Permanently identify the good guys
(everyone else is a risk.)
Rationale
Crime occurs when benefits exceed personal costs. Crime benefits are in wealth, social esteem, and gratification, crime costs are in social esteem but also in physical danger and loss of liberty (prison). In individuals with
lower controls (morality, supervision, observance etc) the risk balance is easily tipped. However, if one or more key risk factors are brought under control then the risk balance stays favourable.
The tipping point for risk in crime is personal identification.
The earlier an individual can be identified in potential criminal behaviour, the greater the personal cost to them of continuing that behaviour. We need to move forward in time the identification process to "pre-crime " rather than "post crime". The problem has been that pre-crime identification has not been possible because criminals will avoid this and imposed systems violate the "guilty before proven innocent" rule. The breakthrough step is to reverse the logic and identify the potential criminal before the act by simple elimination of the innocent. This is better for everyone as it actually helps those on the edge from tipping over into crime rather than catching them and locking them up.
If citizens voluntarily engage in permanent identification then this will leave those "non complying" as a greater (but more controllable) concern.
Permanent identification would include voluntary tagging and badging of all identified (PID) people. Validation would be by fingerprint, eye scan and DNA held in an independent highly secure PID database by a trusted third party (eg Amnesty International) and released for daily use by law enforcement by encrypted ID's only, not personal name/address. People would visibly be identifiable by their PID badge and by camera's and scanners, as lower risk. The PID badge would also use their mobile phone (PID sim card) to securely identify to the PID database all other PID phones in the area all the time. These PID people could be identified as such by a phone "safe" sound when they are approached. Not only would "good guy" tracking be afforded but also risk and panic buttons could advise authorities and warn PID witnesses. Recorded phone pictures could be captured manually or automatically when the risk button was pressed.
Additional functionality is easily added (or forgone if users so desire) because the holy grail of all IT systems is the permanently ID users. Eventually DNA technology will migrate to the phone and permanent ID will be even more secure. Until then both badge and Sim card would need to match to confirm ID. Social responsibility would have a visible implementation.
Crime is actually not difficult to avoid, as our American Cousins might say its a simple case of
"United we stand, Divided we fall"