Situational Peer Dynamics and Crime Decisions

Objectives To investigate how peer dynamics, specifically interpersonal conversations between a potential offender and a peer, contemporaneous with a crime opportunity, influence perceptions of sanction certainty and social costs. Methods Data are analyzed from randomized experiments and hypothetical vignettes embedded within a nationwide, online survey ( n = 1,275). Vignettes were presented for three distinct crime opportunities, drunk driving, fighting, and insurance fraud. Results The findings suggest that respondents adjust two core decision-making perceptions—the perceived certainty of being legally sanctioned and perceived social costs such as stigma or embarrassment—in accord with the content of verbal communications from peers. There is evidence for this both between and within subjects. Conclusions The study underscores the importance of accounting for both physical and social features of the situational context for crime in models of offender decision making. Implications are drawn regarding the social milieu for offender decision making, and the broader criminological relevance of choice principles.

Strategies to Prevent Online Sexual Abuse of Children

Online sexual abuse of children has severe and lasting implications. In addition to there being many avenues to commit sexual offences via technology, there are many ways to intervene. Industry-related prevention and intervention strategies are often targeted at blocking or catching a potential offender. Justice initiatives through punitive measures are targeted towards the perpetrator. Education and awareness campaigns are a means to prevent abuse before it happens or help a victim come forward to seek support and retribution. A systematic review of the literature will endeavour to find research that emphasizes intervention through education and awareness strategies for children and adolescents, including an analysis of the effectiveness of such programs. This protocol follows PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and provides details of the literature review and research parameters.

Features of the design and construction of pre-trial detention centers in Russia, taking into account environmental standards

Pre-trial detention of persons accused of committing a criminal offense is an integral measure in the justice system of any state. In most countries, there are specialized institutions for maintenance of this category of citizens. In Russia, they are called pre-trial detention centers. Such institutions belong to the penitentiary systems. By isolating a potential offender, pre-trial detention centers perform several tasks: 1) exclude the possibility of persons to hide from the investigation and the court; 2) make it impossible for them to continue criminal activities; 3) maximally complicate their obstruction of establishment of truth in a criminal case. Implementation of these tasks is facilitated to the maximum extent by proper design and construction of pre-trial detention centers, competent placement of facilities, security buildings and premises, optimal use of special gratings, doors and locks. The article deals with the regulation of design and construction standards of pre-trial detention centers by Russian legislation. The authors analyze the experience of penitentiary systems of foreign states, as well as the norms in force in Russia, highlighting strengths and weaknesses. The actual double subordination is established in solving the current problem. On the one hand, the department executing the preliminary report, on the other, the department organizing and controlling design and construction of institutions executing preventive measure. Such inconsistency creates problems in practical application of provisions of existing norms, leads to errors and, as a result, inadequate performance of isolation of suspects and accused of committing crimes. Based on the results of the study, it was proposed to create a unified legal document regulating the procedure for design and construction of pre-trial detention centers. There is a need to exclude the listed issues from provisions of documents not related to design and construction sphere. This will provide proper, common understanding of existing problems and their faster resolution.

DO PRECONCEITO À (IM)POLIDEZ: ASPECTOS SOCIAIS, IDEOLÓGICOS E LINGUÍSTICOS QUE CIRCUNSCREVEM PRÁTICAS RACISTAS E SEXISTAS NO FACEBOOK

Virtual interactions are often an extension of face-facing encounters, solidifying in digital spaces as the discursive discourse of racism and sexism practices. Starting from the studies of Sociology, Pragmatics and Interactional Sociolinguistics, our goal is to understand, from Fanon (2008), Van Dijk (2017) Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpeper (1996; 2011), as the prejudice of materializing in (im) language policy through Facebook posts. We conducted a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive survey whereby we selected a post in a Facebook group about a possible case of harassment between a foreign student and a brazilian student. For this, it selects and analyzes as the most relevant answers, according to the criteria of the social network itself. The results demonstrated how politeness strategies were used both to create a positive image of the potential offender and to solicit support from group members in relation to him; In addition, there is condensation between politeness and impoliteness strategies when the effect was to attack one of the group members, the victim or the supposed aggressor himself. Our investigation shows the historical, ideological, social and contextual foundations for the event, as well as an analysis of the politeness and impoliteness strategies applied by the group participants. Conclude that the statements seek alternate between politeness and linguistic impoliteness for the production of biased messages.

Society seen as a victim — how it may affect criminal law

Crimes committed against individual victims quite often affect the whole of society or a certain community as well. Therefore society should be seen as a relevant subject on the victim’s side, and not only as a potential offender or a neutral third party providing certain services for individual victims. Regarding society as a kind of a victim enables us to see crime and criminal reaction in a broader context going beyond the interests of individuals and creating a counterweight to them. For this reason it is important to see in which way society can be victimised, what are its preventive and compensatory interests and how they can be satisfied with the instruments of criminal law.

Category of guilt in criminal law: economic approach

The subject of the paper is guilt as criminal legal category.The main aim of the paper is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that there is a need for risk management in order to prevent crime.The description of methodology. The author uses economic approach and the theory of rational choice as well as the dialectic and formal-legal methodology.The main results and scope of their application. The greater the probability of socially dangerous consequences of actions, the greater the risk, the greater the degree of guilt of the subject and the degree of danger of the crime. In criminalization the risks should be optimally distributed between the state (installs criminal prohibitions) and the citizens (complying with those prohibitions), as well as between the potential offender and the victim. It is necessary to quantify the risk of socially dangerous consequences (for example, as a percentage) for each form of guilt. This will make it possible to streamline and develop forms of guilt, to correlate specific types of guilt with specific crimes in terms of the risks that the crime carries. New forms of guilt, in particular criminal ignorance, need to be introduced. Unlike negligence, which is difficult to control, ignorance, as well as competence, can be fully controlled. It is necessary to take into account the guilt of the victim, who by his behavior contributed to the crime. If the victim has not taken all precautions ( the more provoked the offender) - he must share the overall result, bear the risk of socially dangerous consequences. If there is a violation of the rules of conduct by the offender and the victim, the court should have the right to substantially mitigate the punishment or to refuse to apply it at all, taking into account the nature and extent of the violations committed by each party. For example, with regard to crimes of minor gravity when the victim provoking a crime, failure to take precautions should provide for mandatory exemption from criminal liability with compensation for harm in civil law. Premeditated intent seriously complicates the disclosure of crimes. This intent should be seen as a basis for more severe sanctions. The results of research may be used as the basis of correction of the criminal legislation.It is concluded that any form of guilt in any legal system is based on an assessment of the risks of negative consequences.

Crime prevention in terms of criminal intent criteria in white-collar crime

Purpose In the field of crime prevention there are several theoretical approaches explaining why crime occurs and how to prevent it. Three of them – routine activity theory, crime pattern theory and the theory of crime-as-choice – are logically tested in this work. The point of departure is to test if the theories are logical consistent and logical valid, irrespective of whether the criterion for criminal intent is changed from direct intention to negligence. Design/methodology/approach The issues will be explored in a logical structure by a first-order logic propositional analysis. Findings The analysis shows that all three theories are logical consistent, but only routine activity theory is logical valid. The conclusion is that crime prevention should in general assume that routine activity theory is the legitimate theory and that social prevention as a prevention strategy is logically unnecessary to adopt because it does not matter whether the offender is motivated (direct intention) or not (negligence). Practical implications It does not really matter if the authors theoretically treat white-collar offenders as motivated, because if they have committed an actus reus, they are an offender according to the objective requisites. This means that the best strategies to prevent a potential white-collar criminal are situational prevention, i.e. complicate their access to money, where it becomes irrelevant if the potential offender has a mens rea or not. What counts is the prevention of actus reus by a potential offender. Originality/value As far as I know, no one has previously investigated the logical consistency and/or logical validity of routine activity theory, crime pattern theory and the theory of crime-as-choice as theories of crime prevention.

Experimental Verification of the Mechanical Resistance of Forensic Marking by Means Synthetic DNA

This article deals with experimental verification of resistance of forensic identification marks (microdots in combination with artificial DNA) to property. It is considered mechanical abrasion from potential offender to remove or damage readability of marking and following identification. The aim of this work is to test the hypothesis that forensic marking can be completely removed by the process of mechanical abrasion without causing damages to a protected object. To fulfill this purpose it was designed and built a test equipment, where experiments were carried out to confirm or refute the above mentioned hypothesis.

Is Thymoglobulin or Rituximab the Cause of This Serum Sickness? A Case Report of Serum Sickness Dilemma and Literature Review

Serum sickness is an immune-complex-mediated systemic illness that can occur after treatment with monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies such as Rituxan (Rituximab) or antithymocyte globulin (Thymoglobulin), respectively. Since Rituximab is now being used as an adjuvant treatment for acute humoral rejection and its prevalence to cause serum sickness is comparable to Thymoglobulin-associated serum sickness (20% versus 27%), it should be considered a potential cause of serum sickness after rejection treatment. In kidney transplant patients, there are no case reports where patient received both Thymoglobulin and Rituximab before developing serum sickness. We are reporting a patient who developed serum sickness after receiving Thymoglobulin and Rituximab that led us to consider Rituximab as one of the potential causes in this patient’s serum sickness. Since diagnosis of serum sickness is clinical, and Rituximab use has expanded into treatment of glomerulonephritis and acute humoral rejection, it should be considered as a potential offender of serum sickness in these patient populations. There are not any evidence-based guidelines or published clinical trials to help guide therapy for antibody-induced serum sickness; however, we successfully treated our case with three doses of Methylprednisone 500 mg intravenously. Further studies are needed to evaluate Rituximab-associated serum sickness in nephrology population to find effective treatment options.

SOPHISTICATED ENFORCEMENT AND ADAPTIVE OFFENDERS

The interaction between a sophisticated player and a fictitious player is analyzed and applied to the problem of optimal enforcement. An adaptive potential offender myopically responds to the history of past enforcement. How can a sophisticated enforcement official take advantage of this behavior? Will compliance with the law be attained? Conditions under which full compliance arises is derived and the optimal cycle of enforcing and not enforcing the law is presented. Welfare is shown to be greater than if the offender was sophisticated as well.