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We examine the asking and answering of 'silly questions' (SQs) (for example, 'might sound a bit silly, but do you know whose window it is?') in British police interviews with suspects, the courses of action SQs initiate, and the institutional contingencies they are designed to manage. We show how SQs are asked at an important juncture toward the ends of interviews, following police officers' formulations of suspects' testimony (e.g. 'so you've admitted throwing eggs'). These formulations are confirmed or even collaboratively produced by suspects. We then examine the design of SQs and show how they play a central role in the articulation of suspects' reported 'state of mind', and particularly attributing to them criminal intentions constitutive of the offence with which they may be charged. In cases where SQs do not produce unambiguous answers about 'state of mind' or intentionality, police officers move toward direct questioning about suspects' intent, thus making explicit the project of SQs in such interviews. Following SO–Answer sequences, police officers reformulate suspects' testimony, with subtle but crucial differences with regard to suspects' knowledge state and criminal intent. Suspects overwhelmingly align with police officers' formulations of their testimony, and such agreements have the interactional shape of affiliation. Yet SQs may work in ways that are institutionally adversarial with regard to criminal charges, relevant evidence and self-incriminating testimony.

This paper attempts to investigate comprehensively, a ＂U＂-shaped relationship between income inequality and crime rates in China after building a cost-benefit analysis model, by using time series data from 1981-2012 and panel data from 1999-2012. The empirical results show that： firstly, in the time series model, the U-shaped relationships between inequality and the total crime rate and rates of various crimes except from smuggling, are very significant in the period of 1981-2012, secondly, the panel threshold models show that inequality and crime tend to be correlated positively with each other during 1999-2012, because the inequality level during this period is much higher than the turning points of inequality estimated in the time series models, although three regions with different development levels are located in different parts of a U-shaped curve between inequality and crime.

Objective: to study the issue of the optimal scale of judicial discretion in Russian criminal legislation and to develop scientifically grounded proposals for improving legal regulation in this area. Methods: dialectical materialism, which involves combining a dialectical approach to cognition of the surrounding world with its materialistic understanding, and general scientific (system-structural and formal-logical, inductive and deductive, analysis and synthesis) and special (formal-legal, comparative-legal) methods of cognition based on it. Results: the problem of the limits of judicial discretion in criminal law stems from the legislator’s attempt to regulate the broad and diverse public relations by legal norms. Given the emerging law enforcement practice, the doctrinal view on the need to “narrow” the limits of criminality under Part 2 of Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code is considered debatable. Experts point out that there are no negative consequences of the expanded (since 2015) imposition of a suspended sentence for deliberate serious harm to health, committed with aggravating circumstances. The author opposes the arguments of those who consider Part 6 of Article 15 of the Russian Criminal Code to be a violation of the principles of separation of powers, justice, legality, as well as the norm to be corruption-causing. The proposal is to expand the exemption from criminal liability under Articles 761, 762, 90 of the Russian Criminal Code after decreasing the crime category. Scientific novelty: the article substantiates the author’s opinion on the differentiation of discretion existing in criminal legislation by nature (legal consequences). As a result, the author argues that the court must have a discretion to change the crime category, and attempts to resolve problems related to the implementation of Part 6 of Article 15 of the Russian Criminal Code. Practical significance: the formulated conclusions can be used in legislative and law enforcement practice in terms of optimizing judicial discretion, taking into account the goals and objectives of criminal law policy.

Enactment of the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes of Kazakhstan has settled many problems in the field of criminal sentence, though by no means not all of them. The problem of punishment assignment, meant to ensure the interests of the society, the state, and aggrieved person, as well as correctional rehabilitation of a person liable to punishment, remains one of the unsolved problems. Despite extensive research of the domestic and foreign scholars, the institution of criminal penalty remains one of the most problematic issues. The failure to resolve this problem brings great harm to all law enforcement activities, causes a negative reaction in society, and therefore deservedly enjoys the increased attention of criminologists and experts in criminal law and lawsuit. This problem is multifaceted since it applies not only to criminal law but to criminal lawsuit as well, and therefore, the author sees the aim of the present research in the search of options to improve the substantive and procedural provisions governing assignment of punishment. According to the author, the main factors causing this problem concern insufficient regulation of punishment assignment procedure in the legislation of Kazakhstan, the inaccuracy in construction of legal and technical aspects of dispositions and sanctions contained in certain provisions of the criminal code. In addition, according to the author, the courts are confronted with difficulties when assigning punishment due to misunderstanding of the sentencing principles and criteria. The work presents studies of regulatory enactments, opinions of scientists, legal practice, and foreign experience in the search for optimal punishment assignment model. One of the ways to solve this problem consists in more clear and detailed statutory regulation of the punishment assignment principles and criteria that would be able to significantly limit judicial discretion.

This chapter contains sections titled: Victorian Beginnings The Stratemeyer Syndicate A Golden Age

Using questionnaire, and In-depth Interview, data were collected írom 1,031 staff and students of selected tertiary institutions in Imo State, Nigería in order to evaluate the pattern of public awareness of cybercnme. It was found that (1) the level cybercnme awareness was very high(N=915; 89%); (2) the knowledge of cybercnme menace appeared very superficial because majonty (78%; N=804) of the respondents tend to be only informed of computer-related/assisted category of cybercnme; while as low as 22% (227) were aware of only computer-focused cybercnme categones; (3) cybercnme awareness appeared to be gender sensitive in the sense that more males (91%; N=347) than females respondents (88%; N=572) tend to be aware of cybercnme; (4) there seems to be a positive relationship between level of education and awareness of cybercnme- in the sense that the highly educated Internet users tend to be more informed (N=332; 92%) about online cnminal activities that the lowly educated ones (N=583; 87%); and (5) the level of cybercnme awareness increases (N=305; 97%) as Internet users get older. It was recommended that more eifective and holistic cybercnme awareness campaigns, targeted more on the women and children, should be embarked upon by the stakeholders.

Research has identified several factors that affect fear of crime in public space. However, the extent to which gender moderates the effectiveness of fear-reducing measures has received little attention. Using data from the Chicago Transit Authority Customer Satisfaction Survey of 2003, this study aims to understand whether train transit security practices and service attributes affect men and women differently. Findings indicate that, while the presence of video cameras has a lower effect on women's feelings of safety compared with men, frequent and on-time service matters more to male passengers. Additionally, experience with safety-related problems affects women significantly more than men. Conclusions discuss the implications of the study for theory and genderspecific policies to improve perceptions of transit safety.

Every US state has a database of criminal offenders' DNA profiles. These databases receive widespread attention in the media and popular culture, but there has been no rigorous analysis of their impact on crime. This paper intends to fill that gap. I exploit the details and timing of state DNA database expansions in two ways, first to address the effects of DNA profiling on individuals' subsequent criminal behavior and then to address the aggregate effects on crime rates. I show that DNA databases deter crime by profiled offenders, reduce crime rates, and are more cost-effective than traditional law enforcement tools.

The concentration of police resources in stable crime hotspots has proven effective in reducing crime, but the extent to which police can disrupt dynamically changing crime hotspots is unknown. Police must be able to anticipate the future location of dynamic hotspots to disrupt them. Here we report results of two randomized controlled trials of near real-time epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) crime forecasting, one trial within three divisions of the Los Angeles Police Department and the other trial within two divisions of the Kent Police Department (United Kingdom). We investigate the extent to which (i) ETAS models of short-term crime risk outperform existing best practice of hotspot maps produced by dedicated crime analysts, (ii) police officers in the field can dynamically patrol predicted hotspots given limited resources, and (iii) crime can be reduced by predictive policing algorithms under realistic law enforcement resource constraints. While previous hotspot policing experiments fix treatment and control hotspots throughout the experimental period, we use a novel experimental design to allow treatment and control hotspots to change dynamically over the course of the experiment. Our results show that ETAS models predict 1.4–2.2 times as much crime compared to a dedicated crime analyst using existing criminal intelligence and hotspot mapping practice. Police patrols using ETAS forecasts led to an average 7.4% reduction in crime volume as a function of patrol time, whereas patrols based upon analyst predictions showed no significant effect. Dynamic police patrol in response to ETAS crime forecasts can disrupt opportunities for crime and lead to real crime reductions.

Recent reforms in California caused a sharp and permanent reduction in the state's incarceration rate. We evaluate the effects of that incarceration decline on local crime rates. Our analysis exploits the large variation across California counties in the effect of this reform on county-specific prison incarceration rates. We find very little evidence that the large reduction in California incarceration had an effect on violent crime, and modest evidence of effects on property crime, auto theft in particular. These effects are considerably smaller than existing estimates based on panel data for periods of time when the U.S. incarceration rate was considerably lower. We corroborate these cross-county results with a synthetic-cohort analysis of state crime rates in California. The statewide analysis confirms our findings from the county-level analysis. In line with with previous research, the results from this study support the hypothesis of a crime-prison effect that diminishes with increased reliance on incarceration.