadmissible in court. Facebook is a mixed blessing for law enforcement All new technologies prompt a renewal of the battle between law enforcement agencies and the criminals they seek to detect, arrest and prosecute. The advent of social media has resulted in a period of rapid adaptation in both detection and avoidance techniques. So powerful has Facebook become as an investigation tool

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How a new smartphone app can save lives

Published on 17 January 2012 by in Offender/Drug user health, Social Media Innovation

I am writing this post to celebrate the launch of the new @UTurntraining smartphone app which is dedicated to preventing deaths caused by opiate overdoses. The app was launched on 16 January 2012 and is available for download from the Android marketplace for the sum of £1.99. The iPhone version is already under development. Back in October, I wrote a post speculating on whether a smartphone app could be developed to tackle drug overdoses. My idea was based on the fact that people who overdose on heroin or other opiates often have drug using friends with them who are too scared to call 999 for fear of police involvement. I wondered whether an app could be developed which used a smartphone’s GPS capacity to dial emergency services and direct paramedics to the location of the overdosed person. Within a couple of

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#researchmethods: Using social media for social research

Published on 12 September 2011 by in Digital Engagement, Social Media Innovation

I recently evaluated a pilot project which used online surveys to get local peoples’ views on policing priorities (A virtual approach can mean real engagement). As part of the evaluation, I utilised web-based survey software to gather the views of participants. It was quick and easy to use and succeeded in getting a very high response rate. This got me thinking about other ways of using social media in social research. I was inspired by the new Fixmytransport website which aims to identify common meltdown points in Britain’s public transport system and lobby to get things changed. Developed under the aegis of Mysociety, responsible for a great range of resources including the simplest way to make a freedom of information request (Whatdotheyknow?), members of the public are encouraged to report public transport problems online and find people responsible so that

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Inside Facebook: the rise of the cell phone

Published on 15 November 2011 by in Social Media Innovation

  This is the third in a series of posts about the use of social media in different parts of the criminal justice. The use of mobile phones in prison has been an increasing problem over the last 10 years. I was part of a team which conducted an extensive study into prison drug markets back in 2004 and although it was relatively easy to smuggle drugs in by a variety of routes (using the rectal cavity being by far the most prevalent and effective method), it was very rare for us to hear about mobile phones inside. However, they have now become commonplace. The latest information that I could find refers to 2008 when over 8000 mobile phones or SIM cards were found in prisons in England and Wales – including nearly 400 from high security jails. The problem is no better

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Applying ourselves to prevent drug overdoses

Published on 10 October 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health, Social Media Innovation

The mobile phone application market is huge, over half a million apps for iPhone and quarter of a million for Android phones. As I write this, today’s top trending app in the Android Market is Buka HD – just £1.49 will buy you a game which features a big blue bubble whose purpose is to make ‘stars go boom’. In addition, to the thousands of games, there are apps for every purpose imaginable. In the area of drugs and crime that this Blog is concerned with, there are a number of apps attempting to give you easy access to the local crime maps hosted by police.uk. If you are an American citizen, you have a choice of apps for seeing which sex offenders live in your neighbourhood – you can view their address on a map and see their personal information and

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Detection by Facebook: Not always an idle boast

Published on 4 November 2011 by in Social Media Innovation

In the world of  books and films,  it has always been cool for the best criminals to boast about their misdeeds, provided it is done with style. When the Phantom steals the Pink Panther diamond, he leaves his monogrammed glove as a clue. Raffles,  gentleman thief and cricketer,  stole a gold cup from the British Museum and then posted it to Queen Vitoria as a Diamond Jubilee present. The doyen of cool miscreants must be Cary Grant in the Hitchcock classic “To Catch a Thief”, even if Hitchcock does make him wear stripey burglar tops through much of the movie – when he’s not kissing Grace Kelly.   In real life, bragging about your crimes isn’t always so cool. In June this year Tony Campbell, Boris Johnson’s cultural strategy manager, was forced to resign after boasting that he often stole his

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Public Punishment – the Facebook wall of shame

Published on 9 November 2011 by in Social Media Innovation

Public punishment and humiliation has taken different forms in different societies over the years; from the pillory and stocks in mediaeval England, through chain gangs in the American South to amputating thieves’ hands in countries which operate strict forms of Shari’a Law such as Saudi Arabia. The ultimate form is of course public executions – twenty three countries carried out capital punishments in 2010 according to Amnesty International. Anyone who has read Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” (Surveiller et Punir) will not be able to forget the description of the public execution of the man who tried to kill the French king in the mid-18th-century. Robert-François Damiens was tortured with red-hot pincers; the hand which held the knife in the attempted assassination was burned using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. After several hours of

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Detection and arrest: in search of the invisibility vibe

Published on 3 October 2011 by in Digital Engagement, Social Media Innovation

“An invisible man can rule the world”, says Claude Rains starring in the first movie version of The Invisible Man. I’ve been thinking a lot about the pros and cons of being invisible, or at least anonymous, over the last week or so. Offenders have always  sought to hide from the law and police officers to expose them. The development of fingerprinting, DNA analysis and ubiquitous CCTV coverage have all marked leaps forward in detection and have all been met with corresponding changes in offending skills (gloves, bleach and finding camera blindspots). The advent of social media has merely increased the speed of change. Invisibility/anonymity was a significant feature of the recent riots. Looters weren’t able to be invisible but tried their hardest to remain anonymous, wearing hoodies and masks and using Facebook, Twitter and, in particular, Blackberry Messaging, to organise

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There’s more to Facebook than organising revolutions and riots

Published on 29 August 2011 by in Digital Engagement, Social Media Innovation

Back in the 1980s the answer to everything was 42. Douglas Adams’ joke “ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” started off as a cult among schoolboys (and one or two schoolgirls), and spread to computer science geeks before entering the mainstream via the Internet. New research in 2011 has revealed that ‘42’ is no longer accurate – it now appears that the answer to everything is ‘social media’. Social media (or occasionally just Facebook, Twitter or Blackberry messaging) have been deemed to be the prime drivers behind events and developments as wide-ranging as: Social revolutions in the Middle East a.k.a. the Arab Spring Riots on British streets – and organising the clean-up Encouraging young people’s drug and alcohol use The penetration of social network use into everyday life in the UK continues to rise

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© Russell Webster 2011/12