Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/914278
maltatoday SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2017 Interview 15 Criminologist SAVIOUR FORMOSA warns against the culture of 'instant gratification' that fuels demand for details about criminal investigations... and also about the changing nature of crime itself, which is about to get 'virtual' – so that we cause a review of our own country, when there is no ne- cessity... it will take us another 20 years to come back on par with where we were five years ago. That gets to me a lot... One other striking aspect of this case was the speed with which arrests were made – only five weeks after the murder. It is widely understood that this was made possible thanks to the involvement of foreign specialist agencies, including the FBI. At the risk of being unfair to the local police, isn't this also a reflection that our own law enforcement capability, on its own, is powerless when faced with criminality of a certain level? Let's talk about the strategy of the police force. Our Police Corps has been 200 years in the making: we still have the same police corps as 200 years ago. Two years ago, we [the Criminology Department] attended a meeting of parliament's social affairs committee, where we issued the first high-level strategy document to reform the Corps. It will take time. The legal amend- ments have been affected, but the changes still have to be implement- ed. What we need is a long-term strategy to identify the lacunae, and also the strengths. One thing to bear in mind is that the Mal- tese police corps has areas of spe- cialisation that don't exist in other countries, and vice versa. We're too small to have six specialists in one area. In fact, we're too small to have any specialists at all on cer- tain topics. It's always good to have people interested in a certain line... but there's no point specialising in a particular area, if you're only ever going to get one case in 20 years. In Malta, there isn't the threshold of incidence; and – I have to be care- ful how to say this - there isn't the need for certain expertise, either. Expertise is always needed, don't get me wrong. But, for example, we don't need local specialists in detecting certain chemicals in the air, when we don't have local in- dustries that produce that chemi- cal. One advantage we do have, however, is that we are members of Europol. This gives us access to all Europe's specialists when it comes to certain types of crime... just as other Europol members have access to Malta's areas of specialisation, too. I see our police force as part of a bigger structure. We still need to have our own structure, but where we don't have the skills and knowledge, we can tap into them from abroad. Ad I'm pleasantly surprised at how these things come together... in the sense that the process of coming together, in this case, was divulged to the public. These processes are, however, continuous. There are often cases where the local police might consult experts from Ger- many, or some other European country, and vice versa. Still, this doesn't mean there is no need for a reform of the police force. The process has already been kick- started; what remains to be done is a proper implementation strat- egy. Meanwhile, we also have to prepare for the future. In the next five years, society will move to- wards a virtual reality/augmented reality structure. In Malta, as yet we do not have a specialist in aug- mented reality, and its relation to crime. What does this mean? Very soon, we will be experiencing new realities that are other-worldly: you could be walking in Valletta, wearing a headset, and apart from everyday reality, there will also be other superimposed images: vir- tual, but indistinguishable from reality. You could see, for instance, the Great Siege happening before your eyes... and you'd able to actu- ally touch what you're seeing. That level of tangibility is already pos- sible; we may think it's something that's 20 years in the future, but it's already here. This also means that tomorrow, we will have a new type of crime. You could witness a crime and think it's a case of aug- mented reality... or vice versa. We need to prepare for this from now: start a discussion on 'virtual po- lice stations', and 'online police' in conjunction with the real police. It sounds weird, I know. But this is where we are going... It is ironic that the public need for information – which acts like an injection: one detail creates an appetite for more – can drive certain newspapers to publish details that are actually fictitious SPECULATION Scene Investigation'...