Offense Severity Research Articles

The Silicon Valley Bank Failure: Application of Benford’s Law to Spot Abnormalities and Risks

Data are produced every single instant in the modern era of technological breakthroughs we live in today and is correctly termed as the lifeblood of today’s world; whether it is Google or Meta, everyone depends on data to survive. But, with the immense surge in technological boom comes several backlashes that tend to pull it down; one similar instance is the data morphing or modification of the data unethically. In many jurisdictions, the phenomenon of data morphing is considered a severe offense, subject to lifelong imprisonment. There are several cases where data are altered to encrypt reliable details. Recently, in March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed following unrest prompted by increasing rates. Silicon Valley Bank ran out of money as entrepreneurial investors pulled investments to maintain their businesses afloat in a frigid backdrop for IPOs and individual financing. The bank’s collapse was the biggest since the financial meltdown of 2008 and the second-largest commercial catastrophe in American history. By confirming the “Silicon Valley Bank” stock price data, we will delve further into the actual condition of whether there has been any data morphing in the data put forward by the Silicon Valley Bank. To accomplish the very same, we applied a very well-known statistical paradigm, Benford’s Law and have cross-validated the results using comparable statistics, like Zipf’s Law, to corroborate the findings. Benford’s Law has several temporal proximities, known as conformal ranges, which provide a closer examination of the extent of data morphing that has occurred in the data presented by the various organizations. In this research for validating the stock price data, we have considered the opening, closing, and highest prices of stocks for a time frame of 36 years, between 1987 and 2023. Though it is worth mentioning that the data used for this research are coarse-grained, still since the validation is subjected to a larger time horizon of 36 years; Benford’s Law and the similar statistics used in this article can point out any irregularities, which can result in some insight into the situation and into whether there has been any data morphing in the Stock Price data presented by SVB or not. This research has clearly shown that the stock price variations of the SVB diverge much from the permissible ranges, which can give a conclusive direction on further investigations in this issue by the responsible authorities. In addition, readers of this article must note that the conclusion formed about the topic discussed in this article is objective and entirely based on statistical analysis and factual figures presented by the Silicon Valley Bank Group.

Age, Race/Ethnicity, and Offense Severity: An Examination of the Liberation Hypothesis for Juvenile Case Outcomes at Final Disposition

Prior research on juvenile court processing indicates that legal and extralegal factors impact outcomes at judicial disposition. Less is known, however, if the combined effects of certain characteristics influence decision-making. Applying the liberation hypothesis, this study investigates the interactive effects of a juvenile’s age, race/ethnicity, and offense severity on dispositional outcomes. Using all adjudicated complaints from North Carolina between 2011 and 2018, results suggest that irrespective of a juvenile’s age, youth of color had greater odds of receiving residential placement than community-based sanctions. Regardless of offense severity, Black youth were treated more punitively than Hispanics and Whites. Findings underscore the importance of acknowledging disparities in case outcomes and creating programming options within juvenile justice to meet the needs of youth of color.

Foreigners’ crime and punishment: Punitive application of immigration law as a substitute for criminal justice

Notwithstanding claims about the emergence of ‘crimmigration’ systems, immigration law and criminal law entail two different sets of instruments for authorities to control foreign nationals. Drawing on an analysis of removal orders for foreign offenders in Finland, this article demonstrates that significant administrative powers in immigration enforcement are employed largely autonomously from the criminal justice system. Immigration law enables the police and immigration officials to issue removal orders based on fines or penal orders for (suspected) minor offences, without obtaining criminal convictions. In addition to disproportionate administrative sanctions for foreign nationals, removal orders involve a preventive rationale targeting future risks for the society based on the assumed continuation of criminal activities. While criminal courts adjudicate all severe offences, punitive application of immigration law enables authorities to bypass criminal justice procedures and safeguards, resulting in a distinct, administrative punitive system for visiting third-country nationals.

Hierarchical approaches to Text-based Offense Classification.

Researchers working with administrative crime data often must classify offense narratives into a common scheme for analysis purposes. No comprehensive standard currently exists, nor is there a mapping tool to transform raw descriptions into offense types. This paper introduces a new schema, the Uniform Crime Classification Standard (UCCS), and the Text-based Offense Classification (TOC) tool to address these shortcomings. The UCCS schema draws from existing efforts, aiming to better reflect offense severity and improve type disambiguation. The TOC tool is a machine learning algorithm that uses a hierarchical, multilayer perceptron classification framework, built on 313,209 hand-coded offense descriptions from 24 states, to translate raw descriptions into UCCS codes. We test how variations in data processing and modeling approaches affect recall, precision, and F1 scores to assess their relative influence on model performance. The code scheme and classification tool are collaborations between Measures for Justice and the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System.

СТРУКТУРА ОСОБИСТОСТІ НЕПОВНОЛІТНЬОЇ ЖЕРТВИ КРИМІНАЛЬНОГО ПРАВОПОРУШЕННЯ

The article examines the peculiarities of the structure of a minor victim of a criminal offense. It is indicated that the personality structure of a minor victim of a criminal offense should be understood as a set of objective and subjective factors and factors that affect the index of the probability of a teenager falling into a criminally illegal situation, which is caused by the presence of enabling conditions. It is noted that any victim is a hostage of his own behavior and ability to react to non-standard situations. The determination of victim behavior does not depend on the severity of the criminal offense, it is primarily related to the degree of the actual role of the victim in the mechanism of criminal illegal behavior and its interaction with the subject of the offense. It is summarized that the structure of the personality of a minor victim of a criminal offense should include: 1) demographic characteristics - human characteristics that characterize him as a biological, intelligent being endowed with certain elementary role functions (gender, age, family status, etc.); 2) social and domestic – human characteristics acquired as a result of growing up, which determine the quality of upbringing in the family, educational institutions, etc. Social and household characteristics determine the general idea of a minor about basic things; 3) civic-role – features of a person that shape him as a citizen of the country (observance of constitutional duties); 4) moral and value – a minor's idea of spirituality, self-reflection, understanding of the highest value of human existence and all related matters; 5) psychological and medical - features that are caused by deviations in the child's health, which contributes to victimization; 6) criminological - interaction with a criminal offender and all related objective and subjective factors of victimization. The proposed structure determines the appropriate typology of minor victims of criminal offenses.

Sexual harassment and coercion in German academia: A large-scale survey study

We surveyed a large sample (N = 6,217) of students and employees at a German university regarding their experiences as (potential) targets of sexual harassment and/or coercion (SH/C). Participants were asked specific questions depending on whether they had been targets of SH/C themselves, knew someone who had been affected or said they had no such experiences. Pre-registered analyses showed that women were assumed to become targets more often, and actually did become targets much more often (26.7%) than did males (4.7%; odds ratio: 7.45). Men more often had no first- or second-hand knowledge of any SH/C incidents (odds ratio: 1.75). Contrary to what participants assumed they would do if they became targets, only a very small percentage of such experiences were actually reported using the available channels. Most participants who experienced but did not report SH/C said they did not expect that doing so would lead to any consequences. Greater offence severity was associated with a stronger wish to avoid emotional distress by not reporting. Furthermore, reporting often times did not lead to any significant consequences in the majority of cases. Complaint systems against sexual harassment and coercion in academia may be largely dysfunctional. Practical implications are discussed.

A Pragmatic Study of Apology Strategies in Akan (Twi)

As human interact with each other there is propensity of stepping on the toes of one another, when this happens it is incumbent on the parties involved to try as much as possible to sort out their differences. One of the most effective ways of breaking this barrier is apologizing. The person apologizing creates the impression that he is remorseful for the harm caused. The purpose of the study is to examine the realization of apology speech act, which inclines to be more situation-dependent and less frequently occurring than other speech acts. It also examines how the patterns of apology strategies are varied in relation to contextual factors (social status, social distance, and severity of offence) as used by the Akan (Twi) speakers. Discourse completion Task (DCT) in a form of interview and role play was chosen for the current study. The researcher created scenes for the DCT that required apologies based on situations occurring in real life. The researcher explained the DCT thoroughly to the participants and told them to put themselves in the situation and render an apology. The findings revealed that some Akan (Twi) speakers acknowledge responsibility, some tried to justify their actions whilst others shift the blame on others. It was revealed that some people also combine different strategies when apologizing.

YOUTH OFFENDING

Levels of offending by young people have fallen sharply since 2012, but severe offences now make up a greater proportion of convictions highlighting the need for services to deliver more intensive early help

What Predicts Out-of-Home Placement in Juvenile Court Dispositions? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Research suggests that juvenile court dispositions are influenced by legal factors, such as offense severity and prior record, as well as extralegal factors, such as race/ethnicity, sex, and age. To date, however, no research has reviewed whether legal or extralegal factors are more predictive of juvenile court dispositions across extant research. To address this gap, the present study reports on a systematic review and meta-analysis of predictors of residential placement in the juvenile justice system. A total of 40 independent samples were analyzed from 33 studies that met the criteria for inclusion in the review. Meta-analytic techniques were used to examine the average effects of offense characteristics, prior record, age, preadjudication detention status, race and ethnicity, sex, and contextual factors on odds of placement. The findings suggest that legal factors are more strongly associated with juvenile court dispositions than extralegal or contextual factors. Additionally, the strongest predictor of placement was whether the juvenile defendant had been detained at intake, illustrating the influential role of early case assessment in juvenile court.

Police and Crown Prosecutor Use of Restorative Justice and Diversion for Adults and Youth in a High-Crime Area

This research assesses the use of diversion and restorative justice (RJ) referrals by patrol officers and Crown prosecutors in a high-crime urban community. Of interest was the influence on referral of legal factors such as prior criminal history and offence severity and the potential impact of extra-legal factors such as age, gender, and Indigenous ethnicity. Data on 1,000 eligible offenders during a 6-month study period were analyzed. About 15% of eligible cases were referred. Police and Crown were not as aggressive as desirable, with the police passing on some eligible low-severity cases later referred by prosecutors. As prior criminal history increased referrals declined, with a more pronounced impact at the patrol officer level. In bivariate analysis, age, gender, and marital, student, and unemployment status exerted small effects, but these were non-significant in multivariate analysis. No evidence of ethnic disparity was found. Crime types of less serious violence and lower property, as well as prior convictions, had moderate bivariate effects, and these persisted in multivariate analysis. Although most cases referred had a limited criminal history and involved minor crimes, police and prosecutors did refer a few involving serious violent offences and prior convictions, showing potential for greater use of RJ.

The Limits of Vietnam's Incrementalism towards the Abolition of Capital Punishment for Drug Offenses

AbstractInternational law has ruled out the application of the death penalty on drug offenses. Despite failure to meet the threshold to be categorised as one of the ‘most serious crimes’, the practice of capital punishment for drug offences in many parts of the world continues to dismay human rights activists and practitioners. This article aims to exhibit a dynamic view on drug offences under Vietnamese law. It contends that the nation's understanding of the severity of drug offences has witnessed incremental changes corresponding with international standards, although not completely compatible. Drawing on comparative scholarship, the article then moves on to ask whether there is any room left for the total abolition of capital punishment for drug offences. It suggests that Vietnam's incrementalism towards abolition has reached its bounds. Renovation in the understanding on the severity of drug crimes is very much needed to re-fuel the abolitionist movement in the country.

Formation of inquiry as a type of procedural activity

The article considers the process of origin, development and regulation of special state bodies and individuals, aimed at collecting and storing information about the circumstances of the offense and creating appropriate conditions for trial. Depending on the normative regulation of such activities and the definition of the functional responsibilities of the bodies entrusted with its implementation, it is proposed to allocate the appropriate stages.
 Emphasis is placed on the need for in-depth study of procedural means of proof during the inquiry, as a form of pretrial investigation.
 It is noted that at the initial stage of development of the search process, the inquiry was conducted according to customary law, its procedural form was not normatively determined, and the collected materials were not recognized as evidence during the trial.
 The next stage in the development of inquiry is characterized by the allocation of two types, depending on the severity of the criminal offense for which it was conducted. According to one of them, it was carried out in those cases when the pretrial investigation was not conducted, and according to the second one it preceded the preliminary investigation. In both cases, the inquiry was tasked with preserving the traces of the crime and eliminating the possibility of the suspect disappearing.
 The stages and preconditions of forming an inquiry as an independent form of pretrial investigation were considered, first by specially designated units (starting from the 1960s) and then by independent bodies of inquiry (according to the current CPC of Ukraine).
 It is inexpedient to confuse inquiry as a type of procedural activity, the implementation of which was entrusted to the bodies of inquiry, with operational and investigative activities aimed at solving crimes, which is entrusted to the operational units specified by law.
 Proposals to standardize the means of verifying information about criminal offenses at the initial stage to clarify the circumstances of its commission are substantiated.

The influence of changes in clinical factors on high-security forensic custody dispositions.

The demand for forensic psychiatric beds is increasing, while many individuals are "stuck" in the system. Index offense severity and other legal considerations are associated with longer forensic stays but factors amenable to change such as symptoms of mental illness and aggression may also influence forensic decisions. We examined forensic review board decisions over time among 89 men admitted to a high-security forensic hospital. Almost half received a disposition to remain at their first hearing. Overall, dispositions were not associated with violence risk. The odds of a disposition to remain were higher for men with more in-hospital assaults and higher scores on a measure of clinical factors. Dispositions changed over time and this change was sensitive to clinical factors. We conclude that decisions were consistent with a cascading system of loosening security over time. Further longitudinal research following large samples through the forensic system is recommended.

What Motivates Direct and Indirect Punishment?

Abstract. Punishment represents a key mechanism to deter norm violations and is motivated by retribution and/or general deterrence. Retribution-motivated punishment is tailored to offense severity, whereas deterrence-motivated punishment is tailored to different factors, including punishment observability. This study aimed to replicate and extend prior work by testing how offense severity and punishment observability motivate direct, confrontational punishment versus indirect, covert punishment. Participants ( N = 308) read vignettes describing offenses with varying severity (high vs. low) and punishment observability (high vs. low). We then assessed their punishment tendencies – overall, direct, and indirect – and their endorsement of retribution and deterrence motives. Findings supported a “strong version” of intuitive retributivism. Manipulating retribution-relevant information consistently influenced punishment: participants reported stronger overall, direct, and indirect punishment tendencies when severity was high (vs. low). Self-reported deterrence (but not retribution) motives positively related to overall, direct, and indirect punishment tendencies. However, manipulating deterrence-relevant information did not influence punishment.

Diversion and Restorative Justice: Salt Lake Peer Court Disrupting Disproportionate Minority Contact?

There is an increased acceptance of youth courts grounded in restorative justice principles to divert first-time nonviolent offenders away from formal juvenile court entry. Research assessing the effectiveness of various teen/peer courts is mixed, and focuses mainly on recidivism. This study analyzes 2010 to 2016 Salt Lake Peer Court data to examine the relationship legal and extralegal variables have on the participation in and completion of this diversionary program for first-time youth offenders. Overall, legal factors affected outcomes more than extralegal factors. Gender proved insignificant in both models with race, age, and school socioeconomic status (SES) producing varied significant effects in outcome models. Offense severity produced consistent strong significant effects across model outcomes. Implications of the study point to the possibilities of peer courts for reducing disproportionate minority contact.

Severity matters: The moderating effect of offense severity in predicting racial differences in reporting of bias and nonbias victimization to the police.

Previous research has noted contradictory findings regarding race and police notification, such that Black people indicate higher levels of distrust in the police yet report victimization to the police at rates similar to or higher than others. We investigated the role of offense severity in accounting for these discrepancies. We hypothesized that severity would moderate racial differences in reporting, such that Black victims would be less likely to report less severe victimization but more likely to report more severe victimization. We expected that these differences would be less pronounced for bias-motivated crime, regardless of other markers of severity. We used data from the 2003-2016 National Crime Victimization Survey, including information on 21,510 victimization incidents, 1,105 of which were hate crimes. We conducted logistic regression analyses in which reporting was regressed on victim race, offense severity, hate crime status, and control variables. We also examined interactive effects to disentangle whether severity moderated racial differences in notification. We observed a three-way interaction of Black victims, offense severity, and hate crime status. Specifically, for nonbias incidents, Black victims were more likely than White victims to report severe incidents, but there was no racial difference in reporting nonsevere incidents. Additionally, for nonsevere incidents, Black victims were more likely than White victims to report hate crimes, but there was no racial difference in reporting nonhate crimes. Offense severity plays an important role in the victim decision-making process. These patterns are different, however, by race and for hate crime victims, suggesting that people perceive hate crimes as important to report, regardless of their severity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Development and application of an offense severity index in the evaluation of treatment of individuals convicted of sexual crimes

ABSTRACT Dichotomous recidivism criteria are the main measure of success in forensic treatment studies. However, there is wide agreement that binary outcome measures are too undifferentiated, particularly when official reoffending rates are rather low. Considering previous research on offense severity and the Cambridge Crime Harm Index, we addressed this issue by developing a severity index based on sentencing provisions in the German law. Based on a large dataset of males convicted of sexual crimes who had been released from Bavarian prisons between 2004 and 2008, we analyzed the subgroup of n = 48 individuals who recidivated with a sexual offense. About half of the sample had received treatment during imprisonment. Whereas prior analyses did not reveal a significant treatment effect on dichotomous sexual reoffending, the present harm analyses showed a stronger decrease of sex offense severity for treated compared to untreated participants. Despite some limitations of our study, the results indicate that prison-based treatment might decrease the severity of sexual reoffending in males convicted of sexual offenses. From a harm reduction perspective, our findings support the use of severity measures complementary to dichotomous outcome criteria. The applicability of our severity index and implications for future research on prison-based treatment are discussed.

Supplemental Material for Severity Matters: The Moderating Effect of Offense Severity in Predicting Racial Differences in Reporting of Bias and Nonbias Victimization to the Police

Supplemental Material for Severity Matters: The Moderating Effect of Offense Severity in Predicting Racial Differences in Reporting of Bias and Nonbias Victimization to the Police

Dyferentsiatsiia provadzhennia v sudi pershoi instantsii za Statutom kryminalnoho sudochynstva 1864 roku

The provisions of Statute of criminal procedure devoted to the differentiation of criminal proceedings in the court of first instance are analyzed in the article. The author accentuates that the current criminal procedure legislation of Ukraine has inherited a lot of progressive ideas implemented by Statute of criminal procedure; in particular, it contains a number of differentiated procedures for criminal proceedings in the court of first instance. In fact, Statute of criminal procedure provided for three types of criminal proceedings: ordinary, simplified and complicated, as well as some peculiarities in certain categories of proceedings. Simplified procedure was provided for the consideration of cases of minor criminal offenses — in proceedings before a magistrate (there were signs of private prosecution) and proceedings in absentia in the court of first instance. In addition, such a procedure included an abbreviated judicial investigation, which is carried out in the general order of the trial (summary trial). A complicated procedure took place in the trial court with the participation of jurors, which separated the powers of the jury to pass a verdict and the judge — to pass sentence. The criteria for distinguishing between proceedings according to the degree of complexity of procedural forms were: the nature and severity of the criminal offense, the ratio of private and public interests, as well as the category of cases that could be considered by a jury. The Statute of criminal procedure also contained exceptions to the general procedure of criminal proceedings, which provided for peculiarities in certain categories of proceedings (in cases involving the clergy, the military, state crimes, official crimes, etc.). The criteria for distinguishing such features were: the status of the accused (clergy, military), as well as the category of cases (for crimes against religion and others related to violation of church rules, for state crimes, for official crimes, for crimes in administrative management sphere).

PROVING THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE BY AN INVESTIGATOR

Introduction. The article investigates the problem of proving the circumstances of a criminal offense by investigators. The procedural powers of the investigator are defined in such a way that the investigator makes all decisions on investigative (search) actions, except when the law provides for obtaining approval from the prosecutor or sanctions from the investigating judge and is fully responsible for their legality. After obtaining the factual data, consolidating them as evidence, the investigator must evaluate all the evidence according to his inner convictions. The investigator must be sure that the criminal offense was committed by the suspect. If he has doubts about the commission of a criminal offense by a certain suspect, he must seek evidence of both guilt and innocence. Summary of the main research results. It is proposed to establish the limits of proving a criminal offense on the basis of regulatory support of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The elements of the limits of proof of a criminal offense include the fact of the criminal offense, factual data, information about the facts and procedurally established evidence indicating the guilt of the suspect. It is important to note that the limits of proof must be based not only on the circumstances of the criminal offense, but also on the circumstances that affect the severity of the criminal offense or are grounds for exemption from criminal liability. Conclusions. It is proposed to amend the CPC of Ukraine and establish a mechanism for procedural guidance of the investigator during the operational and investigative activities of operational units. The investigator's activity in determining the subject and limits of evidence in the pre-trial investigation can be improved by improving his procedural status. To this end, it is advisable to strengthen the procedural independence of the investigator, respectively, reducing his dependence on the prosecutor in terms of evaluating the evidence on key issues of pre-trial investigation. Other ways to improve the current legislation of Ukraine are proposed.