Debbie Spencer

I’m Debbie Spencer, and I manage the bulk of the Criminal Justice Program at Sandia National Labs. This includes the satellite facility for the National Institute of Justice and we run a Border Research and Technology Center in San Diego. Other projects at Sandia in criminal justice are with the Department of Energy and with the FBI Crime Lab on new projects on new forensic projects.

I want to start off by quoting one of my sponsors, Dave Boyd at the National Institute of Justice. He’s very fond of saying that "the tools, techniques and methods available to law enforcement today are basically the same as what Wyatt Earp had about a hundred years ago." Unfortunately that statement is truer than we would like for it to be.

Recent efforts by the NIJ, the FBI and DOE should improve things tremendously in coming years. When we talk about the criminal justice world, keep in mind that there are routine operations that patrolmen on the street do; there are special purpose operations such as SWAT Teams and bomb squads; and there are other special purpose operations such as combating white-collar crime and cyber-crime. Then, of course, there is the increasing number of terrorist activities. Thus, it’s a growing field, unfortunately.

When you think criminal justice, don’t just think about law enforcement. Think about courts, think about probation and parole, think about crime labs, think about prisons–all those are parts of the criminal justice world. When you think about the environments for criminal justice, it’s important to stop and realize that the normal environment in criminal justice is often abnormal and malevolent. So let’s redefine our environments.

Abnormal events like lightning strikes, storms, and other acts of nature determine the tools and actions that will mitigate them.

The malevolent environment can be restricted to the active participation of "the bad guys" to try to circumvent systems, methods, and procedures–for instance, an inmate trying to escape from a jail is part of a malevolent attack on systems.

What I have in my hands looks like, and is as strong as, a rope. It is really a roll of toilet paper–not even a roll, just a short strand of toilet paper that a Federal Bureau of Prison’s inmate made for me down in Puerto Rico. This is a tool for a bad guy. It’s easy to see how you could use this rope to kill somebody. It shows how hard it is to get materials that can be used as tools out of a prison. We have to rethink what can be used as a tool in terms of the environments.

In the malevolent environment is the person who gets stopped and then turns on the officer and tries to take his gun away and use it against him. We've tried to address that at Sandia with the Smart Gun–a gun that can only be used in the hands of its authorized user. A manufacturer, Colt, is taking it forward.

(Slide 1)

In the normal environment are our bomb disablement tools. Our PAN disrupter is used to disable bombs, and is hopefully saving some bomb tech lives. We also run an advanced bomb squad training program called Operation Albuquerque, which is supported by the Albuquerque Police Department. Our experts also interact with the FBI. They were instrumental in disabling the Unabomber's bomb up in Montana not too long ago.

Also in the normal environment is test and evaluation of products. Many firms are selling things to law enforcement agencies. I brought a little gismo called a human presence detector with me. This device is sold for $8000 with the claim of finding people in rubble. We tested this in a DOE blind evaluation at Sandia. It's been tested in other places too. All of the independent tests agree that this thing works about as well as random chance.

We've also developing a fluorescence evidence detector. This is a forensics tool that is better able to find evidence at the crime scene, whether it’s fingerprints, blood, semen, or other evidence. It works in daylight, making it easier to find and record the evidence. We’re working the Albuquerque Police Department Crime Lab on this.

(Slide 2)

Which level is the technology in criminal justice? It’s basically level 1, with some level 2. Some examples of level 2 are an explosives detection portal that we developed for the FAA, and virtual reality training that is meant to train hostage rescue teams to fire at the correct persons, and to react the correct way in a situation using virtual reality.

A third example is our work with a correctional facility in Minnesota. The principles are the same. Some of the correctional facilities are getting quite good at how they keep their inmates in and some of the techniques they use certainly fall into the arena of level 2 surety.

As you go to your workshops today, especially my workshop, I want you to concentrate on systems engineering, because I think that’s what we need in criminal justice–not just gadgets and widgets, but how do we make systems that really work. Think about terrorism and the new threats and let’s hope that five years from now Wyatt Earp wouldn’t recognize our tools. Thank you

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