Type Of Offense Research Articles

A transformer-based multi-task framework for joint detection of aggression and hate on social media data

AbstractModerators often face a double challenge regarding reducing offensive and harmful content in social media. Despite the need to prevent the free circulation of such content, strict censorship on social media cannot be implemented due to a tricky dilemma – preserving free speech on the Internet while limiting them and how not to overreact. Existing systems do not essentially exploit the correlatedness of hate-offensive content and aggressive posts; instead, they attend to the tasks individually. As a result, the need for cost-effective, sophisticated multi-task systems to effectively detect aggressive and offensive content on social media is highly critical in recent times. This work presents a novel multifaceted transformer-based framework to identify aggressive and hate posts on social media. Through an end-to-end transformer-based multi-task network, our proposed approach addresses the following array of tasks: (a) aggression identification, (b) misogynistic aggression identification, (c) identifying hate-offensive and non-hate-offensive content, (d) identifying hate, profane, and offensive posts, (e) type of offense. We further investigate the role of emotion in improving the system’s overall performance by learning the task of emotion detection jointly with the other tasks. We evaluate our approach on two popular benchmark datasets of aggression and hate speech, covering four languages, and compare the system performance with various state-of-the-art methods. Results indicate that our multi-task system performs significantly well for all the tasks across multiple languages, outperforming several benchmark methods. Moreover, the secondary task of emotion detection substantially improves the system performance for all the tasks, indicating strong correlatedness among the tasks of aggression, hate, and emotion, thus opening avenues for future research.

An examination of the code of the street code and the dark figure of crime among an institutionalized sample

ABSTRACT There have been a number of studies that have examined the relationship between Anderson’s code of the street and criminogenic behavior. However, little research has been done on the potential relationship between street code adherence and the dark figure of crime. Using a sample of 299 institutionalized individuals the authors examine the relationship between street code adherence and official and unofficial records of assaults and motor vehicle theft. Results official records indicated that street code adherence was not significantly related to either offense type. However, when self-report data for assaults and motor vehicle theft was analyzed, there was strong evidence that street code adherence was a significant predictor. The results suggest that street code adherence is a better predictor of self-report offenses than those measured by official records. Thus, street code adherence may be key to shedding light on the dark figure of crime.

She’s Not That into You: Speed Dating with a Criminal Record

ABSTRACT Prosocial relationships are beneficial to post-conviction reintegration, but criminal stigma may limit romantic relationship access. This study implements an experimental audit of speed dating, which allows people to meet several potential partners in a brief time, to explore how conviction disclosure, offense type, and attractiveness and personality ratings affect dating interest. Three women and three men confederates of different races/ethnicities were randomly assigned to a control or one of three offense conditions before interacting one-on-one with 64 participants in 4-minute Zoom Q&A speed dating sessions. Following each interaction, participants rated one another on attractiveness, personality dimensions, and interest in dating. Findings indicate that disclosure of property offense conviction significantly reduced women’s willingness to date men confederates while assault and drug convictions did not negatively affect women’s dating interest. Women confederate disclosures of convictions did not affect men’s interest in dating them. Researching the effects of prior convictions on romantic relationship interest is challenging but important in revealing how criminal stigma varies by offense type to affect relationship capital.

Illegal Actions of Subjects of Labor Law Violating the Principles of Law (Abuse of Labor Law)

The article analyzes the illegal actions of subjects of labor law that violate the principles of law and the principles of labor law, which in the science of labor law is traditionally qualified as abuse of law and labor law. The analysis of scientific points of view and judicial acts, which use the concept of “abuse of law” and criticize scientific approaches based on legal positivism, as well as on the scientific discussion concept of integrative legal understanding. The author’s conclusions and proposals are formulated from the position of the scientifically grounded concept of integrative legal understanding. In particular, it is concluded that “abuse of law” is a social regulator of relations and a moral category, and the task of the law enforcement body is to analyze the actions of subjects of labor law that have legal significance and are associated with a special type of offense – violation of the principles of law and principles of labor law.

ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL CLASSIFICATION OF INSULTING

This article discusses the offense of defamation, its composition and the basis of liability. In this article, it is noted the types of administrative offense, the offense of insult, types of offense of insult today, the composition and the basis of responsibility, and the suggestions for the prevention of these offenses. KEY WORDS: Administrative offense, signs, insult, behavior, composition of the offense.

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.

Collaborationism as an object of criminological research

With the onset of the war initiated by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, collaborationist activity has become a matter of national security for the country. Collaborationist activity, which involves cooperation or assistance to another country or organisation, can have an impact on the national security of a country, including armed or cyber influence, influence on information flows, and citizen safety. The purpose of this study is to identify the dynamics of changes and distinguish collaborationist activity from other types of criminal offences within the context of criminology and criminal law in Ukraine. The research methods used in this study included analysis and synthesis, which were used to identify pertinent issues in society that arise during the process of identifying the criminal activity of collaborators. Methods of historical analysis, specification, and classification are applied. The main methods used in the study were the analysis and synthesis of scientific and theoretical materials and legal norms. Collaborationism in the context of international law is defined. The main acts in the field of international humanitarian law that define the legal status of populations in occupied territories are analysed. Based on key characteristics, various types of criminal activity are identified. The issue of the need to improve criminal law norms, the definition of crime, and the responsibility for collaborationist activity are addressed. The study explored the issue of collaborationism in Ukraine, which emerged as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation. An analysis of the changes made to the Ukrainian Criminal Code regarding the definition of the crime related to collaborationist activity and the responsibility for such actions is conducted. The dynamics of court verdicts over the past year concerning the application of the criminal code provision in real time is summarised. The practical value of this study lies in the fact that identifying current problems and their resolution methods will enhance the effectiveness of law enforcement activities in detecting individuals engaged in collaborationist activity and holding them accountable. This, in turn, will contribute to reducing the level of criminality in this sphere

The Non-Constant Effect of Defendant Sex across Criminal History: How and When Does Criminal History Condition Sex Disparity at Sentencing?

The goal of this study is to examine how, and when, criminal history conditions the effect of defendant sex on incarceration and prison sentence length decisions in Minnesota state courts. Results suggest that sex differences in sentencing are largely concentrated amongst those who have extensive criminal histories, bypassing those who have little or no criminal history. Moreover, criminal history’s aggravating contextual effect on sex often depends on the dependent variable examined and type of offense committed. Study results shed light on the situations where extralegal disparities are “hidden” in the nuances of case characteristics.

Reconsidering Penal Stability in Canada Through a New Sentencing Severity Index

Changes to criminal sentencing practices are often multifaceted and complex to interpret. This article proposes the development of a new sentencing severity index which simultaneously considers the type of punishment mobilized as well as the scale of that punishment. It does so in the context of important reforms to Canadian sentencing, examining the possibility of a punitive turn in Canadian criminal justice through this new index. Data were drawn from Canadian adult criminal courts collected through Statistics Canada’s Integrated Criminal Court Survey between 2005/2006 and 2016/2017. The analysis is based on instances where either custody or probation were the primary sentence of a case. We show that the underlying makeup of Canadian sentencing has changed over time. Custodial sentences are more frequent, but shorter, while probation sentences are fewer, but longer overall. However, in combining these dimensions (frequency and length), the index suggests that overall sentencing severity remained generally stable. Nevertheless, considerable changes across offence type and jurisdictions were observed. The article points to the importance of nuancing the assessment of penal practices with multiple parameters to better understand penal reform and transformation. The new index provides a tool which helps to do so.

Criminal offences related to domestic violence: Structure of the investigation methodology

Violence by family members is not only systematic, but is also characterized by an increase in its intensity, aggression, and the victim's sense of impunity and inability to resist leads to serious criminal and legal consequences. Even when criminal offenses that result in injury or death are detected, it is not always possible to establish their connection to domestic violence. This situation can be avoided by following a defined, scientifically based structure of actions. Therefore, today there is a need to develop algorithms for investigator's actions during the investigation of criminal offenses resulting from domestic violence. That is why in this article the author aims at identifying the interdependent elements of the criminal investigation process. To achieve this goal, the author used the methods of analysis, synthesis and questionnaire, the method of decomposition, and the special legal method. As a result, this work has made it possible to substantiate the expediency of dividing the investigation methodology into nine mandatory structural elements. The completeness of such elements depends on the investigative situation, the specific type of criminal offense committed, the form of criminal plans implementation, the identity of the offender (either a person who commits systematic domestic violence or a person who is a victim of such violence or a witness thereto), the presence or absence of previous experience of the offender's illegal behavior, and the place of the criminal offense (rural area or a large city environment). The author substantiates the need to include such structural elements as "interaction with state and public authorities, institutions and organizations on preventing and combating domestic and gender-based violence" and "preventive activities of an investigator in criminal proceedings related to domestic violence" in the structure of the methodology. It is also determined that the effectiveness of the methodology is determined by the interdependence of investigative (detective) actions, compliance with the stages of the investigation and timely involvement of relevant specialists. Such elements, if properly sequenced and combined, form the methodology for investigating this category of criminal offenses. The practical value of the work lies in the formation of an effective program, planning of the investigator's actions not only to establish the circumstances of the incident, but also to establish the causal relationship between domestic violence and other criminal offenses.

Crime and Punishment—Crime Rates and Prison Population in Europe

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.

Desconexión Moral y Delincuencia en Población Penitenciaria Adulta: una Revisión Metaanalítica

Research on moral disengagement associated with adult criminal profiles is recent a recent issue and, therefore, has been less evaluated. This meta-analytic study aims to determine the strength of the relationship between moral disengagement and crime in the adult prison population. The results showed a moderate relationship between moral disengagement and crime, with an effect size of r = .26 (p .001). The analysis of moderating variables (i.e., type of offence, gender, age, and instrument measuring moral disengagement) do not show statistically significant results in this association. Finally, it is concluded that moral disengagement is a risk factor for criminal behaviour commission, and future lines of research are proposed.

Guilty by Anticipation: Distortions on the Presumption of Innocence in First Appearance Hearings

This article addresses the dynamics of first appearance hearings and analyzes how the various actors involved in the process influence judges’ decisions. The analysis focuses on the distortion of the presumption of innocence principle based on racial factors, education levels, the criminal record of the arrested person and the type of offense that led to the arrest. Researchers collected data through in-person observations of 63 hearings that took place in the Criminal Court[1] of the city of Belém-Pará-Brazil, from January and March 2020. Results show that the presumption of innocence has little weight in first appearance hearings and factors related to race, education level, criminal background and involvement with drugs often cause the accused to be held in pre-trial detention before being judged and receiving a formal punishment.

What types of information can and do latent print examiners review? A survey of practicing examiners

Understanding typical work practices is important to understanding the decision-making process underlying latent print comparison and improving the reliability of the discipline. Despite efforts to standardize work practices, a growing literature has demonstrated that contextual effects can influence every aspect of the analytic process. However, very little is known about what types of information are available to latent print examiners, and what types of information latent print examiners routinely review. We surveyed practicing latent print examiners (N = 284) regarding what types of information are accessible during routine casework, and what types of information they routinely review during casework. We also explored whether access and inclination to review different types of information vary according to unit size and examiner role. Results indicated that information describing the physical evidence is accessible by almost all examiners (94.4%), and most examiners have access to offense type (90.5%), method of evidence collection (77.8%), and the names of both suspect (76.1%) and victim (73.9%). However, evidence description (86.3%) and method of evidence collection (68.3%) were the only information types consistently reviewed by most examiners. Findings also indicate that examiners in smaller laboratories have access to more information types and often review more information types than examiners from larger laboratories, but both populations choose to not review information at similar rates. Further, examiners in supervisory positions are more likely to choose to not review information than examiners in non-supervisory positions. Although there is some consensus regarding what types of information examiners routinely review, findings suggest that there is little absolute consensus regarding what information examiners can even access, and highlight two sources of variability in examiner work practices: employment setting and examiner role. This is concerning in light of efforts to maximize the reliability of analytic procedures (and ultimately, conclusions) and represents an important area of future study as the field progresses.

Linkage of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to Avon & Somerset Police regional police records.

This data note describes a new resource for crime-related research: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) linked to regional police records. The police data were provided by Avon & Somerset Police (A&SP), whose area of responsibility contains the ALSPAC recruitment area. In total, ALSPAC had permission to link to crime records for 12,662 of the 'study children' (now adults, who were born in the early 1990s). The linkage took place in two stages: Stage 1 involved the ALSPAC Data Linkage Team establishing the linkage using personal identifiers common to both the ALSPAC participant database and A&SP records using deterministic and probabilistic methods. Stage 2 involved A&SP extracting attribute data on the matched individuals, removing personal identifiers and securely sharing the de-identified records with ALSPAC. The police data extraction took place in July 2021, when the participants were in their late 20s/early 30s. This data note contains details on the resulting linked police records available. In brief, electronic police records were available from 2007 onwards. In total, 1757 participants (14%) linked to at least one police record for a charge, offence 'taken into consideration', caution, or another out of court disposal. Linked participants had a total of 6413 records relating to 6283 offences. Almost three quarters of the linked participants were male. The most common offence types were violence against the person (22% of records), drug offences (19%), theft (17%) and public order offences (11%). This data note also details important issues that researchers using the local police data should be aware of, including the importance of defining an appropriate denominator, completeness, and biases affecting police records.

Are Sex Offending Allegations Viewed Differently? Exploring the Effect of Offense Type and Conviction Status on Criminal Stigmatization.

Attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions play a major role in the formation of legislative action, including sentencing policies and registration and notification procedures. However, there is little research about stigmatization directed at those who are accused of such offenses prior to conviction. In this work we explored this gap by comparing stigmatization (e.g., a desire for social distance, and negative personality attributions) towards people accused of a range of crimes (sexual, violent, and acquisitive), and whether this was further impacted by whether or not allegations led to a conviction. We recruited 403 community-based participants for a between-subjects experimental survey. We found support for the conclusion that people accused of and convicted for sexual offenses are more heavily stigmatized than allegations related to other crime types, and especially so when allegations involved child victims. Stigmatization took the form of greater levels of support for police-initiated notifications about allegations before conviction, increased desires for social distance, and attributions of negative personality traits. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of these findings in relation to stigma research and issues related to anonymity for those accused of sexual offenses.

The nature and frequency of homeless contacts with the police

ABSTRACT This study assesses differences between citizen and police initiated homeless-involved dispatch incidents, as well as the resulting police reports. This is accomplished by analyzing dispatch data and police reports identified as involving homeless individuals in a mid-sized city in the central United States from 2020 to 2021. Altogether 12,843 dispatch incidents and 1,762 (13.72%) reports are analyzed. This study found 93% of documented police contacts to be citizen initiated. Incidents that did not involve the homeless were substantially more likely to be officer initiated than homeless-involved incidents. Significant differences are found on the basis of initiation type and offense type for nine of the 18 offense categories. Police initiated incidents are more likely to produce reports about failure to appear or comply, homeless encampments, and drugs or alcohol. Citizen initiated incidents are more likely to produce reports about trespassing, assault or menacing, and theft or shoplifting. The results support prior research (Herring, 2019) and suggest that care should be taken regarding assumptions about why officers contact the homeless. Given the non-criminal nature of many citizen generated incidents, some support exists for an alternative response to address loitering, suspicious persons, or other non-serious and non-criminal homeless incidents.

THE NEW SEXUAL OFFENCES IN THE LIGHT OF DIGITALISATION

Digitalisation has given rise to many new types of offences against sexual autonomy that previously either did not exist or at least were not so easily and quickly perpetrated. The first of these is the category of deepfakes. The term “deep” refers to the deep learning, AI-based technology; “fake” denotes a manipulation, which, in summary, is the use of algorithms to manipulate images or video footage to make it possible to mount someone’s face in a lifelike form on the footage – typically pornographic footage – that does not initially depict them. In practice, however, deepfakes are used not only in connection with pornographic content but often also to discredit political or business opponents. Revenge porn usually involves publishing pornographic images of the victim by the former partner out of jealousy or revenge for the break-up of a relationship. Such images or videos may be of the (typically nude) victim himself or herself, a sexual act between the perpetrator and the victim, or may be manipulated images rather than real ones, where revenge pornography is combined with deepfakes. Upskirting literally means “photographing under a skirt”, which typically involves taking unauthorised pictures or videos of female victims’ crotches. Of course, cameras existed before the advent of digitalisation, but it is only in the last decade or so that large numbers of people have a smartphone with the ability to take high-quality pictures of virtually every passer-by. Unfortunately, technological progress in this area has had a criminogenic effect, since it is easy to take such pictures or videos of an unsuspecting victim quickly and often unnoticed using a mobile phone. Cyberflashing is the phenomenon of sending a picture or video of the offender’s genitalia to the victim via a digital device without prior consent or agreement.

The influence of a Learning to Forgive Program on institutional offending and recidivism among offenders with mental disorder.

Previous researchers have demonstrated that learning to forgive may reduce the likelihood of offending/reoffending. Forgiveness therapy may be useful for rehabilitation by assisting traumatized individuals to release revengeful emotions. The current study is a follow up to a previous study that examined the effects of a 6-week forgiveness psychoeducational intervention for offenders with mental disorders. The aim of the current study was to determine any differences for participants who received a forgiveness intervention versus a control group for rates of recidivism (likelihood of reoffending and length of time to reoffend) and type of institutional offense. Recidivism data was collected through the Canadian Police Information Center. Both the control and treatment group in this study were selected from offenders with mental disorder at the Regional Psychiatric Centre, a multilevel forensic psychiatry hospital in Saskatoon, Canada. Results indicated that participants who received the forgiveness intervention took significantly longer than the control group to both commit non-violent offenses, and to be convicted of any offense. Results suggest that forgiveness therapy for offender populations may improve behavior and reduce recidivism.

Mental health disorders and recidivism among incarcerated adult offenders in a correctional facility in South Africa: A cluster analysis.

The contribution of mental illness, substance use, and appetitive aggression to recidivism has significant policy and practice implications. Offenders with untreated mental illness have a higher recidivism rate and a greater number of criminogenic risk factors than those without mental illness. Previous research has demonstrated that the likelihood of appetitive aggression increases in violent contexts where individuals perpetrate aggressive acts. Using the Ecological Systems Theory, this study investigated the association between mental health disorders and recidivism among incarcerated adult offenders in South Africa, and the intervening role of appetitive aggression and substance use. Using a cross-sectional quantitative research design, a sample of 280 incarcerated male and female adult offenders aged 18-35 with no known psychiatric disorders were sampled at a correctional facility in South Africa. The re-incarceration rate, mental health disorders, substance use, and appetitive aggression symptomology were assessed using the Hopkins symptoms checklist, the CRAFFT measure of substance use, and the appetitive aggression scale. Findings indicate a 32.4% recidivism rate (n = 82). Cluster analysis indicated that the combination of anxiety, depression, substance use, and appetitive aggression increased the likelihood of recidivism. Appetitive aggression median differences between clusters 2 and 3 played a key role in distinguishing recidivism risk among recidivist and non-recidivist participants. Chi-square analysis highlighted group differences in education levels among the established clusters [x2 (3, n = 217) = 12.832, p = .005, which is < .05] as well as group differences in the type of criminal offence [x2 (3, n = 187) = 24.362, p = .000, which is < .05] and cluster membership. Combined factors that increase the likelihood of recidivism provide a typology for classifying offenders based on particular recidivism risk determinants, which offers insights for developing tailored interventions that address a combination of factors.