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Crime

Victim Personal Statements

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About the VPS

The VPS gives victims an opportunity to tell the criminal justice agencies and the magistrate or the judge about the effect a crime has had on their lives. It also helps the criminal justice agencies to understand fully the impact that the crime has had on the victim so that they can make decisions about the case. The VPS is optional. No pressure should be put on victims to make one if they don’t want to. However, it’s important that the victim understands the benefits of making one

What is the VPS?

A VPS is a statement written in the victim’s own words. It is different to the witness statement, which is a written or video-recorded account of what happened to the victim. The VPS can be taken at the same time as the witness statement, but it can also be taken at a later stage.

It can be used to:...

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Analyzing an Offender’s Journey to Crime: A Criminal Movement Model (CriMM)

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Abstract

In the current study we develop a Criminal Movement Model (CriMM) to investigate the relationship between simulated travel routes of offenders along the physical road network and the actual locations of their crimes in the same geographic space. With knowledge of offenders’ home locations and the locations of major attractors, we are able to model the routes that offenders are likely to take when travelling from their home to an attractor by employing variations of Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm. With these routes plotted, we then compare them to the locations of crimes committed by the same offenders. This model was applied to five attractor locations within the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Information about offenders in these cities was obtained from five years worth of real police data. After performing a small-scale analysis for each offender to investigate how far off their...

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Possession of an Unregistered Firearm 26 U.S.C. § 5861

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6.26.5861 Possession of an Unregistered Firearm (26 U.S.C. § 5861)

Count (No.) of the indictment charges (name of defendant) with possession of an unregistered firearm, namely (describe the firearm; e.g., a shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length), which is a violation of federal law. In order to find (name) guilty of the offense charged in the indictment, you must find that the government proved each of the following four elements beyond a reasonable doubt.

First: That (name) knowingly possessed a firearm;

Second: That this firearm was a (describe the firearm; e.g., a shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length);

Third: That (name) knew of the characteristics of the firearm, (that is, that it was (describe the firearm; e.g., a shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length));

Fourth: That this firearm was (could readily have been put) in operating condition; and

Fifth: That this

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Tackling Youth Knife Crime

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introduction

We are determined to get knives off our streets. One incident is one too many. The Tackling Knives Action Programme (TKAP) was developed by the Home Office, working closely with other government departments and key stakeholders including local government, police forces, community groups and practitioners in affected local areas. TKAP will sustain and build on existing cross government and community work; this includes the lessons learned and success achieved by the Tackling Gangs Action Programme and Youth Crime Action Plan (YCAP) to reduce the number of teenagers killed or seriously wounded and increase public confidence that our streets are safe. The first phase of TKAP was launched by the Prime Minister and Home Secretary on 5 June 2008. In the first nine months we focused nearly £7 million of resources on rapid, concentrated work to tackle teenage knife crime in 14 areas of the country. In March 2009 TKAP was extended for a further year,

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The Psychiatrist’s Role in Determining Accountability for Crimes: The Public Anxiety and an Increasing Expertise

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I. INTRODUCTION

In conjunction with the criminal law, the psychiatrist witness has been asked to evaluate people at four different stages. He has been asked to give his opinion whether the defendant understands the charges and is able to aid his defense, whether the defendant should be held responsible for his activity, to recommend a disposition and finally to recommend a stay for execution of sentence.' This comment will discuss the second of these functions, the role of the psychiatrist in determining whether someone should be held accountable for the consequences of his acts who has accomplished activity classified by society as criminal. This comment will discuss the legal tests for insanity only peripherally, by illustrating the legal semantical difficulty produced by the attempts of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to deal with this problem. The legal tests have been so overtreated and overemphasized that one noted authority has remarked: "Rivers of ink, mountains of printer's

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Symbolic, Relational, and Ideological Signifiers of Bias-Motivated Offenders: Toward a Strategy of Assessment

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Hate crimes constitute a special class of violence. In the United States, since the enactment of federal hate crime laws in 1990, bias-motivated crimes have garnered national attention. Although social psychological research concerning hate crimes has provided insight into the factors that lead to intergroup violence (Ehrlich, 1992; Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998; Herek, Gillis, Cogan, & Glunt, 1996), information concerning individual difference variables of bias offenders is to date unavailable. There is significant debate about whether an offender’s bias motivation can be reliably identified (Sullaway, in press). This has led some theorists to argue for the repeal of hate crime laws altogether (Jacobs & Potter, 1998). The successful prosecution of the bias-motivated offender requires that there is a discernible behavioral and volitional component present in the offense. This is essential if the offense is to meet the standard of legal intent, as defined under state and federal laws (Levin, 1999). Determining the validity of the bias motivation is compromised by the

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Super-Predators or Victims of Societal Neglect? Framing Effects in Juvenile Crime Coverage

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An impressive array of scholarly research demonstrates that language has a profound influence on human thought (see Carroll 1956; Seidel 1975; Sanford, 1987; Rosch 1973; Lakoff 1987). In the realm of political communication, the use of particular forms of presentation or modes of discourse (also known as "frames") -- strongly influences perceptions of public issues, events, and leaders (Iyengar 1991; Neuman, Just, and Crigler 1992; Gamson 1992; Anderson 1996). For example, the public is more likely to endorse increases in government welfare spending when the beneficiaries are said to be "poor people" rather than "people on welfare" or "black people" (Bobo and Kluegel 1993; Gilens, 1996; 1999; Gilliam, 1999; Smith 1987). Of course, the most common forum for the presentation of public issues is broadcast news. The overwhelming majority of broadcast news reports are "episodic" or event-oriented, focusing on concrete acts or live events rather than general contextual material. Television...

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Stranger Violence: Perspectives, Issues, and Problems

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I. INTRODUCTION

Stranger violence represents one of the most frightening forms of criminal victimization. Conklin' and McIntyre have argued that the fear of crime is basically a fear of strangers. It is suggested that people fear the unknown person who commits an unpredictable and violent attack on a vulnerable and innocent citizen going about routine daily activities. The perceptions that the attacker is indiscriminate in his selection of the victim and that the victim can do little to avoid attack or protect himself also elicit fear in society. The urban dweller, in particular, confronts what Silberman refers to as a "startling paradox": Life in metropolitan areas . . . involves a startling paradox: we fear strangers more than anything else, and yet we live our lives among strangers. Every time we take a walk, ride a subway or bus, shop in a supermarket or department store, enter an office building lobby or elevator,

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The Restatement (Third) Of Restitution And Unjust Enrichment: Some Introductory Suggestions

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Professor and Reporter Andrew Kull has brought reason and order to the law of restitution and unjust enrichment. He has done so with elegant expression and architecture, incisive and insightful comments, and careful analysis and research. With constructive suggestions from his advisers and consulting members of the American Law Institute and other scholars, judges, and lawyers in the United States and elsewhere, and with the careful examination and approval of drafts by the Institute‟s Council and membership, he has produced a masterpiece, the Restatement (Third) of Restatement and Unjust Enrichment. He has reestablished the subject as as a crucial building block of the law along with Contracts and Torts. In this introductory comment, I will first summarize the structure and key points of the new Restatement and then, using two examples, examine briefly whether and how it might be used to address new claim...

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Partners In Crime A Comparison Of Individual And Multi-Perpetrator Homicides

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Abstract

Little is known about the characteristics of homicides committed by more than one perpetrator. This study examined the crime, victim, and perpetrator characteristics of individual homicides (n = 84) versus multi-perpetrator homicides (n = 40), according to official file information from two Canadian federal penitentiaries. Compared to multiple perpetrators, individual perpetrators were more likely to be older and to target female victims, and their homicides were more likely to contain reactive, sexual, and sadistic elements. Multi-perpetrator homicides tended to involve younger offenders, male victims, and instrumental motives. Psychopathic offenders were likely to act alone in committing sexual homicides and to involve an accomplice in other types of murders, but they typically committed gratuitous violence against women regardless of whether they acted alone or with a co-perpetrator. The findings indicate that individual and multi-perpetrator homicides have distinctive dynamics and can be differentiated during investigations....

Additional Resource: Partners In Crime A Comparison Of Individual And Multi-Perpetrator Homicides

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Remorse, Apology, and Mercy

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I. INTRODUCTION

It is commonly even if not universally believed that the very worst of evildoers are those who are utterly without remorse for the evil that they have done an absence often understandably inferred from their unwillingness to express remorse by apologizing or begging forgiveness or by their not engaging in appropriate non-verbal expressive behavior seeking out punishment, for example. Such absence of remorse may, in the words of Wislawa Szymborska, be a “sign of bestiality” or, in the phrase of Seamus Heaney, reveal them as “malignant by nature.” In the legal world, such judgments can be found at various points in the criminal process—where absence of remorse may be cited as an aggravating factor that legitimately should incline us to greater harshness and certainly not to greater compassion or mercy. Here are a few examples one from a clemency decision, one from a prosecuting attorney’s argument at the sentencing stage of a criminal trial, one from a trial judge justifying a sentence, one from a

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Crime Pattern Definitions for Tactical Analysis

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Introduction

The identification and tactical analysis of crime patterns is a primary responsibility of crime analysts at police agencies around the world. Every day, analysts query and mine data in an effort to link cases by key factors and disseminate information about known and newly-discovered patterns to fellow police personnel. This analysis improves the safety of communities by facilitating police response which can, in turn, prevent and reduce crime. While the pattern identification process is reasonably standardized, there is a diversity of perspective on what constitutes a crime pattern. Unfortunately, the profession lacks a common language, and the terms “crime pattern,” “crime series,” “hot spot,” “crime trend,” and “crime problem” are often used interchangeably. Therefore, the goals of this white paper are to 1) standardize the definition of a crime pattern, 2) differentiate pattern types, and 3) define and illustrate each of the different pattern types. This delineation of standardized and practical...

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Evaluating The Usefulness Of Functional Distance Measures When Calibrating Journey-to-Crime Distance Decay Functions

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Abstract

This research evaluates the usefulness of applying functional distance measures to criminal geographic profiles using mathematically calibrated distance decay models. Both the travel- path (i.e., shortest distance) and temporally optimized (i.e., quickest travel time) functional distance measures were calculated based on the impedance attributes stored within a linearly referenced transportation data layer of several parishes in Louisiana. Two different journey-to- crime distance decay functions (i.e., negative exponential, and truncated negative exponential) were mathematically calibrated for ‘‘best fit’’, based on the distribution of distances between homicide crime locations and offenders residences. Using the calibrated distance decay functions, geographic profiles were created for a localized serial killer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A probability score was calculated for every point within the study area to indicate the likelihood that it contained the serial offenders residence. A comparison between the predicted (highest probability score) and the actual residence of the serial offender determined the predictive value and procedural validity of functional distance metrics.

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Crimes Against the Elderly 2003–2013

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For the period 2003–13, elderly persons age 65 or older experienced nonfatal violent crime victimizations at lower rates (3.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 65 or older) than younger persons ages 12 to 24 (49.9 per 1,000), persons ages 25 to 49 (27.6 per 1,000), and persons ages 50 to 64 (15.2 per 1,000) (figure 1). Nonfatal violent crime includes rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Each year, the elderly accounted for approximately 2% of violence and 2% of serious violence, which equals 136,720 violent crimes and 47,640 serious violent crimes. However, the elderly made up about 21% of the population age 12 or older during this time period. The rate of property crime was also lower compared to younger persons.This report uses data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to provide detailed information on nonfatal violent victimization and property victimization against...

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Become a Problem Solving Crime Analyst

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Forward

You who read this manual are more important than perhaps you think. Crime analysts are not well-known to the general public. You don’t star in peak-time TV series or big-screen movies as do behavioural profilers or forensic scientists. Even some of your colleagues in the police aren’t sure what you’re about. But you are the new face of policing. For years the police have contented themselves with chasing individual crimes after they have taken place. Crimes have been regarded as episodes to be detected, and if they result in a conviction the case is thought to be ‘solved’. This is manifestly mad. So mad, in fact, it is astonishing that society hasn’t rumbled it, complained very loudly and demanded a smarter approach. Running after crooks relentlessly is too late, like catching the horse (if you’re lucky) after it has bolted for the hundredth time rather than learning how to lock the stable door. It is as though when aircraft

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Amnesia and Crime

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Amnesia for serious offenses has important legal implications, particularly regarding its relevance in the contexts of competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility. Forensic psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are often required to provide expert testimony regarding amnesia in defendants. However, the diagnosis of amnesia presents a challenge, as claims of memory impairment may stem from organic disease, dissociative amnesia, amnesia due to a psychotic episode, or malingered amnesia. We review the theoretical, clinical, and legal perspectives on amnesia in relation to crime and present relevant cases that demonstrate several types of crime-related amnesia and their legal repercussions. Consideration of the presenting clinical features of crimerelated amnesia may enable a fuller understanding of the different types of amnesia and assist clinicians in the medico-legal assessment and diagnosis of the claimed memory impairment. The development of a profile of aspects characteristic of crime-related amnesia would build toward establishing guidelines for the assessment of amnesia in legal contexts.

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