Testing Death Penalty Opinions With General Questions and A Specific Case Scenario: Potential Lessons From China

Despite rich literature on public opinion on capital punishment, only a few studies examined people’s death penalty support within specific contexts. None have explored if correlates that influence people’s opinion would hold the same effect in general questions and specific case scenarios. Similarly, the Marshall hypotheses have not been tested with specific crime scenarios. Based on a sample of 1,077 students in a quasiexperimental design, this study contrasts Chinese students’ death penalty opinion in general questions with a specific crime scenario, and tests the Marshall hypotheses with the latter. Compared to their support in general questions, students’ support for death sentences dropped significantly in the specific crime scenario. Multivariate analyses showed that different factors influenced people’s decisions in the general questions and in the specific case, and respondents’ choices of preferred punishment in the specific crime scenario failed to lend support to the Marshall hypotheses.

Predicting support for community corrections: Crime type and severity, and offender, observer, and victim characteristics

The aim of the current research was to examine the contribution of crime type and severity as well as offender, observer, and victim characteristics to prediction of perception of community correction (CC) as an appropriate punishment. We conducted a telephone survey among Israeli citizens. A random and representative sample of 573 respondents, aged 20 to 74, evaluated the seriousness of crime scenarios and the appropriateness of CC for each scenario. In different versions of crime scenarios, we manipulated offence type as well as offender and victim characteristics. The results of a logistic regression indicate that perceived lower crime severity, a crime that is not murder, older offender age, and being a secular observer are related with an increased likelihood of supporting community corrections. The discussion addresses these findings in the context of punitive goals (e.g., revenge, retribution), public perception of offender dangerousness, and social identity theory.

Perceptions of Crime Seriousness and Punitive Attitudes in Post-Secondary Students

Public perceptions of crime seriousness and attitudes towards the punishment of crime stem from the social norms and values that shape society and are informed by ways of knowing about crime. Located within a social constructionist paradigm, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of post-secondary education, crime type and crime representation on perceptions of crime severity and punitive attitudes for different crime types. A sample of 971 students from the University of Winnipeg completed an online questionnaire measuring perceptions of crime severity for one-line crime descriptions as well as crime scenarios based on actual court data. Results show that both wrongfulness and harmfulness are strong predictors of perceived seriousness. As predicted, violent crimes ranked highest on measures of seriousness, wrongfulness, and harmfulness, and received the most severe sentencing recommendations. While the level of education completed had no significant difference on perceptions of crime severity, differences between fields of study showed significance. Comparisons between responses to the one-line crime descriptions and the crime scenarios revealed significantly stronger severity ratings for the scenarios than for the one-line descriptions although the ranking of crimes remained similar. Findings suggest that universal notions of wrongfulness and harmfulness exist that influence perceptions of seriousness and are resistant to change. Perceptions towards crimes are informed by a socially constructed reality of crime that shapes our knowledge of crime. Understanding the underlying factors that influence perceptions and attitudes towards crime may shed new light on the social approaches to dealing with crime and provides new insights into crime control practices and government crime policy. Finally, results also emphasize the importance of reflecting on the matter of crime representation in academic research.

Jurors' expectations and decision-making: Revisiting the CSI effect

It has been argued that the rise in popularity of crime show dramas over the past few years has led to jurors holding unrealistic expectations regarding the type of evidence presented at trial. This has been coined the CSI effect. We investigated the CSI effect and the less well-known Tech effect-assigning more weight to evidence if obtained through technological means-and the impact of crime severity on juror decision-making. However, we argue that as time progresses, such effects will no longer be found to impact juror decision-making processes. We propose that past effects reported in the literature can be explained by considering a novelty bias. Using both frequentist and Bayesian frameworks, we tested this claim. Participants were primed with a newspaper that either contained a forensic, technology, or neutral article. They were then presented with two crime scenarios and asked to provide a verdict and a confidence rating. We find that mock jurors were unaffected by either the priming manipulation or crime severity, finding no evidence for either the CSI or Tech effects. The data suggest jurors are not as easily biased as has been previously argued in the literature, indicating a potential shift in public perceptions and expectations regarding evidence.

The (In) Security o Smart Cities: Vulnerabilities, Risks, Mitigation and Prevention

Smart cities represent the overall development in an urban model utilizing human, and technological enhancement leading to an increase in economic and social opportunities. However, the significant challenges were observed with the rise of smart cities. A comprehensive review is conducted on the study of different approaches used for mitigation of the crime scenarios in smart cities in perspective of hacker’s view on hashing and thereby protecting the integrity of the data in heterogeneous devices on a network of smart city. This paper also proposes the ICT architecture of a smart city which is encompassed with numerous security layers in onion model to integrate secure framework for future smart city, for better city living and governance, based on cloud computing IoT and distributed computing in accordance with salted hash value added as a prefix and postfix in a generated password

Digital Forensic Analysis on Android Smartphones for Handling Cybercrime Cases

As the times progressed, forensic science has developed rapidly. The science of forensics extends to new areas of technology ranging from digital forensics, computer forensics and mobile forensics. Mobile forensics in analyzing and collecting data is obtained from various resources, such as operating systems, communication lines and also various storage media. The most popular mobile operating system of the day is a smartphone based on android operating system. With android technology, criminals can use that technology as a crime medium ranging from overriding crime ideas, crime targets and crime scenarios. In this Final Project use forensic mobile application to get data residing in cell phone actors, in the form of text, sound, picture and video that have or not yet deleted in smartphone. In this study, a model for investigating the crime scene is the author using the Generic Computer Forensic Investigation Model (GCFIM). On the GCFIM model the investigator may be able to return to the previous stage because of the possibility of a changeable situation (both physical and digital), the investigation tools used, the crime tools used, and the level of investigative expertise. In this research also added weighting method of word TF-IDF, where this method can help to find keyword in digital evidence in the form of word / text.

Virtual reality – level of immersion within the crime investigation

The 3D reconstruction and visualization of crime scenarios, such as criminal assaults, traffic accidents or homicides are defining a new approach with potential for increasing effectiveness within the criminal investigation process. Modern 3D capturing and processing methods are utilized to create an authentic and immersive virtual environment. Nonetheless, an immersion to virtual environment enables different levels of view. Virtual reality immersion views which are proposed and described. These views are specific by reasons of its role within the criminal investigation as well as its technical severity. Moreover, the possible methods for the design of proposed virtual views are analyzed and the next research steps are exposed.