Crime concepts

These cases illustrate some of the complex issues associated with PCP-related litigation. The concept that malice is implied when an experienced drug user commits a crime while under the influence of the drug is not held in most states, at the present time. 

The history of our concept of the atom is as exciting as a crime thriller, and for two reasons. First, there were only indications for the existence of the different atoms. This is still true today, as the pictures of the atom that have by now been seen by everyone are only visualized measurement data. There are no eyewitnesses. Second, there are no clues regarding a perpetrator or motive. Who created the atom and its laws as they are Were... 

Though shocking in terms of civil liberties, the concept is consistent with recent trends in the criminal justice system. British criminologist Nikolas Rose has described the increased employment of preventive models in the United States in the efforts to control crime (Rose, 1999). Sexual predatory statutes in some states, for example, require propensity hearings . Megan s law requires those convicted of sexual crimes to register the fact with local police after they have served their time. 

Search and seizure is generally defined as the search by law enforcement officials, or their agents, of a person or place to seize evidence to be used in the investigation and prosecution of a crime. The security of one s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the poHce, which is the core of the Fourth Amendment, is basic to a free society, and therefore, implicit in the concept of ordered liberty [36]. 

The ethical need involved the distribution of fitting reward or punishment. Toward the end of the century, the critic Thomas Rymer gave to this concept the name "poetic justice." By poetic justice, he meant a kind of justice whereby the punishment fit the crime, and the characters received their just deserts by the end of the play. While the doctrine can be dangerous in the interpretation of tragedy, it is very useful when applied to comedy. 

The intentional presentation of false and one-sided information to the public must automatically lead to false conceptions of reality and thence to unwise political decisions. The intentional presentation of disinformation through suppression of news or spreading of false news should be considered one of the most serious crimes of a political nature that can be committed in a democracy. 

In the third quarter, we plan to offer a course which includes the presentation of expert witness testimony in a mock court of law with the assistance of the Northeastern University Law School. Practice trial sessions with student attorneys are envisioned. The course on arson and explosives will deal with detection of related crimes, and biometrics in the fifth quarter will cover concepts of statistics important in forensic chemistry. 

At the February meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Dallas, Texas, the Criminalistics Section supported a resolution that the Forensic Sciences Foundation develop a concept paper for a national system of crime laboratory proficiency testing This, subsequently, resulted in a grant award to the Foundation for an eighteen-month study which will test the feasibility of regular proficiency testing in the nation s forensic laboratories. 

The NAA method for the determination of firearm discharge residue has been generally accepted, but applications have been limited to just a few laboratories. In the process of establishing NAA capability for the State of Illinois crime laboratories we re-examined the standard techniques (10). In the course of our work it became clear that post-irradiation is the cause of several constraints which have discouraged a more widespread use of NAA. The inherent time limitation due to the 87 min. half-life of 139Ba necessitates fast manipulations of radioactive solutions which in turn requires an experienced radiochemist. In addition to an ever present danger of overexposure and contamination, typically only a dozen samples can be irradiated per batch, which makes the method quite expensive. The developed statistical bivariate-normal analysis (11) is convenient for routine applications. With this in mind, a method was developed which a) eliminates post-irradiation radiochemistry and thus maximizes time for analysis b) accommodates over 130 samples per irradiation capsule (rabbit) c) does not require a collection of occupational handblanks and d) utilizes a simplified statistical concept based on natural antimony and barium levels on hands for the interpretation of data. The detailed procedure will be published elsewhere (15). 

The Wuppertal Court based its conception of the layout of the site in question not only on the incorrect sketch but also on witness testimony, particularly on the testimony of the witness Freimark. The Court had affirmed that this witness recollected the site in particularly precise detail. And indeed, he described almost a dozen incorrect details precisely as they appear, incorrectly, on the Court s sketch. Witness Freimark obviously was not familiar with the alleged site of the crime from personal memory he merely went by the faulty sketch. 

The concepts of trace and microtrace were introduced into criminalistics to define material that had been found at the scene of a crime and then subjected to examination. The concept of a criminalistic trace was defined by Jan Sehn, who stated that traces in the criminalistic sense are changes in objective reality (.. . )... 

Clearly, much depends on how we define A s "normal" course of action. A moralized definition - where the normal course is the action that A ought to have taken - is clearly inadequate in some cases. It would, for instance, prevent us from saying that the police justly coerce people into abstaining from crimes. In some cases the relevant baseline would seem to be what A usually does in other cases it may be what he would have done in B s absence (not from the universe, but from A s field of influence). And in some cases a moralized conception of the baseline may... 

In short, the inquisitor was not concerned with overt, antisocial acts that was a problem for the secular courts. He was interested in heresy, which was a crime against God and the Christian religion, and was therefore defined in theological terms. The institutional psychiatrist is likewise not concerned with overt, antisocial acts that is a problem for the criminal courts. He is interested in mental illness, which is an offense against the laws of mental health and the psychiatric profession, and is therefore defined in medical terms. Mental illness is the pivotal concept of institutional psychiatry, just as heresy was of inquisitorial theology. ... 

This is no less dramatically true tor the folsity of the concept of mental illness than it is for that of masturbatory insanity. The National Association for Mental Health asserts, and American presidents endorse and repeat, that Mental illness is like any other illness. The facts are that American citizens may be hospitalized and treated against their will for mental illness, but not for any other may plead mental illness as an excuse to crime, but not any other and may obtain a divorce from their spouses disabled by mental illness, but not by any other. Yet, these facts have not weakened—indeed, perhaps they have strengthened—the psychiatric and popular view that mental disorders are medical diseases requiring care by physicians in hospitals. 

For these various reasons it is suggested that the way forward is to discard the concept of the match altogether, and to use in its place precise probabilities of getting the observed deviation between the two bands (scene-of-crime and suspect) under the two hypotheses. In the case of the hypothesis of guilt, this probability would be calculated from a normal distribution determined by the measurement error. In the case of innocence, the probability would be... 

Actuarial justice is a concept utilised in criminological literature to describe the tendency towards instrumental, regulatory modes of crime governance. Writers such as David Garland (2001) have identified the development of a bifurcated criminal justice system, which combines an instrumental strategy and an expressive strategy. On the one hand, modern penal practices are characterised by the imposition of harsher sanctions, politicised penal policies, and the expansion of the penal infrastructure. At the same time, however, the criminal justice system... 

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