Feature Channels: Crime and Forensic Science

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Following the death of Michael Brown a year ago this August, one of the key issues to emerge was a critical examination of the municipal court system in the individual communities that make up St. Louis County. Many of the courts were accused of not working primarily for justice, but as a way to raise funds for municipalities. Three faculty members from the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, all of whom are involved in court reform efforts, express their thoughts on the reform process.

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Most anti-bias trainings probably won’t be as effective as organizers hope, according to a study just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The research finds that only those whites who are aware of their racial biases will internalize negative feedback about their racial preferences and take steps to correct their behavior.

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A simple, lower-cost new method for DNA profiling of human hairs developed by the University of Adelaide should improve opportunities to link criminals to serious crimes.

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Fixing up abandoned buildings in the inner city doesn’t just eliminate eyesores, it can also significantly reduce crime and violence, including gun assaults, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine report in the first study to demonstrate the direct impact of building remediation efforts on crime.

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Forest rangers from the Gunung Leuser National Park (GLNP), the Government of Indonesia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Wildlife Crimes Unit (WCU) announced today the arrest of two suspects engaged in the illegal trade of helmeted hornbill beaks. The suspects’ operation involved 30 hunters who poached the birds inside Indonesia’s Leuser landscape—a continuous forest covering more than 25,000 square kilometers, most of which lies in the province of Aceh, including Gunung Leuser National Park.

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Traditional signals for opportunities for crime may not be representative of the whole neighborhood.

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African-American adults — particularly women — are much more likely to know or be related to someone behind bars than whites, according to the first national estimates of Americans' ties to prisoners.

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A 1995 Connecticut law requiring a permit or license – contingent on passing a background check – in order to purchase a handgun was associated with a 40 percent reduction in the state’s firearm-related homicide rate, new research suggests.