Search Results (11)

Recent statistics reveal alarming flaws in the Criminal Justice System’s (CJS) handling of rape cases, undermining the pursuit of justice for complainants seeking legal redress. This paper takes a novel approach to explore police rape stereotype use in interviews with rape complainants, utilising critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis and discursive psychology to understand and critique the balance of power within an interview and how this might impact attrition and prosecution decisions. Ten police interviews with rape complainants were analysed with several suspect discursive constructions present throughout, including the interviewer constructing the suspect as misunderstanding, the complainant as miscommunicating non-consent, or agentless and passive talk. A significant and original finding was the way constructions interacted with the spectrum of stranger-to-partner rapes. In stranger rape cases, passive language often obscures the suspect and emphasises the complainant’s behaviour. Acquaintance rapes frequently involved misunderstandings centred on visible distress and mixed signals. Partner rapes highlighted issues around consent and coercion, with officers often ignorant of coercive control and domestic abuse. These findings align with Operation Bluestone Soteria (OSB); thus, the recommendations align with those made by OSB’s Pillar One. Full article

It has been more than ten years since the nationwide sentencing standardization reform was implemented in China to solve the widespread problem of uneven sentencing in criminal justice. A statistical analysis of 1595 written judgments of illegal possession of drugs showed that the reform of sentencing for the standardization amount-based crimes has achieved remarkable results, and judges’ discretion has been highly normative and consistent. Under the same criminal circumstances, the degree of consistency between the amount involved in the crime and imprisonment has significantly increased, which is more in line with the standards of formal justice. However, the effect of the sentencing standardization reform declined as the amount involved in the crime increased. This exposes the shortcomings of the standardized sentencing model when considering multiple crimes; these include confusion between the amount and circumstances of a crime, the imbalance between crime and punishment, and the application of discretionary circumstances in sentencing depending on the amount involved in the crime. Therefore, it is necessary to attach more importance to the evaluation of the legitimacy of the sentencing range established by criminal law in subsequent sentencing reforms and to further refine and perfect the standardized sentencing mode, with a shift from formal justice to justice in form and substance. Full article

This paper presents an attempt at establishing an association between crime levels and prison populations across European countries. We observe that the situation in Central and Eastern European countries differs distinctly from the rest of Europe. Building on this, we offer justification that is methodologically based on correlations and regressions of country incarceration rates on crime rates, with reference to governance indicators. Our cross-sectional analysis uses data on crime and prisoner rates by offence from Eurostat and SPACE for the year 2018. The paper’s empirical analysis is preceded by a discussion of the challenges faced when attempting to compare crime between countries in Europe. A review of research focused on relationships between incarceration and crime follows, with the emphasis on the deterrence effect and the prison paradox. Typically, this stream of research uses microdata covering a single country or limited to a smaller geographic area. International comparisons are rare, and are usually based on time series and trend analyses. The quantitative approach applied here is based on recognizing two clusters of countries: the Central and Eastern European (CEE) cluster and the Western European (WE) cluster. We show that the observation of higher prisoner rates and lower crime rates for CEE countries is confirmed with regression analysis. Our study encompasses four types of offences: assault, rape, robbery, and theft. The final section of the paper presents an attempt to incorporate Worldwide Governance Indicators into the analysis of the association between incarceration and crime rates. The results confirm that crime rates in WE countries are distinctly higher than in CEE countries, while incarceration rates in WE are significantly lower than in CEE countries. We think this is due to a higher percentage of crimes being reported and the greater accuracy of police statistics in WE countries. The prison population in each country is largely determined by its criminal and penal policies, which differ substantially between CEE and WE countries (e.g., in terms of frequency of imposing prison sentences and the length of imprisonment). These tendencies result in higher incarceration rates in CEE countries, despite lower crime rates when compared to WE countries. Full article

One of the difficulties of artificial intelligence is to ensure that model decisions are fair and free of bias. In research, datasets, metrics, techniques, and tools are applied to detect and mitigate algorithmic unfairness and bias. This study examines the current knowledge on bias and unfairness in machine learning models. The systematic review followed the PRISMA guidelines and is registered on OSF plataform. The search was carried out between 2021 and early 2022 in the Scopus, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, and Google Scholar knowledge bases and found 128 articles published between 2017 and 2022, of which 45 were chosen based on search string optimization and inclusion and exclusion criteria. We discovered that the majority of retrieved works focus on bias and unfairness identification and mitigation techniques, offering tools, statistical approaches, important metrics, and datasets typically used for bias experiments. In terms of the primary forms of bias, data, algorithm, and user interaction were addressed in connection to the preprocessing, in-processing, and postprocessing mitigation methods. The use of Equalized Odds, Opportunity Equality, and Demographic Parity as primary fairness metrics emphasizes the crucial role of sensitive attributes in mitigating bias. The 25 datasets chosen span a wide range of areas, including criminal justice image enhancement, finance, education, product pricing, and health, with the majority including sensitive attributes. In terms of tools, Aequitas is the most often referenced, yet many of the tools were not employed in empirical experiments. A limitation of current research is the lack of multiclass and multimetric studies, which are found in just a few works and constrain the investigation to binary-focused method. Furthermore, the results indicate that different fairness metrics do not present uniform results for a given use case, and that more research with varied model architectures is necessary to standardize which ones are more appropriate for a given context. We also observed that all research addressed the transparency of the algorithm, or its capacity to explain how decisions are taken. Full article

Personality types are related to trustworthy, reliable, and competent communication, especially when dealing with clients. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether the Myers–Briggs (MBTI) indicator could be used to detect differences in the personality preferences of students at the Veterinary Faculty, University of Ljubljana (VS) compared to students at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor (CJS). Our aim was to profile the two cohorts of students in Slovenia, to compare profiles of students from the social and natural sciences with similar personality traits, and to compare them with published results. CJS are considered well-established, well-studied, non-science ombudsman profiles of students in Slovenia for whom care and safety will play important roles in their future work, similar to VS. Views of people’s duties to animals and the implications for animal care, safety, and welfare are also very important, especially for VS. For this reason, we tested the ethical viewpoints of the two cohorts of students using an interactive web-based program. Our results show that both VS and CJS had different MBTI types, with ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging) preferences predominating, followed by INFJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging) in VS and ESTJ (Extraverted, Observant, Thinking, and Judging) in CJS. Between the two cohorts, the ratio between ISFJ and INFJ was statistically different. In the animal ethics study, the utilitarian viewpoint was most prevalent and statistically higher in VS compared to CJS, where the animal rights perspective was most prevalent. Compared to previous profile studies, some differences were found that could be related to the COVID-19 pandemic and/or the different generations of students. Overall, this study highlights the importance of personality traits for better communication, work, and animal research in veterinary science as well as criminal justice. Full article

(1) Background: The one general psychopathology (p Factor) theory asserts that a superordinate dimensional construct encompasses underlying forms of psychopathology, but the theory has limited empirical linkages to criminology. (2) Methods: We utilized case reports from 12 male offenders selected from a federal jurisdiction in the central United States who were in the 99th percentile on a composite indicator of psychopathology to advance a qualitative study of the p Factor. (3) Results: Clients experienced frequent and often pathological traumatic experiences and exhibited exceedingly early onset of conduct problems usually during the preschool period. Their criminal careers were overwhelmingly versatile and contained numerous offense types, had extensive justice system contacts, and exhibited remarkable deficits in global functioning. Most clients spent the majority of their life in local, state, or federal confinement. Consistent with the theory, clients experienced a generalized psychopathology disposition that had undercurrents of externalizing, internalizing, psychotic, paraphilic, and homicidal features. (4) Conclusions: A qualitative understanding of the p Factor and its contribution to offending behaviors among correctional clients complements the statistical approach to developmental psychopathology. Full article

Serial murder is a specific type of violent crime that falls into the crime category of multicide. According to the nomenclature of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Violent Crime Classification Manual and Academic Researchers for the Classification of Violent Crimes, most serial killers are adults. However, serial murder is also committed by young people, although to a lesser extent. Young serial killers are a topic of relevance in areas such as psychology, criminology, and the justice system. Given that the study of the variables that could be the basis of such multicide criminality is not conclusive, the need for further research is evident. The homicides perpetrated by children and young people point to a social panorama that is alarming due to their young age. This issue is prevalent enough to conduct a review. The performed review concludes the importance of psychosocial factors to better understand the process by which children and young people commit crimes as serious as serial murders. The scope of the problem of serial murders perpetrated by minors is controversial because it often depends on how the number of real cases is counted. Although official statistics indicate the low prevalence of juvenile serial killers, childhood is a period in which antisocial behaviour can have its beginning. Some authors consider that it is not uncommon for the first murder of this type to occur in adolescence. It is important to consider psychopathy as an influential factor in the various forms of serial criminal conduct committed by children and young people. The research works consulted provide evidence of the special relevance of psychopathy in the generation of serious juvenile delinquency. Full article

The restorative justice (RJ) paradigm requires coherence among legal, justice, and educational systems to promote a culture of restorative dialogue with victims of violence and to reintegrate aggressors into the community. The objective of this study, from an evolutionary social perspective, was to examine criminal mediation files in the archives of the Murcia Intrajudicial Criminal Mediation Service (UMIM), Spain, to see which variables are associated with which types of violence and understand the contents and adoption of agreements. In this study the sociodemographic, procedural, and interpersonal variables of 216 people who used criminal mediation were analysed. The results showed statistically significant differences concerning age, the procedural moment of referral, and the participants’ relationship. The main conclusions are that the youngest group had a more significant number of encounters with physical violence; most agreements occurred in the initial phase of a judicial procedure; and the majority of agreements had moral content regardless of the age of the parties involved. These factors are of interest to the establishment of judicial and educational restorative models. Full article

Society has undergone an entire evolution in the field of criminal penalties, as people want to avoid, or ideally to extinguish, crime and consequent victimization. However, the human nature would hardly allow such utopian society to prevail. Hence, as individuals, we do have codes and bylaws that govern our society. The number of male prisoners is considerably higher in comparison to female prisoners. The aim of the present research is to analyze the sex inequality in the Portuguese criminal justice system, as well as to discuss the following questions: (i) Are men suffering from unjustifiable discrimination by the criminal system? Or, (ii) are there any physical and psychological differences between both sexes? A quantitative and qualitative approach was used. A legal framework was created regarding penalty enforcement, followed by a review of the literature approaching themes of criminology, victimization, and sex inequality. To enrich and empirically support this research, the statistics provided by the Directorate-General for Justice Policy of the Ministry of Portuguese Justice are presented, and a descriptive analysis on the evolution of the number of inmates in Portuguese prisons and juveniles detained in educational centers, between 2010 and 2019 was performed. Implications of this study are is discussed to highlight mediation in criminal cases as a neutral future. Full article

Micro-expression is a spontaneous emotional representation that is not controlled by logic. A micro-expression is both transitory (short duration) and subtle (small intensity), so it is difficult to detect in people. Micro-expression detection is widely used in the fields of psychological analysis, criminal justice and human-computer interaction. Additionally, like traditional facial expressions, micro-expressions also have local muscle movement. Psychologists have shown micro-expressions have necessary morphological patches (NMPs), which are triggered by emotion. Furthermore, the objective of this paper is to sort and filter these NMPs and extract features from NMPs to train classifiers to recognize micro-expressions. Firstly, we use the optical flow method to compare the on-set frame and the apex frame of the micro-expression sequences. By doing this, we could find facial active patches. Secondly, to find the NMPs of micro-expressions, this study calculates the local binary pattern from three orthogonal planes (LBP-TOP) operators and cascades them with optical flow histograms to form the fusion features of the active patches. Finally, a random forest feature selection (RFFS) algorithm is used to identify the NMPs and to characterize them via support vector machine (SVM) classifier. We evaluated the proposed method on two popular publicly available databases: CASME II and SMIC. Results show that NMPs are statistically determined and contribute to significant discriminant ability instead of holistic utilization of all facial regions. Full article

In 1996, a coordinated community response (CCR) was formally established in a mid-sized Midwestern city to improve the criminal justice response to intimate partner violence (IPV). Data for this study included all IPV-related incidents to which the local police department responded since the establishment of the CCR for a fourteen year period. Effective CCRs provide for IPV offender accountability through citation and prosecution of IPV-related crimes. Concerns about demographic variables affecting citation and prosecution rates have been identified in the literature. Compared to national statistics, gender differences were consistent but higher citation and conviction rates were identified in this community. While differences related to race were found, they were small in size. Although lack of data available from the time prior to the implementation of the CCR model for comparison precludes a definitive conclusion about the effectiveness of the CCR, our findings suggest there is benefit to having one. Full article