Feature Channels: Crime and Forensic Science

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Sixty years ago, the murder of an African-American teenager helped galvanize the civil rights movement in America. Today, the history of that iconic event is being shared through a location-based smartphone application.Florida State University Professor Davis Houck helped lead the Emmett Till Memory Project to commemorate the death and memory of Till, whose 1955 murder in the Mississippi Delta sparked protests across the country.

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New research from the University of South Australia finds that Australian businesses are ill-prepared for mandatory modern slavery reporting, with more than two-thirds of ASX 100 companies unable to produce a disclosure statement about potentially exploitative labour practices.

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Contrary to what many think, a comprehensive and sweeping review of all fatal police shootings across the nation reveals

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On August 10-13, thousands of sociologists from around the nation and the world will meet in New York at the association’s 114th Annual Meeting. At a time when issues ranging from the U.S. census to the racial wealth gap dominate public discourse, more than 600 sessions involving 4,600 presenters and 3,000 research papers will deepen understanding of the interrelationship of societal structures and policy issues, as well as their impact on ordinary people and communities.

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The males of one species of butterfly are more attracted to females that are active, not necessarily what they look like, according to a recent research conducted at Augustana University.The paper, “Behaviour before beauty: Signal weighting during mate selection in the butterfly Papilio polytes,” found that males of the species noticed the activity levels of potential female mates, not their markings.

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New analysis of the fossilized skull of an Upper Paleolithic man suggests that he died a violent death, according to a study published July 3, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by an international team from Greece, Romania and Germany led by the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany

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High school seniors’ confidence in law enforcement and the justice system significantly declined from 2006 to 2017 while their faith in religious organizations and schools was comparatively higher and more stable, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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Any single hair from anywhere on the human body can be used to identify a person. This conclusion is one of the key findings from a study by a team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Michigan State University.

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Researchers from NYU Wagner and the NYU Department of Sociology look at more than 10,000 citizen complaints filed against the Chicago PD, and find a racial divide.

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PNNL's Dr. Svitlana Volkova and her the team analyzed three years worth of discussions on Reddit from January 2015 to January 2018 measuring the speed and scale of discussion spread related to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero cryptocurrencies.

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Data science is used to predict everything from crimes to Yelp reviews. Darden Professor Michael Porter is leading the practice of predictive modeling, finding patterns in human behavior in hopes of benefiting society.

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Research finds that police officers who place more trust in the public are also more likely to pursue cases on their own initiative – termed proactive policing – and have higher arrest rates. The finding may have implications for public safety, police training and future law enforcement research.

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Following a natural disaster or strong storm, there is usually a second wave of potential destruction – scam artists looking to line their pockets.

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An interactive map of lynchings that occurred in the United States from 1883 to 1941 reveals not just the extent of mob violence, but also underscores how the roles of economy, topography and law enforcement infrastructure

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A recent study conducted by Saint Joseph’s University researcher and professor of sociology and criminal justice, Chunrye Kim, Ph.D., revealed that hairstylists in immigrant communities in Queens, New York are aware of domestic violence and other forms of abuse among their clients.

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The Electronic Recovery and Access to Data (ERAD) Prepaid Card Reader is currently being used by state and local law enforcement in 48 states, by federal law enforcement agencies, and by international law enforcement agencies.

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With reports of crimes against nursing home residents gaining media attention around the country, seven states have passed laws regulating the use of cameras in care facilities. An assistant professor in the University of Washington School of Social Work outlines the list of legal and moral issues that surveillance raises.

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S&T’s Immersive Imaging System was recognized at the recent annual R&D 100 Conference among the 100 most exceptional innovations in science and technology from 2018.

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Brendan Lantz, an assistant professor in the FSU College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, found that co-offending, or committing a crime with others, was significantly related to increased chances of serious injury regardless of the motivation behind the crime.

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Major criminal justice reforms such as removing mandatory fines, providing relief for poor defendants and assessing the ability to pay would go far in correcting a criminal justice system that punishes low-income people, a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study finds.

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Justice systems fail to resolve justice problems for 1.5 billion people, finds a new report by the Task Force on Justice. The report, released today at the World Justice Forum in The Hague, points to a hidden epidemic of injustice that affects all countries but hits the poorest hardest.

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Millennials are more likely to be arrested than their predecessor counterparts regardless of self-reported criminal activity, finds a new study by a Johns Hopkins University expert. Furthermore, black men who self-reported no offenses were 419% more likely to be arrested at the beginning of the 21st century than non-offending blacks of the previous generation, and 31.5% more likely to be arrested than whites of the same generation who did not self-report any crimes.

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Debates over gun regulations make headlines across the world, but there’s an underground operation for weapons that has drawn very little attention – until now. Researchers from Michigan State University crept into the dark web to investigate how firearms are anonymously bought and sold around the world.

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In recognition of National DNA Day, scientists at Arizona State University took time to reflect on some big questions: What brought us to this point and where are we going from here. And just because we can, should we?

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Dangers of policing have dramatically declined since 1970 with a 75 percent drop in police officer line-of-duty deaths. In the context of nearly 50-year monthly trends, the study also shows a statistically significant decline in felonious killings of police following the Ferguson effect and Michael Brown’s death in 2014, which directly contradicts the war on cops’ theory.

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West Virginia University junior Samantha Mehnert has been selected as a recipient of the 2019 George H. Robinson Memorial Scholarship.

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New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York, could make it easier to track and process suspicious activity in surveillance footage.

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New research finds that Black and Latino adolescent boys who are stopped by police report more frequent engagement in delinquent behavior thereafter. The study also demonstrates that police stops have a negative impact on the adolescents’ psychological well-being.

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What do cheese, jeans and wine all have in common? They get better with time. New research from Florida State University finds that’s also true of teenagers’ attitudes toward law enforcement as they become adults.A research team, led by Assistant Professor of Criminology Kyle McLean, found that teens’ attitudes toward law enforcement tend to improve as they reach adulthood.

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The FBI is responsible for tracking hate crimes across the U.S., but the data are notoriously unreliable. University of Utah geographers want to fill the data gap with an app. The first of its kind, the app accepts reports beyond crimes captured in police records.

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The independent South Australian Law Reform Institute based at the Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide is reviewing the current law of forfeiture in South Australia and its impact in murder or manslaughter cases, especially those that involve domestic violence, mercy killings or mental impairment.

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Rutgers researchers have defined the relationship that forms between children who are sold for sex and the criminals who traffic them.

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DHS S&T has teamed up with the Israeli Police to invest in a new tool. The tool, called 3D-Hawk, can turn a crash or crime scene into an interactive 3D model within minutes, based on high-definition (HD) video footage.

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The Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence based at Iowa State University and the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization, are working with Significance Magazine to report on the latest in forensics science.

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Men released from prison who receive social, community and spiritual support have better mental health, according to a study by researchers at Rutgers School of Public Health.

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As states around the country move to stiffen punishments for animal cruelty, Michigan State University researchers have found a correlation between the types of animal abuse committed and the perpetrator's relationship to an animal and its owner.

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A new whitepaper authored by experts on active shooter detection systems details how automated, rapid-response technology may have changed the course of events which lead to more than 30 wounded or dead students and faculty.

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