Feature Channels: Crime and Forensic Science

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Irvine, Calif., June 9, 2021 — Criminology and legal experts at the University of California, Irvine have released Rap on Trial: A Legal Guide for Attorneys, to help protect artists from having their lyrics used against them in court. Rap lyrics have been introduced as evidence in hundreds of cases, and a high-profile ruling by the Maryland Court of Appeals recently allowed a few lines of rap to help put a man behind bars for 50 years.

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By: Anna Prentiss | Published: April 23, 2021 | 12:56 pm | SHARE: With a 94-1 vote, the U.S. Senate passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act Thursday, a bill that would expedite the Justice Department’s review of hate crimes related to COVID-19 and designate an official at the department to oversee the effort, as well as issue new guidance to state and local law enforcement for online reporting.

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The latest findings show that with clever science, a single fingerprint left at a crime scene could be used to determine whether someone has touched or ingested class A drugs.

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The civility center plans to refine a national model to promote national criminal justice reform and reduce mass incarceration.

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Two criminal justice professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have been awarded a $324,987 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund a three-year program to study anti-Muslim sentiment and Muslim hate crimes in Arkansas. Dr. Tusty ten Bensel, director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, and Dr.

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With a living descendant's DNA sample, a team of researchers have identified the remains of John Gregory, engineer aboard HMS Erebus

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A study to understand the dating violence experience and perpetration of college-age women, as well as how they conceptualize violence in dating relationships, reveals normalization of unhealthy violent behaviors where sexual pressure or sexualized verbal harassment are viewed as an innate part of men, supporting the idea that “boys will be boys.” Study participants demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the forms of dating violence and its consequences. They accepted, rationalized and provided excuses for these acts of violence.

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Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted April 20 on three charges in the death of George Floyd. Collectively, people across the country breathed a sigh of relief because far too often, the story has been police killing people of color with impunity, says an expert on race and the law at Washington University in St.

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By: Bill Wellock | Published: April 20, 2021 | 5:23 pm | SHARE: Florida State University has experts available to offer context on topics related to the Derek Chauvin trial and verdict.POLICING AND POLICE REFORMEmma E. Fridel, assistant professor, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice (201) 452-0384; researches violence and aggression with a focus on homicide, including school violence, homicide-suicide, serial and mass murder and fatal officer-citizen encounters.

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To search for answers about how blood droplets from a gunshot wound can reverse direction while in flight, researchers explored the influence of propellant gases on blood backspatter. In Physics of Fluids, they report using numeric modeling to capture the behavior of gun muzzle gases and predict the reversal of blood droplet flight, which was captured experimentally. Their experiments also show the breakup of blood droplets, a future extension of their modeling efforts.

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A real-life forensic puzzle inspired University of Illinois at Chicago and Iowa State University researchers to explore the physics involved, and in Physics of Fluids, they present theoretical results revealing an interaction of the incoming vortex ring of propellant muzzle gases with backward blood spatter. A detailed analytical theory of such turbulent self-similar vortex rings was given by this group in earlier work and is linked mathematically to the theory of quantum oscillators.

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A new study classifies different types of wildlife traffickers and sellers in two of Central Africa’s growing urban centers, providing new insight into the poorly understood urban illegal wildlife trade.

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A team of researchers used geographic information systems — a collection of tools for geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth and society — and data from a government database on mafia ties during the 1960s, to examine how these networks were built, maintained and grown. The researchers said that this spatial social networks study offers a unique look at the mafia’s loosely affiliated criminal groups. Often called families, these groups were connected — internally and externally — to maintain a balance between security and effectiveness, referred to as the efficiency-security tradeoff.

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Among people with opioid use disorder (OUD), more than half have reported contact with the criminal justice system. A new study published today in Health Affairs reveals that Medicaid expansion is associated with substantial improvements in access to medications for OUD. However, the study also reveals that individuals referred for treatment by the criminal justice system were substantially less likely to receive medications for OUD as part of the treatment plan.

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Fewer than half of inmates in jails and prisons surveyed in a study by the CDC and University of Washington said they would accept a COVID-19 vaccine, while the majority either said they wanted to wait before getting the vaccine or would refuse one.

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The University of Georgia has established a new interdisciplinary center to combat human trafficking through research, programming and policy development.

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By: Kathleen Haughney | Published: March 23, 2021 | 1:13 pm | SHARE: As the nation grapples with the second mass shooting in a month, criminologists are examining the patterns behind these horrific events.Florida State University Associate Professor of Criminology Jill Turanovic is available to speak to reporters about the deadly shooting in Boulder, Colorado, and the issue of mass shootings.

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In a formal statement, the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) condemned racism, discrimination, and gun violence, urging that these issues be confronted as public health crises.

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A new centre established by the University of Bristol to help protect citizens online has created a shared data science framework to help law enforcement investigate organised crime.

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On March 16, a man went on a shooting rampage at three Atlanta spas, killing eight people, including six Asian women. The killings have sparked outrage and fear in the Asian American community, but the suspect has denied that the killings were racially motivated.The suspect’s claims and subsequent claims made by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office have set off a debate about anti-Asian racism in America.

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The shooting deaths of eight people, including six women of Asian descent, in Atlanta yesterday is a horrendous tragedy, and just the latest incident in an ever growing wave of mass violence in our country. We extend our deepest sympathy to the loved ones of the victims and to communities in Atlanta and across the United States that have been deeply affected by this senseless assault.

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Looking beyond cartels, the Mexico Violence Resource Project is an initiative from UC San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies launched last fall with the goal of facilitating better analysis on the nuanced drivers of violence in Mexico. The project recently formed a partnership with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime to support new research and policy advocacy on issues surrounding violence, crime and governance in Mexico.

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For Black girls in the juvenile justice system, attention from a caregiver might amount to too much of a bad thing, a recent study suggests.

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In a new study, Case Western Reserve University researchers identified some of the primary gaps in the connective tissue of the criminal justice system—among them failures to test rape kit DNA samples to unjustified doubts of victims’ statements.

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The George Washington University Program on Extremism has continued to update a project that is tracking individuals charged with crimes related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

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The majority of African American men return to prison within one to three years of their first release. A study explores why re-entry programs are not as effective for them when compared to others. Researchers suggest a holistic approach that addresses psychological and historical trauma in conjunction with the environmental factors that perpetuate the stigma justice-involved African American men experience. The approach accounts for negative associations developed in the centuries of oppression and segregation that shape their current societal interactions.