Search Results (74)

Famed lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) argued strongly for an early-life public health approach to crime prevention, one that focused on education, poverty reduction, and equity of resources. Due to his defense of marginalized persons and his positions that were often at odds with his legal colleagues and public opinion, he was known as the Big Minority Man. He argued that the assumption of free will—humans as free moral agents—justifies systems of inequity, retributive punishment, and “unadulterated brutality.” Here, the authors revisit Darrow’s views and expand upon them via contemporary research. We examine increasingly louder argumentation—from scholars across multiple disciplines—contending that prescientific notions of willpower, free will, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility, are contributing to social harms. We draw from biopsychosocial perspectives and recent scientific consensus papers calling for the dismantling of folk psychology ideas of willpower and blameworthiness in obesity. We scrutinize how the status quo of the legal system is justified and argue that outdated notions of ‘moral fiber’ need to be addressed at the root. The authors examine recent arguments for one of Darrow’s ideas—a public health quarantine model of public safety and carceral care that considers the ‘causes of the causes’ and risk assessments through a public health lens. In our view, public health needs to vigorously scrutinize the prescientific “normative” underpinnings of the criminal justice system. Full article

This article focuses on how rising nativism, manifested through immigrants’ experiences of everyday discrimination, and Florida’s legal context (ascertained through immigrants’ fears of deportation), are related to immigrants’ hesitation when seeking healthcare services. Hesitation to seek healthcare, or healthcare hesitancy, is examined in the context of Florida’s SB1718, a law passed in 2023 that criminalized many aspects of being an immigrant. Based on a survey of 466 Florida immigrants and U.S. citizen adult children of immigrants, logistic regression analysis reveals that everyday experiences with discrimination are associated with a reluctance to seek healthcare services among this population. In particular, those with insecure legal immigrant status (i.e., undocumented and temporary statuses), those with financial hardship, and women demonstrate reluctance to engage with healthcare systems when controlling for other sociodemographic factors. Findings from this study exemplify how immigration policies that restrict access to healthcare and social services not only create logistical barriers to seeking care but also foster a climate of fear and exclusion that deters even those with legal status from seeking medical attention. Full article

This community-based participatory research (CBPR) study explored, using a Photovoice methodology, the lived expeiences of northeastern Black and/or African American youth and mothers who were currently experiencing the incarceration of their fathers and husbands. Grounded in critical theories of dual consciousness and comparative conflict, the findings provide valuable insights into how this population navigates the intersections of family, school, and community within the context of the criminal legal system, and, in the process, underscore the relevance of Abolitionist practice in capturing their theoretically lived experiences. Participants documented through photography and narrative reflections the multifaceted impacts of incarceration on fathers and husbands, including disrupted family dynamics, social stigma, and barriers to community resources. A focus group with the mothers of these youth highlighted the profound impact of incarceration on their family structure, revealing significant emotional burdens for caregivers as well as personal changes to parenting styles as a result of this project. A central theme that emerged was the development of a “double” or “dual consciousness”—an ability to see humanity and injustice in their circumstances, fueling a desire for systemic change. Overall, this CBPR project amplifies the voices of marginalized youth and mothers, illuminating how the criminal legal system perpetuates cycles of trauma, stigma, and disempowerment. The implications call for a radical reimagining of the role of social work in creating more equitable, restorative, and healing-centered communities, including an immediate embrace of Abolitionist practice concepts and interventions. Full article

Human trafficking, a grave violation of human rights, frequently intersects with financial crimes, notably identity theft and coercive debt accumulation. This creates complex challenges for victims, survivors, and law enforcement. Victims of human trafficking are often coerced and/or threatened into committing various forms of crime, referred to as “forced criminality.” In recent years, this trend of criminality has moved from violent crimes to financial crimes and fraud, including identity theft, synthetic identity fraud, and serving as money mules. This phenomenon, termed “forced fraud”, exacerbates the already severe trauma experienced by victims (referred to as both victims and survivors throughout, consistent with trauma-informed terminology) trapping them in a cycle of financial instability and legal complications. Traffickers often coerce their victims into opening credit lines, taking out loans, or committing fraud all in their own names, leading to ruined credit histories and insurmountable debt. These financial burdens make it extremely difficult for survivors to rebuild their lives post-trafficking. This paper explores the mechanisms of forced fraud, its impact on survivors, and the necessary legislative and financial interventions to support survivors. By examining first-hand accounts and social and policy efforts from a range of sources, this paper highlights the urgent need for comprehensive support systems that address both the immediate and long-term financial repercussions of human trafficking. Full article

Background: The United States has the highest number of immigrants in the world, with over 46 million foreign-born residents as of 2022. A growing number of migrants originate from Latin America, driven by factors such as economic instability, food insecurity, and crime. This study explores their experiences and perceptions regarding trust in the criminal justice system (CJS) in both their home countries and the United States. Methods: This study surveyed 500 migrants at a transitional institution in a U.S.–Mexico border city in the summer of 2023. The survey assessed confidence in law enforcement, immigration officers, courts, and government institutions using a 5-point Likert scale. Results: Migrants reported significantly higher confidence in the U.S. CJS compared to that of their home countries. Multivariate analysis revealed that satisfaction with border officials, documentation status, English proficiency, and health were positively associated with confidence in the U.S. CJS, while employment status, traveling with family, and fear of crime correlated with lower confidence. Conclusions: This study highlights the stark contrast in migrants’ confidence levels between their home countries and the U.S. criminal justice system. While migrants view the U.S. system as more legitimate, challenges such as fear of crime and legal uncertainties persist. Full article

The vast majority of people in U.S. women’s prisons are survivors of interpersonal violence, a pattern that organizers and advocates have referred to as the abuse-to-prison pipeline. This article critically examines criminal prosecution from the perspectives of survivors of interpersonal violence who faced long prison sentences in California. In-depth interviews and group discussions were generated through a participatory process at a gathering to launch the University of California Sentencing Project, a partnership with the community-based organization California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The twenty-two formerly incarcerated participants had collectively spent more than 300 years imprisoned. Drawing on their lived experiences spanning several decades and multiple jurisdictions, this article offers an unyielding account of tactics of isolation, intimidation, narrative manipulation, and confinement as definitional to prosecutorial practice and culture. This criminalized survivor-centered analysis of prosecution shows how one of the most robustly funded public interventions for interpersonal violence is not merely failing to protect victims but is protracting patterns of abuse and coercive control. Implications are discussed in terms of social care work and collective defense rooted in abolition feminism. Full article

In an ongoing series of interviews, Challenges Advisory Board member and Nova Institute for Health Fellow Alan C. Logan meets with thought leaders, scientists, scholars, healthcare professionals, artisans, and visionaries concerned about health at the scale of individuals, communities, and the planet. Here, Dr. Pragya Mishra responds to a set of questions posed by Challenges. Dr. Mishra, a legal academician and one of the few global scholars with a PhD specifically in neurolaw, is at the forefront of research examining the intersection of law and brain sciences. As a concept and developing field, the promise of neurolaw is that it will lead to a more equitable and less punitive justice system, one based on objective science rather than prescientific assumptions of blameworthiness and willpower. Here, Dr. Mishra reflects on the promises and pitfalls of neurolaw, the growing challenges to the free will assumptions held by the courts, and her work in a field that epitomizes a transdisciplinary effort. She discusses the place of contemplative practices within neurolaw, with special emphasis on the hope of rehabilitation. Dr. Mishra describes neurolaw through a holistic lens, one that embraces future possibilities and the shaping of evidence-based policy changes. While planetary health embraces justice as a broad term, it has paid little attention to the criminal justice system. Discussions of neurolaw are important to the ethical frameworks of planetary health. Neurolaw, as Dr. Mishra explains, is at the heart of the many interconnected challenges of our time. Full article

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), presents critical challenges for correctional systems, particularly as global populations age. AD, affecting 60–80% of dementia cases, primarily impairs memory and cognition in individuals over 65. In contrast, FTD, rarer than AD but not uncommon in those under 65, affects the frontal and temporal brain regions, leading to deficits in social behavior, language, and impulse control, often resulting in antisocial actions and legal consequences. Behavioral variant FTD is especially associated with socially inappropriate and impulsive behaviors due to frontal lobe degeneration. The prevalence of cognitive impairment in incarcerated populations is high, exacerbated by prison environments that compound distress and limited access to specialized healthcare. Studies indicate that up to 11% of United States state prison inmates over the age of 55 exhibit cognitive impairments, often undiagnosed, resulting in punitive rather than rehabilitative responses to symptoms like disinhibition and aggression. Ethical concerns around criminal responsibility for individuals with dementia are increasingly prominent, particularly regarding their ability to comprehend and engage in legal proceedings. The growing elderly prison population necessitates reform in correctional healthcare to include early cognitive assessment, targeted intervention, and tailored post-release programs. Addressing these needs is essential to ensure appropriate treatments, alleviate healthcare demands, and support reintegration for cognitively impaired inmates. Full article

The article discusses the ultimate limits of crime proceeds control measures from the perspective of the proportionality principle. The concept of the general illicit enrichment offence (GIEO) is explored as it is considered one of the most radical illicit asset control measures. It is based on two extreme elements: first, it reaches broadly beyond the all-crime proceeds approach and targets any unexplained assets. Secondly, it provides highly intrusive measures, involving both the confiscation of assets and, in addition, criminal sanctions. The advantages and risks of the concept are examined from both practical and basic legal principle perspectives. The author presents recent results from the Lithuanian penal justice system, where the GIEO has been introduced into penal law and practice since the end of 2010. A rich body of case law from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and European Union Court of Justice (EUCJ) serves as the background of the analysis. The author concludes that the concept of GEIO is in conflict with the proportionality principle. Although the Lithuanian Constitutional Court did not find proportionality issues with the GIEO, the prospects of successful challenges with respect to the proportionality principle in the ECtHR and the EUCJ appear promising. Full article

Electronic evidence is an essential component in most legal trials of criminal activities, and digital forensics is therefore a crucial support for law enforcement investigations. For instance, a wide range of electronic devices contain Not AND (NAND) flash memory chips, and when a criminal leaves digital evidence on non-operational or locked systems, accessing this memory is crucial. Student acquisition of the necessary competences and skills associated with electronic devices, their basic principles, and the associated technologies can be provided by experimental training, as done with the optional Digital Forensics module included in the degree in Criminalistics: Forensic Sciences and Technologies offered by the University of Alcalá (Spain). This module equips students with the appropriate skills to extract, process, and authenticate evidence information using suitable tools. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of experimental learning, deployed through laboratory digital forensic tasks. A literature review was conducted of novel data extraction and analysis tools and procedures as a guide to the design of data recovery tasks incorporating experimental learning. Drawing on student feedback, our results highlight positive learning outcomes for the students. It is concluded that powerful forensic image analysis freeware is capable of identifying elements, and practical tests involving JTAG/chip−off extraction and analysis yield favorable results. A proposal for future studies is to reduce the destructiveness of invasive extraction methods. Full article

True crime podcasts invite their listeners to crowdsource investigations online, solving cases that have fallen through the cracks of the criminal justice system. Through a cultural criminologist lens, this digital ethnography examines The Vanished podcast as a case study of how true crime listeners engage with solving cases in digital community spaces. Previous studies have dismissed true crime fans as pseudo police acting as digital vigilantes. Podcasting communities provide an important public service, working as participatory journalists to investigate the story and report the truth. Rather than depending on law enforcement permission to organize, online crime-investigation communities leverage the Internet’s function as an organizing agent for mobilization beyond the parameters of conventional social structures and formal government agencies. Findings reveal a six-step process of case collaboration between podcast producers, active listeners, and family and friends of missing persons. Other communities can apply this unique system to successfully investigate crime, suggesting implications for individuals within marginalized groups less likely to find justice through the formal legal system. Full article

The proliferation of AI-generated content (AIGC) has empowered non-experts to create highly realistic Deepfake images and videos using user-friendly software, posing significant challenges to the legal system, particularly in criminal investigations, court proceedings, and accident analyses. The absence of reliable Deepfake verification methods threatens the integrity of legal processes. In response, researchers have explored deep forgery detection, proposing various forensic techniques. However, the swift evolution of deep forgery creation and the limited generalizability of current detection methods impede practical application. We introduce a new deep forgery detection method that utilizes image decomposition and lighting inconsistency. By exploiting inherent discrepancies in imaging environments between genuine and fabricated images, this method extracts robust lighting cues and mitigates disturbances from environmental factors, revealing deeper-level alterations. A crucial element is the lighting information feature extractor, designed according to color constancy principles, to identify inconsistencies in lighting conditions. To address lighting variations, we employ a face material feature extractor using Pattern of Local Gravitational Force (PLGF), which selectively processes image patterns with defined convolutional masks to isolate and focus on reflectance coefficients, rich in textural details essential for forgery detection. Utilizing the Lambertian lighting model, we generate lighting direction vectors across frames to provide temporal context for detection. This framework processes RGB images, face reflectance maps, lighting features, and lighting direction vectors as multi-channel inputs, applying a cross-attention mechanism at the feature level to enhance detection accuracy and adaptability. Experimental results show that our proposed method performs exceptionally well and is widely applicable across multiple datasets, underscoring its importance in advancing deep forgery detection. Full article

Rates of victimization from identity theft continue to rise exponentially. Personally identifiable information (PII) has become vitally valuable data bad actors use to commit fraud against individuals. Focusing primarily on the United States and Canada, the objective of this paper is to raise awareness for those involved in criminal justice (CJ) to more fully understand potential life-changing consequences for those whose PII is used fraudulently. We examine the impact of crimes involving PII and the urgent need to increase investigations and legal proceedings for identity theft-related crimes. Referring to a National Crime Victimization Survey, we analyze why many victims of identity theft crimes resist notifying appropriate authorities. We also address why those within the CJ system are often reluctant to initiate actions against occurrences of identity theft. We provide insight into consequences experienced by identity theft victims, particularly if their PII is posted on the Dark Web, a threat that can exist into perpetuity. If rates of victimization from identity theft-based crimes are to decline, reporting of victimization must increase, and current legislation related to investigating and processing identity theft crimes must progress. Full article

This article examines the challenges posed by criminal subcontractors in the construction industry. It aims to delineate the specific crimes committed by these subcontractors and assess their impact against the broader backdrop of industry-related criminality. Employing a scoping literature review, the study explores the existing research, summarizes key findings, and highlights gaps in the current knowledge. The construction industry’s inherent complexities and reliance on extensive subcontracting create an environment ripe for criminal activities. The research questions addressed are the following: (1) What crimes are carried out by subcontractors? (2) What are the consequences of crimes carried out by subcontractors? This study identifies several major concerns: (1) adverse impacts on project management in terms of timelines, quality, and budgetary control; (2) widespread exploitation within supply chains, ranging from wage disparities to modern slavery; (3) prevalent fraudulent practices, such as bribery, collusion, and embezzlement; and (4) the detrimental effect on Health, Environment, and Safety (HES) standards. The article underscores the diversity of legal frameworks across jurisdictions and signals the need for concerted efforts to enhance crime prevention measures, foster industry-wide collaboration, and establish robust control systems. There is an urgent need for a profound understanding of the contractor–subcontractor dynamic and procurement of substandard materials. The findings suggest that the construction industry faces formidable challenges due to criminal elements, profoundly affecting project efficiency, legal compliance, and worker welfare. Full article

This applied linguistics study on the lay discourse about legal language analyses online public reactions to a court decision in the Sarah Halimi case, a French Jewish woman killed by her neighbour in Paris in 2017. This study draws on discourse analysis with a focus on semantics analysis and dialogism theory to delve into how legal discourse is disseminated in forums and undergoes semantic redefinition through users’ language practices of legal notion in their own discourses. Thus, the aim of this study is not to develop linguistics theories but to use linguistics to explore the relationship between (1) the public representation and perception of this murder case in three forums and (2) the politico-legal response to decisions about a lack of criminal responsibility. The latter remains a sensitive topic in several countries, and several criminal justice reforms are revised or implemented with close observation of public reaction. This analysis highlights the linguistic markers revealing emotional discourse and a polymorphous expression of a lack of confidence in the justice system and legal actors, emphasising issues in comprehending justice and the work of psychiatrists and highlighting a gap between expectations and the actual delivery of justice. This study also shows that the linguistic strategies of non-experts are similar to those of legal experts. Full article