Mini Review: The Forensic Value of Heat Shock Proteins

Forensic pathologists are routinely confronted with unclear causes of death or related findings. In some instances, difficulties arise in relation to questions posed by criminal investigators or prosecutors. Such scenarios may include questions about wound vitality or cause of death where typical or landmark findings are difficult to ascertain. In addition to the usual examinations required to clarify unclear causes of death or address specific questions, immunohistochemistry and genetic analyses have become increasingly important techniques in this area since their establishment last century. Since then, many studies have determined the usefulness and significance of immunohistochemical and genetic investigations on cellular structures and proteins. For example, these proteins include heat shock proteins (Hsp), which were first described in 1962 and are so called based on their molecular weight. They predominantly act as molecular chaperones with cytoprotective functions that support cell survival under (sub) lethal conditions. They are expressed in specific cellular compartments and have many divergent functions. Central family members include, Hsp 27, 60, and 70. This mini review investigates recent research on the Hsp family, their application range, respective forensic importance, and current limitations and provides an outlook on possible applications within forensic science.

Mini Review: Forensic Value of Aquaporines

Forensic pathologists are routinely confronted with unclear causes of death or findings. In some scenarios, it can be difficult to answer the specific questions posed by criminal investigators or prosecutors. Such scenarios may include questions about wound vitality or causes of death when typical or landmark findings are difficult to find. In addition to the usual subsequent examinations to clarify unclear causes of death or special questions, immunohistochemical analysis has become increasingly important since its establishment in the early 40s of the 20th century. Since then, numerous studies have been conducted to determine the usefulness and significance of immunohistochemical investigations on various structures and proteins. These proteins include, for example, aquaporins, which belong to the family of water channels. They enable the transport of water and of small molecules, such as glycerol, through biological channels and so far, 13 classes of aquaporins could have been identified in vertebrates. The classic aquaporin channels 1, 2, 4 and 5 are only permeable to water. The aquaporin channels 3, 7, 9, and 10 are also called aquaglycerolporins since they can also transport glycerol. This mini review discusses the immunohistochemical research on aquaporins, their range of applications, and respective forensic importance, their current limitations, and possible further implementations in the future.

Analysis of Criminal Law Sanctions' Application Against Statutory Rape from the Positive Law Perspective on Ambon Island and Lease Islands

The purpose of this study was to analyze the application of criminal law sanctions against statutory rape in Indonesia. The analysis employed a positive law perspective and an empirical legal approach. The research data consisted of verbal utterances and observation results collected from Criminal Investigators at the Ambon Island and Lease Islands’ police stations. Data analysis was carried out through (1) data reduction, (2) data display, and (3) conclusion. The results of this study indicate that criminal sanctions against statutory rape in Indonesia are applied through the process of investigation, visum et repertum, prosecution and summons of suspects and witnesses, statements of criminal penalties for the perpetrators, and prevention of sexual immorality and rape. The criminal sanctions are based on “Law Number 35 of 2014 about Amendments to Law Number 23 of 2002 concerning Child Protection Articles 76D and 81. Keywords: criminal, intercourse, positive law

A price paid? A review of the research on the impact of investigating serious crime on the wellbeing of police staff

Research pertaining to the wellbeing of police focuses on the job at a macro level, neglecting that policing is an occupation made up of thousands of roles. The needs of staff in various roles differs according to the situations that they are exposed to. This paper provides a review of the literature pertaining to the impact of criminal investigation on employees’ wellbeing. Three discernible categories regarding the wellbeing of criminal investigators are revealed and the paper demonstrates that criminal investigation has a negative effect on the wellbeing of staff. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research, training and support.

Face Sketch Recognition Using Computer Vision

Now-a-days need for technologies for identification, detection and recognition of suspects has increased. One of the most common biometric techniques is face recognition, since face is the convenient way used by the people to identify each-other. Understanding how humans recognize face sketches drawn by artists is of significant value to both criminal investigators and forensic researchers in Computer Vision. However, studies say that hand-drawn face sketches are still very limited in terms of artists and number of sketches because after any incident a forensic artist prepares a victim’s sketches on behalf of the description provided by an eyewitness. Sometimes suspect uses special mask to hide some common features of faces like nose, eyes, lips, face-color etc. but the outliner features of face biometrics one could never hide. Here we concentrate on some specific facial geometric feature which could be used to calculate some ratio of similarities from the template photograph database against the forensic sketches. The project describes the design of a system for face sketch recognition by a computer vision approach like Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Local Binary Pattern Histogram (LBPH) algorithm and a supervised machine learning model called Support Vector Machine (SVM) for face recognition. Tkinter is the standard GUI library for Python. Python when combined with Tkinter provides a fast and easy way to create GUI applications. Tkinter provides a powerful object-oriented interface to the Tk GUI toolkit.

Exposing Manipulated Photos and Videos in Digital Forensics Analysis

Tampered multimedia content is being increasingly used in a broad range of cybercrime activities. The spread of fake news, misinformation, digital kidnapping, and ransomware-related crimes are amongst the most recurrent crimes in which manipulated digital photos and videos are the perpetrating and disseminating medium. Criminal investigation has been challenged in applying machine learning techniques to automatically distinguish between fake and genuine seized photos and videos. Despite the pertinent need for manual validation, easy-to-use platforms for digital forensics are essential to automate and facilitate the detection of tampered content and to help criminal investigators with their work. This paper presents a machine learning Support Vector Machines (SVM) based method to distinguish between genuine and fake multimedia files, namely digital photos and videos, which may indicate the presence of deepfake content. The method was implemented in Python and integrated as new modules in the widely used digital forensics application Autopsy. The implemented approach extracts a set of simple features resulting from the application of a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) to digital photos and video frames. The model was evaluated with a large dataset of classified multimedia files containing both legitimate and fake photos and frames extracted from videos. Regarding deepfake detection in videos, the Celeb-DFv1 dataset was used, featuring 590 original videos collected from YouTube, and covering different subjects. The results obtained with the 5-fold cross-validation outperformed those SVM-based methods documented in the literature, by achieving an average F1-score of 99.53%, 79.55%, and 89.10%, respectively for photos, videos, and a mixture of both types of content. A benchmark with state-of-the-art methods was also done, by comparing the proposed SVM method with deep learning approaches, namely Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). Despite CNN having outperformed the proposed DFT-SVM compound method, the competitiveness of the results attained by DFT-SVM and the substantially reduced processing time make it appropriate to be implemented and embedded into Autopsy modules, by predicting the level of fakeness calculated for each analyzed multimedia file.

The Role of Police Investigators in Treating Criminal Actions of Corruption

To further ensure the implementation of a corruption-free government, Law Number 31 of 1999 concerning Eradication of Corruption Crimes, as amended by Law Number 20 of 2001 concerning Eradication of Corruption Crimes, is in lieu of Law Number 3 of 1971. The birth of the law -this law is expected to accelerate the growth of people's welfare, with a countermeasure against the evil nature inherent in corruption. The author uses an empirical juridical approach, which is an approach that is carried out by studying the law in fact in the form of attitudes, judgments, behaviors, which are related to the problems being studied and which are carried out by conducting research in the field. Based on the results of the research, it can be concluded that the investigation activity is a follow-up to the investigation which has more or less found the construction of criminal corruption incidents that have occurred. Constraints faced with the authority of police investigators are the limited number of Criminal Investigators; information received regarding criminal acts of corruption is still unclear and in detail; operational costs that have not met; lack of public legal awareness. Efforts to overcome the obstacles faced include gradually increasing the number of criminal investigators; accelerate all access so that information related to criminal acts of corruption is quickly absorbed by police investigators; the government needs to increase the budget post for operational costs, in order to facilitate the running of investigative activities; and the need to provide outreach to the public either directly or through electronic media or social media. Keywords: Investigators, Crime, Corruption

Forensic studies with human analogues: evaluation of decomposition and the use of residual odor detection dogs

This book is the product of the research group “Sniffing Knowledge” which belongs to the School for Canine Guidance and Training of the National Police of Colombia, in collaboration with the Institute of Forensic Sciences of the Texas Technological University (TTU). Chapter 1 includes experiments with human analogues (Sus Scrofa) detectable by canine teams, evaluating the sensitivity and specificity of the findings at sites where a corpse was found by means of a double blind test. The test is carried out in order to determine the existence of residual odor. It also validates the response of the dog and itshandler using unmanned aerial devices and uses dogs who were certified with human bone remains. Chapter 2 analyzes the effects of the external envelope of pigs against the rate of decomposition in order to understand, in real practice when a body is discovered at a crime scene, if such information is crucial for criminal investigators to be able to establish the Post Mortem Interval (IPM). The academic and experimental approach analyzes tangent efforts to present possible solutions to corpse inspection procedures or the possible sites associated with the events in which a person might die. To conclude, it articulates different fields of knowledge within the forensic sciences applied with canines, allowing high reliability for the subsequent approach in real operational work of missing persons or in cases of homicide in order to have an impact on the crimes that affect coexistence and citizen security in Colombia.

Toward Mass Video Data Analysis: Interactive and Immersive 4D Scene Reconstruction

The technical progress in the last decades makes photo and video recording devices omnipresent. This change has a significant impact, among others, on police work. It is no longer unusual that a myriad of digital data accumulates after a criminal act, which must be reviewed by criminal investigators to collect evidence or solve the crime. This paper presents the VICTORIA Interactive 4D Scene Reconstruction and Analysis Framework (“ISRA-4D” 1.0), an approach for the visual consolidation of heterogeneous video and image data in a 3D reconstruction of the corresponding environment. First, by reconstructing the environment in which the materials were created, a shared spatial context of all available materials is established. Second, all footage is spatially and temporally registered within this 3D reconstruction. Third, a visualization of the hereby created 4D reconstruction (3D scene + time) is provided, which can be analyzed interactively. Additional information on video and image content is also extracted and displayed and can be analyzed with supporting visualizations. The presented approach facilitates the process of filtering, annotating, analyzing, and getting an overview of large amounts of multimedia material. The framework is evaluated using four case studies which demonstrate its broad applicability. Furthermore, the framework allows the user to immerse themselves in the analysis by entering the scenario in virtual reality. This feature is qualitatively evaluated by means of interviews of criminal investigators and outlines potential benefits such as improved spatial understanding and the initiation of new fields of application.

Peran Reserse Kriminal Umum Sebagai Penyelidik Dalam Tindak Pidana Curat Dan Curas (Studi Di Polrestabes Medan)

This article discusses the problems regarding the factors causing the increase in criminal by theft robbery in Medan, what is the role of the General Criminal Agency of the Polerstabes Medan and what are the barriers Sin dealing with theft and robbery in the city of Medan. This study uses normative juridical legal research methods, with qualitative analysis. The data used are secondary data using primary legal sources. The results obtained in this study are that the cause of the increase in the level of criminal acts of theft and robbery is internal and external factors of the perpetrators of crime. General Criminal Agency Polrestabes Medan has a role as an investigator and investigator in criminal acts of theft and robbery that can use the authority given by the Criminal Procedure Code and police law. Obstacles obtained by criminal investigators can be categorized as barriers to juridical and non-juridical servitude.