tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/criminology-890/articlesCriminology – The Conversation2024-03-26T00:44:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2256552024-03-26T00:44:34Z2024-03-26T00:44:34ZMost states now have affirmative sexual consent laws, but not enough people know what they mean<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583937/original/file-20240325-25-244jlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2670&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/couple-smiling-hugging-while-spending-time-2106323468">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this month, Queensland became the latest state to pass affirmative consent laws. This means consent is understood as ongoing communication for the purposes of rape and sexual assault offences.</p>
<p>Under <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-adopts-affirmative-consent-in-sexual-assault-laws-what-does-this-mean-161497">affirmative consent</a>, agreement to each sexual act must be actively communicated. That is, each person must say or do something to indicate consent and check the other is willing to proceed.</p>
<p>It’s common for victims of sexual assault to <a href="https://researchblog.duke.edu/2023/07/06/neuroscience-shows-why-sex-assault-victims-freeze-its-not-consent/">freeze</a> or try to avoid further injury, rather than fighting back. The new laws make it clear these reactions are not consent. </p>
<p>But it’s not just Queensland that has such laws. Where else are they in place, and how are they working in practice?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-adopts-affirmative-consent-in-sexual-assault-laws-what-does-this-mean-161497">NSW adopts affirmative consent in sexual assault laws. What does this mean?</a>
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<h2>What do Queensland’s laws do?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/html/bill.first/bill-2023-007">new Queensland laws</a> define consent as “free and voluntary agreement”. They clarify that a person does not consent where they do not “say or do anything to communicate consent”.</p>
<p>The laws also limit the <a href="https://theconversation.com/queensland-rape-law-loophole-could-remain-after-review-ignores-concerns-about-rape-myths-and-consent-141772">mistake of fact excuse</a> for rape and sexual assault. This excuse allows defendants to argue they honestly and reasonably — but mistakenly — believed the other person consented to sex.</p>
<p>The excuse has been <a href="https://journal.law.uq.edu.au/index.php/uqlj/article/view/2993">heavily</a> <a href="https://www.able.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/3687926/7.-AFFIRMATIVE-CONSENT-AND-THE-MISTAKE-OF-FACT-EXCUSE-IN-WESTERN-AUSTRALIAN-RAPE-LAW_.pdf">criticised</a> for allowing defendants to rely on irrelevant factors, such as the other person’s clothing or failure to fight back, as the basis for alleged mistakes about consent.</p>
<p>However, the new laws say a belief in sexual consent is not reasonable unless the person took active steps to check their partner was consenting. This is <a href="https://www.able.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/3687926/7.-AFFIRMATIVE-CONSENT-AND-THE-MISTAKE-OF-FACT-EXCUSE-IN-WESTERN-AUSTRALIAN-RAPE-LAW_.pdf">consistent with</a> an affirmative consent model.</p>
<h2>Where else has similar laws?</h2>
<p>Four out of the six Australian states and one of the two territories have now enacted affirmative consent laws. <a href="https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-1924-069#JS1@GS14A@EN">Tasmania</a> was the first state to adopt an affirmative consent model in 2004. </p>
<p>The Queensland laws follow on the heels of recent legal changes in NSW, the ACT and Victoria. NSW and the ACT legislated affirmative consent in 2021, while Victoria did the same in 2022. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/government/announcements/discussion-paper-project-113-sexual-offences">Western Australia</a> and <a href="https://www.agd.sa.gov.au/law-and-justice/legislation/review-of-sexual-consent-laws-in-south-australia">South Australia</a>, meanwhile, are currently reviewing sexual consent laws and may well follow suit. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-we-aligned-sexual-consent-laws-across-australia-but-this-faces-formidable-challenges-196115">It's time we aligned sexual consent laws across Australia – but this faces formidable challenges</a>
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<p>The national trend is clearly towards an affirmative consent standard. Some scholars have argued this could pave the way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-we-aligned-sexual-consent-laws-across-australia-but-this-faces-formidable-challenges-196115">aligning sexual consent laws across the nation</a> — although significant challenges remain. </p>
<p>Critics of affirmative consent laws have suggested they could criminalise “<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/consent-laws-criminalise-spontaneous-marital-sex-says-queensland-law-society/news-story/2d60ee2d97000f5779383c83dcd40663">spontaneous marital sex</a>”. However, this ignores the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/08/consent-is-not-a-romance-killer-the-mistake-of-fact-defence-for-needs-to-go">social and legal context</a> within which the laws operate.</p>
<p>There is no evidence of the laws being applied in this way. </p>
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<h2>Vital for debunking rape myths</h2>
<p>Affirmative consent laws can only be effective and fair if people understand what they mean in practice. </p>
<p>However, public attitudes are not always consistent with an affirmative consent model. A <a href="https://lsj.com.au/articles/a-question-of-consent/">NSW government study</a> found 14% of young men “didn’t agree that you must seek consent every time you engage in sexual activity”.</p>
<p>Societal attitudes are clouded by persistent myths about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/10/nsw-study-rape-sexual-assault-harassment-trials-myths-victims-stereotypes">consent</a> and <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-11/ti611_misconceptions_of_sexual_crimes_against_adult_victims.pdf">sexual violence</a>. For example, people may think that someone who was drunk or did not fight back cannot be a victim of rape.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-as-simple-as-no-means-no-what-young-people-need-to-know-about-consent-155736">Not as simple as 'no means no': what young people need to know about consent</a>
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<p>Rape myths are not limited to the general public. They influence judges, lawyers, police and jurors as well. Recent research has found rape myths in <a href="https://law.adelaide.edu.au/ua/media/2808/alr_44-2_09_schaffer.pdf">supreme court judgments</a> and <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:c06d8d6">jurors’ perceptions of evidence</a> in rape trials.</p>
<p>It is easy to assume that once affirmative consent laws are passed, they will be fully effective in the courts. However, years after affirmative consent was adopted in Tasmania, courts were still <a href="https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_impact_of_introducing_an_affirmative_model_of_consent_and_changes_to_the_defence_of_mistake_in_Tasmanian_rape_trials/23207285">applying outdated legal principles</a>.</p>
<h2>Raising public awareness</h2>
<p>For affirmative consent laws to serve their purpose, everyone — including judges, lawyers, jurors, police and the public — needs a clear understanding of what affirmative consent means.</p>
<p>Public awareness campaigns can help to clarify that consent is an active, ongoing process that cannot be inferred from silence or lack of resistance. </p>
<p>NSW’s <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/family-and-relationships/make-no-doubt">Make No Doubt</a> campaign was launched the week prior to its new consent laws taking effect, but a similar campaign has yet to be announced in Queensland. </p>
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<p>The Queensland <a href="https://www.womenstaskforce.qld.gov.au/about-us/news/news-items/reform-needed-to-systems-stacked-against-female-victim-survivors">Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce</a> heard from victim-survivors, support services, lawyers, police and the broader community about the need for improved public education on consent. </p>
<p>Understanding consent in isolation is not enough. <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandatory-consent-education-is-a-huge-win-for-australia-but-consent-is-just-one-small-part-of-navigating-relationships-177456">Comprehensive education</a> on respectful relationships is vital to fostering a culture where affirmative consent becomes the norm. </p>
<p>The effectiveness of affirmative consent laws also depends on how they are applied by police, lawyers and judges. If police don’t give effect to the laws, then most sexual assaults <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-28/how-police-are-failing-survivors-of-sexual-assault/11871364">will never reach prosecutors</a> — let alone the courtroom.</p>
<p><a href="https://dcj.nsw.gov.au/news-and-media/media-releases-archive/2022/affirmative-consent-becomes-law-in-nsw.html">Comprehensive training</a> for these professionals is essential to ensure affirmative consent is implemented across the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>Since Australia’s affirmative consent laws are so new, there is limited evidence (beyond Tasmania) of exactly how they will work in practice. It will be important to build this evidence base to ensure the laws are functioning as intended.</p>
<h2>Government action is essential</h2>
<p>Online resources, such as Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy’s <a href="https://rasaraorganisation.squarespace.com/consent-toolkit-home">sexual consent toolkit</a>, can help people learn about affirmative consent. However, these resources only reach a small part of the community. </p>
<p>To raise wider awareness of affirmative consent and to overcome persistent rape myths, large-scale efforts are needed.</p>
<p>Governments across Australia should invest in the success of affirmative consent laws through further public awareness campaigns, as well as training and education for criminal justice professionals and the public.</p>
<p>Otherwise, affirmative consent laws could turn out to be just words on paper.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Crowe is Director of Research at Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gianni Ribeiro receives funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology. </span></em></p>Australian jurisdictions are making strides to ensure consent means an active ‘yes’ rather than the absence of a ‘no’. But without better knowledge of these laws, they risk being just words on paper.Jonathan Crowe, Head of School and Dean, School of Law and Justice, University of Southern QueenslandGianni Ribeiro, Lecturer of criminology, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181242023-11-23T23:44:57Z2023-11-23T23:44:57ZA survey found 1 in 6 men admit sexual feelings for children. So is paedophilia increasing?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561219/original/file-20231123-27-gg6txo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C268%2C5731%2C3561&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/abstract-crowd-lights-look-christmas-people-121618450">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One in six (or 15.1% of) Australian men aged over 18 recently surveyed said they had sexual feelings for a child or teen younger than 18 years.</p>
<p>This data was part of a <a href="https://www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/Identifying%20and%20understanding%20child%20sexual%20offending%20behaviour%20and%20attitudes%20among%20Australian%20men.pdf">study</a> by UNSW Sydney and Jesuit Social Services. Researchers asked 1,945 men about their attraction to children via an online recruitment process. </p>
<p>The researchers also found:</p>
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<li>around one in ten (9.4%) Australian men has sexually offended against children</li>
<li>around half of this group (4.9%) reports sexual feelings towards children, while the others may be offending for situational or opportunistic reasons</li>
<li>of the men with sexual feelings towards children, 29.6% wanted help.</li>
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<p>Compared to men with no sexual feelings for or offending against children, the 4.9% of men with sexual feelings and previous offending against children were more likely to: </p>
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<li>work with children</li>
<li>be married</li>
<li>have higher levels of social support </li>
<li>earn higher incomes</li>
<li>be a victim of child sexual abuse.</li>
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<p>This contradicts the notion that people who are sexually attracted to children and are willing to act on it are social outcasts and statistical outliers. </p>
<p>Overall, the study was well designed and conducted. However, the authors acknowledge some limitations. The majority (64.8%) of participants self-identified as white, 64.4% were born in Australia, and 92.8% identified as heterosexual. Therefore, members of specific minority populations may not have had an equal chance or inclination to participate, which could impact how representative the findings are.</p>
<h2>What is paedophilia?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-au/professional/psychiatric-disorders/paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders/pedophilic-disorder">Paedophilic disorder</a> is a diagnosis assigned to adults (those aged over 16 years, and five years older than the child/children to whom they are sexually attracted) who have a recurrent and intense sexual attraction specifically to prepubescent children – generally those 13 years or under. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-au/professional/psychiatric-disorders/paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders/pedophilic-disorder">majority</a> of paedophiles are male. Previous estimates suggest between <a href="https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-au/professional/psychiatric-disorders/paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders/pedophilic-disorder">3%</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4478390/#B149">5%</a> of the adult male population have paedophilic disorder. Estimates suggest it’s <a href="https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-au/professional/psychiatric-disorders/paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders/pedophilic-disorder#v82333441">lower in women</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/psychology-of-a-paedophile-why-are-some-people-attracted-to-children-59991">Psychology of a paedophile: why are some people attracted to children?</a>
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<h2>Is paedophilia increasing?</h2>
<p>This is unlikely. Instead of the new data indicating more men are becoming sexually attracted to prepubescent children, it’s more likely to indicate problems with previous sampling strategies. </p>
<p>For example, many previous studies gathered data from either survivors of child sexual abuse, or those who have been found guilty. Because studies were so targeted, they may have failed to capture a broader sample, which was more reflective of overall attitudes and behaviours.</p>
<p>While there doesn’t seem to be an increase in people who are sexually attracted to children, the internet has made it much easier for paedophiles to act on their desires and access child sexual abuse material, or groom children from a distance anonymously.</p>
<p>A study in the United States found that, of children aged ten to 15 surveyed, 35% <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-18770-005">reported</a> being the victim of either internet harassment or unwanted sexual solicitation. </p>
<h2>Can you cure paedophilia?</h2>
<p>Paedophilia cannot be “cured”, but it can be treated with hormone medication therapies, <a href="https://psychcentral.com/disorders/treating-pedophilia#cbt">cognitive behaviour therapy</a> (CBT), and psychosocial methods such as group therapy.</p>
<p>Drug treatments for paedophilic disorder that include testosterone-lowering drugs <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-022-01696-1">have shown</a> positive results in reducing sexual interests and behaviours. However, more data needs to be collected on larger sample populations before conclusions can be drawn.</p>
<p>A 2021 study also found CBT can be effective at <a href="https://psychcentral.com/disorders/treating-pedophilia#cbt">reducing paedophiles’ hypersexuality</a> (compulsive sexual bevahiour). CBT aims to change the thoughts and behaviours relating to paedophilia, with success measured by a reduction in the desire to offend against children. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-support-paedophiles-to-prevent-child-sex-offending-44845">We need to support paedophiles to prevent child sex offending</a>
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<h2>What can we do to protect children?</h2>
<p>We cannot stop predatory men attempting to access children – either in person, or more frequently online. </p>
<p>But we can, as parents and guardians and the broader community, put safeguards in place to ensure they are not victimised. As the UNSW/Jesuit Social Services study notes, these <a href="https://www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/Identifying%20and%20understanding%20child%20sexual%20offending%20behaviour%20and%20attitudes%20among%20Australian%20men.pdf">include</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>improving safety of online dating sites to reduce the likelihood of predators targeting single parents to access children</p></li>
<li><p>increasing safeguards in environments where children are particularly vulnerable, such as daycare centres and sporting clubs</p></li>
<li><p>increasing support for men who are sexually attracted to children, but who want help, via organisations such as <a href="https://www.stopitnow.org.au">StopItNow</a> as well as within family and friend groups when worried about someone’s behaviour.</p></li>
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<p>It’s also important to educate children about how to be safe online, and whom to report to if they are concerned.</p>
<p>The best way to protect children is to be proactive as a society. </p>
<p><em>Correction: The headline and article have been updated to reflect the proportion of men surveyed with sexual feelings towards children.</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-started-a-service-for-people-worried-about-their-sexual-thoughts-about-children-heres-what-we-found-213235">We started a service for people worried about their sexual thoughts about children. Here's what we found</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xanthe Mallett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study contradicts the notion that people who are sexually attracted to children and are willing to act on it are social outcasts and statistical outliers.Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082602023-10-19T15:24:59Z2023-10-19T15:24:59ZNew ‘healing’ prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reform<p>Ireland has formally opened <a href="https://www.irishprisons.ie/minister-justice-helen-mcentee-visits-new-limerick-prison-expansion-announces-publication-irish-prison-service-annu/">the new women’s wing</a> of the Limerick prison. </p>
<p>This expansion was desperately needed. The former wing was at <a href="https://www.iprt.ie/latest-news/iprt-voices-grave-concern-about-prison-overcrowding-as-bed-capacity-reaches-100-across-prison-estate/">164% capacity</a>, with women reportedly sleeping on mattresses on the floor of what were already inadequate conditions of a dilapidated 19th-century building. </p>
<p>The new build now offers space for 50 women, an increase in capacity of 78%. It also eschews the <a href="https://theconversation.com/prisons-and-asylums-prove-architecture-can-build-up-or-break-down-a-persons-mental-health-109989">dehumanising cliches</a> of the traditional prison environment. </p>
<p>Corridors follow gently bending routes into skylight-lit spaces. Rooms are painted in what has been described as a “<a href="https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/limerick-womens-prison-an-architecture-of-hope">calming colour palette</a>” of lilac and pale blue. </p>
<p>The windows don’t have bars. The prisoners’ cells look like student accommodation. In place of a prison yard, there is a garden and a children’s play area.</p>
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<img alt="A colourful view of a prison recreation room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554379/original/file-20231017-17-e4f19r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An architectural rendering of the new Limerick female prison wing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Justice|Louise Brangan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Like anyone in the care of the state, prisoners should expect clean and humane living conditions. <a href="https://www.irishprisons.ie/wp-content/uploads/documents_pdf/Press-Release-Limerick-Prison-B-Division.pdf">More than</a> good conditions, though, this design project has been hailed as an <a href="https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/limerick-womens-prison-an-architecture-of-hope">“architecture of hope”</a>, providing a healing space in which the prisoners might be “thrive and flourish”. </p>
<p>This is not Ireland’s first experiment in progressive incarceration. My research shows that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362480619843295">in the 1960s and 1970s</a>, the nation cleaved to the idea that the best kind of penal system is when there is the least amount of imprisonment.</p>
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<h2>Policies to avoid imprisonment</h2>
<p>Before the 1970s, prison policy in England and much of the western world was underpinned by a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-lessons-in-scandinavian-design-could-help-prisons-with-rehabilitation-106554">rehabilitative</a> ambition. The idea was that by employing the likes of criminologists, social workers and psychologists, prisons could transform people and ultimately reduce crime. </p>
<p>In Ireland, things were a little different. The prison system was managed by the Prison Division, a small group of generalist civil servants who were unconvinced by the new prison professionals and their individuated schemes. </p>
<p>The Division held that prisoners were not inherently criminal. Poverty in Ireland at the time was endemic. Officials assumed that prisoners’ crimes had socio-economic, not pathological, causes.</p>
<p>Contrary to other nations, the Division also worried that prison was, in fact, fundamentally damaging. In 1963, Minister for Justice Charles Haughey stated in an internal memo that “the institutionalisation, psychological deterioration and disruption to family and individual life, consequent on imprisonment”, must be avoided. </p>
<p>This was a widely held view. During <a href="https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1970-05-27/3/?highlight%5B0%5D=basically&highlight%5B1%5D=unsuitable&highlight%5B2%5D=encouraging&highlight%5B3%5D=individuals&highlight%5B4%5D=become&highlight%5B5%5D=adequate&highlight%5B6%5D=responsible&highlight%5B7%5D=members&highlight%5B8%5D=normal&highlight%5B9%5D=society">a debate on prisons in 1970</a>, TD (member of the Irish parliament) for Fine Gail John Bruton said that prison was “basically unsuitable” as a tool for encouraging people to become responsible members of society.</p>
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<img alt="An old manor house in rural Ireland." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554337/original/file-20231017-23-m0c4vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shelton Abbey, in County Wicklow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Church,_Interior,_Arklow,_Co._Wicklow%22_is_in_Arklow,_but_definitely_exterior_(35740556981).jpg#/media/File:%22Church,_Interior,_Arklow,_Co._Wicklow%22_is_in_Arklow,_but_definitely_exterior_(35740556981).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<h2>Ireland’s humane penal reforms</h2>
<p>It was in this sceptical spirit that the Irish government would go on to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362480619843295">implement</a> significant reform. In 1973, the Republic of Ireland’s first open prison, Shelton Abbey, was established in a former country manor. A maximum of 90 prisoners spent their days tending to the gardens. </p>
<p>In 1975, the Training Unit, the nation’s first purpose-built prison, opened on the site of Mountjoy prison in Dublin. Modernist in style, it was lauded for its semi-open regime. Its 90 prisoners wore their own clothes and came and went during the day for work and training purposes. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most radical of these changes was the permissive and liberal use of temporary release. Established in Ireland in 1960, this allowed an increasing number of prisoners to return home for days, weeks and sometimes permanently, serving the end of their sentence at home. </p>
<p>None of this was undertaken with the central ambition of reducing crime. That kind of rehabilitation was beyond the prison, they believed. The Division hoped that by being released more frequently and by having access to more engaging activities and less austere spaces, it might help prisoners develop as people, but at least it would reduce the pains of imprisonment. As an internal 1981 Prison Division report <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362480619843295">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[The aim is] to equip the offender with educational, technical and social skills which will help him to turn away from a life of crime, if he so wishes. However, even if the offender on release does not turn away from a life of crime, those services can be regarded as having achieved some success if they bring about an improvement in the offender’s awareness of his responsibilities to himself, his family and the community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Success, they concluded, was impossible to measure. Best to be lenient, first and foremost.</p>
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<img alt="A black and white archival photograph of people playing sport indoors." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554513/original/file-20231018-17-32t82p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The recreation hall at the Training Unit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Justice|Louise Brangan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>The damage prison causes</h2>
<p>The temporary release system still operates today, though in a much more restricted form. As Ireland changed, so too did public and political attitudes. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, it was felt that prisons in Ireland should do a little more confining and a little less releasing. In 1995, 21% of prisoners served their sentence on temporary release, that figure has now dropped to <a href="https://www.irishprisons.ie/wp-content/uploads/documents_pdf/SEPTEMBER-2023.pdf">9%</a>. </p>
<p>In the decades since these innovative regimes were instituted, a formidable body of research has amassed, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00043/full">proving</a> that the Prison Division’s scepticism of imprisonment’s benefits was well founded. </p>
<p>Being deprived of liberty and cut off from society puts a person at greater risk of poor mental health, homelessness and poverty after imprisonment. It also contributes, as research <a href="https://archive2021.parliament.scot/S4_JusticeCommittee/Inquiries/Dr_Lesley_Graham.pdf">in Scotland</a> has found, to a greater risk of dying prematurely.</p>
<p>Prison officials in the 1960s and 1970s saw incarceration as inescapably repressive – a site of harm for individuals, their communities and the wider society. Their bold new policies (open facilities; the temporary release scheme) sought to reduce the use and impact of the prison. The Irish Prison Division thought the prison was the problem, not the prisoners. </p>
<p>Limerick’s new women’s unit embodies the opposite idea: that prison can fix damaged prisoners and help reduce crime, all while expanding the size of the prison estate. </p>
<p>The Prison Division was right. Humane penal policy has to be about much more than buildings, design and physical spaces. Using incarceration sparingly – cautiously, leniently – is better for individuals and society at large.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>In the course of her research, Louise Brangan has received funding from the ESRC, Fulbright Commission, British Academy and Leverhulme.</span></em></p>In the mid-20th century, civil servants in Ireland recognised the harms incarceration wreaks not just on individuals but their families and society at large.Louise Brangan, Chancellor's Fellow | Senior Lecturer, University of Strathclyde Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148442023-10-16T01:07:55Z2023-10-16T01:07:55ZHow mistaken identity can lead to wrongful convictions<p>In March 1976, American Leonard Mack was convicted of sexual assault and holding two female victims at gunpoint. In September 2023, Mack’s wrongful conviction was finally overturned by a New York judge on his 72nd birthday with the help of the <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/news/hit-in-dna-database-proves-leonard-macks-innocence-after-47-years-of-wrongful-conviction/">Innocence Project</a>, an organisation that uses DNA evidence to prove factual innocence. </p>
<p>Mack’s conviction took 47 years to overturn. He served seven-and-a-half of these years in a New York prison. His case is the <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/news/8-moving-moments-from-leonard-macks-historic-exoneration-after-47-years/">longest</a> in United States history to be overturned using DNA evidence. </p>
<p>In June 2023, a similar historic moment occurred in Australia. Kathleen Folbigg was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/05/kathleen-folbigg-pardoned-after-20-years-in-jail-over-deaths-of-her-four-children">pardoned and released</a> after 20 years in prison for the murder and manslaughter of her four young children. </p>
<p>Considered one of the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/folbigg-release-would-make-chamberlain-case-pale-into-insignificance-20230307-p5cpya.html">worst miscarriages of justice</a> in Australian history, Folbigg’s release has sparked discussion over whether Australia needs a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/12/not-a-rare-case-kathleen-folbigg-pardon-sparks-calls-for-new-body-to-review-possible-wrongful-convictions">formalised body</a> to deal with post-conviction appeals. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/serial-podcasts-adnan-syed-has-murder-conviction-vacated-how-common-are-wrongful-convictions-190968">'Serial' podcast's Adnan Syed has murder conviction vacated. How common are wrongful convictions?</a>
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<p>Mack and Folbigg are only two individuals on different sides of the world who have spent decades fighting to prove their innocence. </p>
<p>Many others are still fighting. The prevalence of wrongful convictions is hard to determine. The <a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx">National Registry of Exonerations</a> in the United States has recorded 3,396 exonerations nation-wide since 1989. </p>
<p>But data on official exonerations fail to capture the many individuals whose convictions are yet to be overturned. </p>
<p>Estimates of the prevalence of wrongful convictions in the United States range from <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/08874034221106747?casa_token=DL_gPkxNcI8AAAAA:uI-en9junmLXXScDGthXAuC9JcLsxp5OF1J4QB1WdA2L2cZRcwRuwtxVmIMiKYbYaSDj_ji4EdPSLA">0.5 to 5%</a>. The exact prevalence in Australia is less clear but we do know <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.801706351305383?casa_token=cpZBfZmh944AAAAA%3Ax_zYUlnogLjuDWl81jc38vmeOovzw44M171rP7G3ibNnU35rvWS0yeIO_Ad0eBa54nE54KxaKzIb3w4">71 cases of wrongful convictions</a> have been identified in Australia between 1922 to 2015.</p>
<p>Some have argued there could be <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.308199161216493">350 convictions per year</a> of individuals who are factually innocent in Australia. </p>
<p>A witness mistakenly identifying an innocent suspect is common in many wrongful conviction cases.</p>
<p>Eyewitness misidentification is the leading contributing factor in wrongful convictions overturned by the <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/">Innocence Project</a>, present in 64% of their successful cases. </p>
<p>In Australia, <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.801706351305383?casa_token=cpZBfZmh944AAAAA%3Ax_zYUlnogLjuDWl81jc38vmeOovzw44M171rP7G3ibNnU35rvWS0yeIO_Ad0eBa54nE54KxaKzIb3w4">6%</a> of recorded wrongful convictions involved an eyewitness error. </p>
<p>This may be an underestimate given many applications to innocence initiatives in Australia alleging wrongful conviction, such as the <a href="https://bohii.net/">Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative</a>, report <a href="https://bohii.net/blog/positiononestablishingccrcas">eyewitness evidence</a> as a potential contributing factor.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kathleen-folbigg-pardon-shows-australia-needs-a-dedicated-body-to-investigate-wrongful-convictions-205645">Kathleen Folbigg pardon shows Australia needs a dedicated body to investigate wrongful convictions</a>
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<p>In Mack’s case, two victims misidentified him as the perpetrator. These identifications proved to be instrumental in his wrongful conviction. How did the two victims get it wrong? </p>
<h2>How problematic procedures influence eyewitnesses</h2>
<p>Eyewitness identification evidence relies on witnesses to accurately remember criminal perpetrators. Several factors affect eyewitness memory accuracy. Features of the crime can impact memory, such as whether it was light or dark, or whether the perpetrator wore a disguise. </p>
<p>Memory can also be affected by characteristics of the witness at the time of the crime, such as their stress or intoxication levels. </p>
<p>These factors are present at the time of the crime and cannot be changed. What is perhaps more crucial is that eyewitness memory can also be affected by the procedures law enforcement use to collect identification evidence.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/news/hit-in-dna-database-proves-leonard-macks-innocence-after-47-years-of-wrongful-conviction/">Mack’s case</a>, there were serious problems with the procedures used to get the identifications from the victims. One of the victims made three separate identifications of Mack. Witnesses should only complete one identification procedure for each suspect, because the first identification will bias future identification attempts. </p>
<p>For two of the identifications the victim made, she was only shown Mack by himself surrounded by police. Showing a lone suspect without any other lineup members may <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-29406-3_2">increase mistaken identifications</a>, particularly when the context in which they are shown is highly suggestive. </p>
<p>Seeing Mack in handcuffs and in the presence of police may have led the victim to identify him. Mack was the only person shown to the witness in these identification attempts, so the police officers organising the process knew he was the suspect. </p>
<p>“Single-blind” administration of identification procedures – where the police officers organising the lineup know who the suspect is – increase the likelihood of <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-49224-002">mistaken identifications</a>.</p>
<p>For the other identification this victim made, she picked Mack out of a photo lineup containing seven images. Mack’s photo was the only photo in the lineup that contained visible clothing and the year (1975) in the background. All members of a lineup must be matched and no one lineup member <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/lhb-lhb0000359.pdf">should stand out</a>, but Mack’s photo was distinct. </p>
<p>With all these problematic practices combined, we can see how Mack was misidentified and convicted.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kathleen-folbigg-is-free-but-people-pardoned-and-exonerated-of-crimes-face-unique-challenges-when-released-from-prison-207017">Kathleen Folbigg is free. But people pardoned and exonerated of crimes face unique challenges when released from prison</a>
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<p>In 2020, a team of eyewitness experts published <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/lhb-lhb0000359.pdf">nine evidence-based recommendations </a>for conducting identification procedures. </p>
<p>These recommendations serve to reduce mistaken identifications and enhance accurate ones. </p>
<p>The recommendations address the problematic practices in Mack’s case, but also include things like making sure there is sufficient evidence to place a suspect in a lineup, and giving appropriate instructions to witnesses during the procedure. </p>
<p>Identification procedures should also be video recorded to identify any poor practices. </p>
<p>While these recommendations will go a long way to reducing wrongful convictions resulting from faulty eyewitness identifications, they will only be effective if followed by police. </p>
<p>The next step is ensuring these recommendations are embedded into everyday policing practice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hayley Cullen previously worked on a voluntary basis for Not Guilty: The Sydney Exoneration Project, an organisation that reviews cases of potential wrongful conviction. She was not involved in any of the cases discussed in this article.</span></em></p>Leonard Mack spent years in a US jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Here’s how identification procedures can, and have, led to wrongful convictions, and what can be done to prevent it.Hayley Cullen, Lecturer, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103912023-09-13T13:09:34Z2023-09-13T13:09:34ZRehab for South Africa’s female inmates focuses on domestic chores – instead of finding good work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541043/original/file-20230803-27-8xeebf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Patriarchal norms influence the design of rehabilitation programmes for women in jail.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Corrections facilities are supposed to help rehabilitate offenders. However, during apartheid, South Africa’s <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/267012745.pdf">correctional system was a pillar of the repressive, discriminatory laws</a>. It was used to punish those – mainly the black majority – perceived to be a threat to the white minority regime.</p>
<p>Present day correctional services in South Africa remain <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/64290/Steyn_Profile_2017.pdf?sequence=1">patriarchal and discriminatory</a>. They disadvantage women by limiting their rehabilitation programmes to mostly domestic skills. In contrast, male offenders have a richer array of skills programmes to choose from. This increases their chances of being gainfully employed or self-employed, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2022.2044123">lessening their chances of re-offending</a>. </p>
<p>There are 143,223 convicted prisoners in South Africa, of which <a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/south-africa">3,724 are women</a>. Yet the idea of women in corrections continues to be a taboo subject. Because of the persisting patriarchal idea of women as nurturers, carers and homemakers, their mere presence in correctional facilities is considered to go against what society expects them to be. </p>
<p>Such beliefs contribute to how women are treated within correctional services and which rehabilitation programmes are deemed appropriate for them. </p>
<p>As psychology scholars, we set out to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358198293_Women_offenders%27_experiences_of_rehabilitation_in_a_South_African_correctional_centre">explore</a> the rehabilitation experiences of women offenders in one of South Africa’s correctional centres for women classified as maximum security offenders. We interviewed 18 women at the Johannesburg Correctional Centre.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-smart-ways-to-help-curb-reoffending-in-south-africas-prisons-106255">Two smart ways to help curb reoffending in South Africa's prisons</a>
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<p>Our findings indicate the need for culture and gender sensitive offender rehabilitation programmes and processes. They also highlight the role the women play in reshaping their identities. </p>
<h2>Enforcing women’s domestication</h2>
<p>Correctional services rehabilitation programmes aim to reduce offenders’ risk of reoffending (recidivism). They also seek to enhance the chances of successful community reintegration upon release. This is only possible if such programmes take seriously women’s needs, histories, cultures and overall worldviews. We found this was not the case.</p>
<p>For example, the women we surveyed highlighted the imposition of Bible reading sessions whether they were Christian or not. </p>
<p>Also, in order to restore the “traditional good woman narrative” – being a good mother and a good wife – correctional centres enforce domestication. Most of the rehabilitation programmes and processes for women tend to be centred on home life. Women are expected to do beadwork, knitting, sewing and laundry and to take care of the sick. </p>
<p>Giving incarcerated women less exposure to non-traditional vocational training, such as entrepreneurship and digital skills, limits their prospects in the job market and business upon their release. This raises <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sw/v53n2/08.pdf">their prospects of reoffending</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigeria-has-too-many-prison-inmates-awaiting-trial-technology-could-achieve-swifter-justice-193237">Nigeria has too many prison inmates awaiting trial. Technology could achieve swifter justice</a>
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<p>Those who try to defy these prescripts by accessing formal education through correspondence say they have to fight to overcome barriers. These include limited access to computers and a conducive learning environment (single cells instead of communal cells). A participant in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624X19895974">one of our studies</a> indicated that women sometimes resort to court action to claim their right to education:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We just struggle to have every little thing … We had to go to courts … We had to do motions just to make sure that we had laptop in our cells … I understand, they say the policy doesn’t allow that, but I mean education cannot be curtailed by anything, not even incarceration, it’s a right for me to study. </p>
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<p>Incarcerated women continue to be stigmatised and judged by the justice system and society at large for breaking the law, and the moral standards of what it means <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/02645505211010336">to be a good woman and a good mother</a>. </p>
<p>As a result, some of the women also look at rehabilitation processes as an opportunity for restoring their moral status as a good mother. </p>
<h2>‘Bad mothers’</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358198293_Women_offenders%27_experiences_of_rehabilitation_in_a_South_African_correctional_centre">findings</a> also showed that the incarcerated women experienced an internalised “bad mother” narrative. In trying to circumvent this, one of the participants pointed to good behaviour and studying with a view to restoring her motherhood status:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now if you doing … something better … then you are also sending a message to your kids because they will say okay at least mommy is studying. Even when you reprimand them when you say Lucy (pseudonym) do not do this then she will realise that okay mummy is a better person.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Correctional facilities mimic society</h2>
<p>Our study shows how the vocational activities for incarcerated women in South Africa are in line with what a patriarchal society demands. While it may be argued that the women are being equipped with skills they can use upon their release to earn an honest living, their relegation to such domestic activities as sewing and beading needs to be challenged.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/juvenile-offenders-in-ghana-arent-prepared-for-rejoining-society-how-the-system-is-failing-them-203253">Juvenile offenders in Ghana aren't prepared for rejoining society - how the system is failing them</a>
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<p>While the odds of securing a “decent job” are reduced for many offenders, it doesn’t justify the relegation of women into stereotypical and gendered rehabilitative practices. We therefore argue that all incarcerated women should be more exposed to non-traditional vocational training which broadens their options beyond the job market into entrepreneurship post-incarceration. This is particularly important in view of women’s much more nuanced pathways to crime, with economic marginalisation as one of the factors, especially in the South African context. </p>
<p>Rehabilitation experiences for women offenders should include programmes that empower them financially, such as entrepreneurship and technical skills, including computer literacy. They must be equipped with skills that will contribute to lessening re-offending.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sibulelo Qhogwana received funding from the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Puleng Segalo receives funding from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p>Inmates who are mothers tend to be accused of being bad parents.Sibulelo Qhogwana, Senior lecturer, University of JohannesburgPuleng Segalo, Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2121052023-08-31T03:28:02Z2023-08-31T03:28:02ZAccess and attention: why serial killers like Lucy Letby often work in healthcare<p>British nurse Lucy Letby was last week sentenced to life in prison for <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-21/british-nurse-lucy-letby-sentenced-prison-murder-seven-babies/102757606">murdering</a> seven infants in her care, and attempting to murder a further six.</p>
<p>As a forensic criminologist, many people have asked me why a medical professional would murder their patients. </p>
<p>While they’re very rare, serial killer healthcare workers often share common traits, and they target a specific, and very vulnerable, victim pool. </p>
<p>While limited research has been conducted on serial killer medicos, there are some trends among serial killers that can help us understand the role of the profession in the act of serial murder.</p>
<h2>‘Custodial’ killers</h2>
<p>A serial killer is usually defined as someone who kills at least three people in a series, but not in a single event – there needs to be a cooling-off period between the killings. Although the public is generally fascinated by these predators, serial killings are a rare event, comprising <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder">fewer than 1% of all murders in any given year</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>Serial killers come from many walks of life, and not all are dysfunctional loners – many are married or in a stable relationship.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178913001183">2014 research paper</a> found serial killers can be understood via several subtypes, including: those who kill for sexually sadistic pleasure; professional killers who are motivated by money and the power they derive from the kill; and, as relevant to Letby, “custodial killers”.</p>
<p>Custodial killers are often healthcare workers who murder helpless or dependent people in their care.</p>
<p>The paper’s author writes of custodial killers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most common examples include “angel of death” cases involving nurses in hospitals or nursing homes who surreptitiously murder ill or elderly patients, usually by asphyxiation or medication overdose. This group is likely to contain the highest number of female serial killers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s likely the method of murder is linked to their profession. Healthcare workers have access to medications not available to others, as well as the knowledge to hide their crimes more effectively.</p>
<p>One research group studied 64 female serial killers in the US between 1821 and 2008, and found <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14789949.2015.1007516?journalCode=rjfp20">nearly 40%</a> of them worked in healthcare. </p>
<p>But the question remains, why do they kill? If we look at women specifically, the 2014 research paper suggests that, unlike men who murder as a result of predatory lust and/or compulsive rage, women serial killers are typically driven by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178913001183">histrionic attention-seeking or financial gain</a>. </p>
<h2>Letby and healthcare killers</h2>
<p>Another research paper specifically studied the characteristics of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jip.1434">16 convicted healthcare serial killers</a>, which the authors defined as “nurses who have been convicted of at least two murders, which they have carried out within a hospital setting”.</p>
<p>While a small sample size, they found 56% were female, and the average age of those being charged was 36 years.</p>
<p>About 44% killed between five and nine victims before being caught, and 75% killed in only one location. Insulin was the most common method of murder, followed by muscle relaxant.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-can-be-psychopaths-too-in-ways-more-subtle-but-just-as-dangerous-84200">Women can be psychopaths too, in ways more subtle but just as dangerous</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Letby fits several of these characteristics. She’s a woman, 33 years old, and murdered seven infants. She killed, as far as we currently know, in only one location, and she used insulin to murder some of her victims.</p>
<p>A 2007 book, Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers: Why They Kill, provides a checklist of 22 “red flags” for this group of killers, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>secretive/difficult personal relationships</p></li>
<li><p>history of depression or mental instability</p></li>
<li><p>higher incidents of death when they are on shift</p></li>
<li><p>making colleagues anxious or suspicious</p></li>
<li><p>craving attention.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Letby certainly made her colleagues <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/lucy-letby-baby-murder-colleague-b2395533.html">suspicious</a>, and they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/19/doctors-were-forced-to-apologise-for-raising-alarm-over-lucy-letby-and-baby-deaths#:%7E:text=Lucy%20Letby's%20colleagues%20were%20ordered,deaths%2C%20the%20Guardian%20has%20learned.">reported her</a> in the years preceding her arrest. There were more <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11301405/Doctors-Lucy-Letbys-hospital-noticed-shift-patterns-matched-rise-babies-falling-ill.html">child deaths on her shifts</a> than on those of any other staff member, which is how she was caught.</p>
<p>One criminal psychologist suggested part of the rationale behind the killings may have been to gain the attention of a male colleague, whom prosecutors <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/07/lucy-letby-texted-about-doctor-crush-hours-before-attempt-on-boys-life-court-told">claimed</a> she had a “crush” on. This would fit with research suggesting attention-seeking is a motive for female serial killers more generally.</p>
<h2>Other infamous healthcare killers</h2>
<p>Harold Shipman was an English general practitioner who is considered one of the most <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harold-Shipman">prolific serial killers</a> in modern history.</p>
<p>He was convicted of murdering 15 of his patients in 2000, but is suspected in the deaths of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100413134928/http://www.the-shipman-inquiry.org.uk/6r_page.asp?ID=3401">up to 250 people</a>.</p>
<p>Most of his victims were older women in good health. He killed many by injecting them with lethal doses of diamorphine (medical-grade heroin), after which he falsified their death certificates to indicate they had died of poor health. </p>
<p>Suspicions were raised as the number of his patients dying was very high, as were the number of cremation orders his colleagues were being asked to countersign. </p>
<p>Given the patients he killed were largely in good health, misguided “altruism” cannot explain his crimes.</p>
<p>Niels Högel, a German nurse, is another example. In 2019, Högel was found guilty of using lethal injections to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/06/06/730281642/german-serial-murderer-nurse-is-found-guilty-of-killing-85-patients">murder 85 of his patients</a>, some of whom he attempted to resuscitate to show off to his colleagues.</p>
<h2>Medics who murder are rare</h2>
<p>The reason the Letby case (like Shipman’s before it) is causing such significant public interest and horror is because we see medics as trusted professionals.</p>
<p>We put our lives in their hands, and cases such as these cause significant fear when one is found to have breached that trust so fundamentally.</p>
<p>But it’s important to acknowledge they also cause such interest precisely because they are so rare.</p>
<p>While medics who turn serial killer are incredibly prolific, we should not fear unnecessarily for ourselves or our loved ones. </p>
<p>If you are concerned about a medical professional, you should report them to the appropriate authority. High-profile cases such as Letby’s have shown these individuals can be caught and their patterns of behaviour can be identified, and in that way we can protect the most vulnerable among us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xanthe Mallett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These ‘custodial killers’ are often healthcare workers who murder helpless or dependent people in their care.Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2086322023-07-24T14:47:04Z2023-07-24T14:47:04ZWhen mafia threatens democracy: research shows ordinary people are less honest in countries hit by organised crime<p>Organised crime casts a <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Studies/Illicit_financial_flows_2011_web.pdf">long shadow</a>, driving violence and an illicit economy. But our <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506231176615">research</a> has uncovered some more subtle dimensions to its influence, too. We’ve found that organised crime can undermine the civic honesty of ordinary, law abiding people. </p>
<p>Civic honesty means adhering to shared moral norms that characterise actions such as tax evasion, bribery or welfare fraud as unacceptable. Civic honesty is a cornerstone for a robust and thriving democracy. It creates a society where people follow rules not out of fear of reprisal but due to their moral convictions. That, in turn, lessens the need for intensive surveillance and costly punitive measures. </p>
<p>Typically, civic honesty is driven by trust in public bodies such as the government and police. This trust represents citizens’ stake in a tacit <a href="https://www.econometricsociety.org/publications/econometrica/2020/07/01/state-capacity-reciprocity-and-social-contract">social contract</a> according to which they perform their civic duties in exchange for the competency, fairness and reliability of their government.</p>
<p>However, the link between political trust and civic honesty varies substantially from country to country. We wanted to explore if the presence of organised crime was a factor in this variability.</p>
<h2>83 countries</h2>
<p>To test this, we used an <a href="https://ocindex.net/">index</a> of global organised cime to rate the influence of criminal groups in different countries and regions on a scale of 1 to 10. We included mafia-style groups with a clear structure and a recognisable name like the Cosa Nostra in Italy or the Yakuza in Japan, and looser criminal associations without a clear structure or name. </p>
<p>We also looked at state-embedded groups – organised criminals that operate by infiltrating the state apparatus – and foreign criminal groups operating outside their home country, such as the Italian mafia operating in the US.</p>
<p>We paired this index with survey data from more than 128,000 people in 83 countries from two <a href="https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSEVSjoint2017.jsp">large-scale research studies</a> investigating beliefs, opinions and values. From these studies, we obtained two measures of individual differences: political trust and civic honesty.</p>
<p>The political trust measure was based on how much confidence people had in key legal and political institutions – the police, civil service, government, political parties and the justice system.</p>
<p>The civic honesty index was based on how justifiable respondents thought four illegal actions were – accepting a bribe, cheating on taxes, fare dodging on public transport and benefit fraud.</p>
<p>Data for these two measures were available from eight African countries, 13 countries in the Americas, 26 Asian nations, 34 European nations and two in Oceania. </p>
<h2>Corruption undermines civic honesty</h2>
<p>We found that citizens tended to be less inclined towards civic honesty in countries where organised criminal groups were more widespread. In these places, corruption is more commonly justified. </p>
<p>We also expected that people who report higher political trust would be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-006-9013-6">more civically honest</a>. If you believe in the integrity and reliability of the government, the police and the courts, you are more likely to abide by the rules they impose. </p>
<p>Political trust is a reflection of the legitimacy of institutions because when people see institutions as legitimate, they are more likely to internalise the norms and values they promote as their own. </p>
<p>People tend to follow the directives of legitimate institutions out of a conviction that such directives constitute the proper, moral way to act. Therefore, how much people trust institutions should be linked to their civic honesty.</p>
<p>That was indeed the case in countries that had fewer problems with organised crime, such as Denmark, Finland and Singapore. However, the picture was quite different in countries where there was more organised crime, exposing an interesting dynamic.</p>
<p>In countries such as Italy, Mexico and Russia, the association between civic honesty and political trust was weaker or even non-existent. Knowing how much trust a person has in institutions therefore tells you little or nothing about what they think about civic honesty.</p>
<p>We interpret this as an indication that in countries more strongly influenced by organised crime, institutions lose their role as moral referents. People’s judgements about the justifiability of illegal actions are not predicted by how much they trust political and legal institutions. </p>
<p>When our understanding of the appropriateness of tax evasion becomes disconnected from our confidence in institutions, for example, it shows that our norms are out of step with those of the institution. We don’t yet know what drives people’s judgements in these situations but it is likely that the perceived <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190038">probability of being caught</a> or personal values become more central.</p>
<h2>Total takeover</h2>
<p>Remarkably, however, in countries experiencing the most extreme criminal influence, the correlation between trust and honesty actually inverted. If people had a greater trust in public institutions, they were more likely to show a lower level of civic honesty. </p>
<p>In countries such as Colombia, Iraq and Venezuela, people’s trust in institutions is associated with higher justification of illegal actions like bribery and fare dodging.</p>
<p>In these countries, not only do institutions lose their role as moral referents, but people’s confidence in what presumably are corrupted institutions is linked to them finding it easier to justify illegality. </p>
<p>This seemingly paradoxical outcome could be attributed to criminal groups successfully co-opting the state, thereby subverting the nature and moral responsibilities of institutions. </p>
<p>Institutions may be perceived as being manipulated to serve illegal interests, which leads to a situation where the citizens who have confidence in corrupted institutions are also the ones with a higher tendency towards immorality and crime. </p>
<h2>Crime as a democratic issue</h2>
<p>The implications of these findings for democratic systems are profound. Organised criminal groups can play a part in altering societal norms by undermining the moral authority of public bodies. An insidious erosion of the social contract can follow, shifting norms away from the principles of civic honesty.</p>
<p>The unchecked growth of organised crime doesn’t merely lead to more illegal activities and lower public security, it threatens the very fabric of our democracies. It can lead to a broader acceptance of illegal behaviours by subtly limiting, or even sabotaging, political and legal authorities’ capacity to promote a culture of legality and cooperation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giovanni A. Travaglino receives funding from the UKRI for the "Secret Power" project (Grant No. EP/X02170X/1). The grant was awarded to him under the European Commission’s “European Research Council - STG” Scheme.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alberto Mirisola and Pascal Burgmer do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mafia groups don’t just cause harm through violence, they can erode the principles that make a democracy function.Giovanni A. Travaglino, Professor of Social Psychology and Criminology, Royal Holloway University of LondonAlberto Mirisola, Associate Professor of Social Psychology, University of Palermo Pascal Burgmer, Lecturer in Psychology, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2065702023-06-05T12:07:50Z2023-06-05T12:07:50ZBaseless anti-trans claims fuel adoption of harmful laws – two criminologists explain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529672/original/file-20230601-29-zn4nbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C56%2C4716%2C3087&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kansas legislators Brenda Landwehr, left, and Chris Croft confer during a vote on an anti-transgender bathroom bill, which both support.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TransgenderHealthKansas/63880be5083f47a499bd396dee2a3631/photo">AP Photo/John Hanna</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been seven years since North Carolina made headlines for enacting a “<a href="https://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/46/2/232.full.pdf">bathroom bill</a>” – legislation intended to prevent transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. </p>
<p>After boycotts threatened to cost the state more than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/bathroom-bill-to-cost-north-carolina-376-billion.html">US$3.7 billion</a>, legislators <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/north-carolina-transgender-bathrooms.html">repealed the law</a> in 2017. Since then, however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000270">religious</a> <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/rag/11/1/article-p67_5.xml">and</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2021.1">political</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/us/politics/transgender-laws-republicans.html">conservatives</a> have successfully spread an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/opinion/america-is-being-consumed-by-a-moral-panic-over-trans-people.html">anti-trans</a> <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anti-trans-moral-panics-endanger-all-young-people/">moral panic</a>, or irrational fear, across the United States.</p>
<p>As far back as 2001, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-republican-transgender-laws-pile-up-setting-2024-battle-lines-2023-05-18/">Republican lawmakers</a> proposed the first of what are now <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/anti-lgbtq-plus-state-bill-rights-dg/index.html">nearly 900 anti-LGBTQ+ bills</a>. <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights">More than 500 of these</a> were introduced in 49 state legislatures and the U.S. Congress during the first five months of 2023. To date, at least <a href="https://translegislation.com/">79 have passed</a>.</p>
<p>Many of these anti-trans laws are <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/inside-playbook-transgender-health-bills-99475030">written</a> <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/165403/groups-pushing-anti-trans-laws-want-divide-lgbtq-movement">and</a> <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/03/31/anti-trans-bills-2023-america">financed</a> by a group of far-right interest groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, the Liberty Counsel and the American Principles Project. </p>
<p>These groups claim their proposed laws would protect cisgender women and girls – those whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth – from the sorts of violent trans people that are often depicted in <a href="https://perma.cc/W43F-7YKZ">movies</a> <a href="https://www.glaad.org/new-york-times-sign-on-letter-from-lgtbq-allied-leaders-and-organizations">and</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/entertainment/transgender-jk-rowling-media-intl/index.html">other</a> <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/kayla-denker-speaks-out-against-death-threats-transphobic-backlash">media</a>. </p>
<p>But as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SYMKKZQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">criminologists</a>, <a href="https://healthpolicyresearch-scholars.org/scholars/alexis-rowland/">we</a> know these claims are without merit. No reliable data supports the argument that transgender people commit violent crimes at higher rates than cisgender men and women. In fact, transgender people are more than <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306099">four times</a> as likely to be the victim of a crime as cisgender people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C4758%2C3165&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of people walk down a sidewalk carrying flags promoting equality and LGBTQ+ rights" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C4758%2C3165&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529654/original/file-20230601-20-9b3l28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators protest against a Tennessee proposal to ban drag shows, one of many anti-trans proposals across the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PrideFestivals/156f97554dbe49df84b950452bee9569/photo">John Amis/AP Images for Human Rights Campaign</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Expanding reach</h2>
<p>Anti-trans laws like the one enacted in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/transgender-rights-bathroom-law-kansas-b3d068afa2bc02bb15314ee04e8e3899">Kansas</a> over the governor’s veto reach beyond restrooms to limit access to many sex-segregated spaces, including “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/transgender-rights-bathroom-law-kansas-b3d068afa2bc02bb15314ee04e8e3899">locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers</a>,” based on the sex assigned at birth to a person who seeks to use those spaces.</p>
<p>As of the end of May 2023, at least <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/map-gender-affirming-care-targeted-us/story?id=97443087">18</a> <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/03/18/gender-affirming-health-care-bans-transgender-lgbt">states</a> had enacted laws within the preceding 12 months that limit medically age-appropriate gender-affirming health care for trans minors, with similar bills pending in 14 more states. And Florida’s barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ regulations even prohibits the mere discussion <a href="https://apnews.com/article/desantis-florida-dont-say-gay-ban-684ed25a303f83208a89c556543183cb">of sexuality and gender identity in schools</a> through the 12th grade. Journalist Adam Rhodes called these efforts a “<a href="https://theappeal.org/anti-trans-bills-transgender-state-legislation/">centrally coordinated attack on transgender existence</a>.” </p>
<p>We believe these laws and bills illustrate the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/politics/anti-lgbtq-plus-state-bill-rights-dg/index.html">increasingly</a> <a href="https://www.thecanary.co/us/us-analysis/2023/05/23/floridas-desantis-issues-slew-of-anti-lgbtq-legislation-ahead-of-presidential-campaign/">hostile</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/politics/montana-drag-story-hour-ban/index.html">legislative</a> landscape for LGBTQ+ people despite polls showing that most people in the United States <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/">want trans people to be protected from discrimination</a> in public spaces on the basis of their gender.</p>
<h2>What the data shows</h2>
<p>A variety of <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/myths-and-facts-battling-disinformation-about-transgender-rights">myths</a>, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2023/03/31/we-must-fight-anti-trans-disinformation">false narratives</a>, <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/03/31/trans-myths-debunked-science/">bad science</a>, <a href="https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol104/iss7/2/">misconceptions</a> and <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/are-50-of-trans-women-in-prison-sex-offenders-512f949c365a">outright</a> <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/41-per-cent-trans-transgender-trans-women-prisoners-sex-offenders-false-study-statistic-this-is-why-a8072431.html">misrepresentations</a> undergird anti-trans laws. The reality, however, is that trans-exclusionary laws do not protect cisgender women and girls from harassment or violence. Rather, they result in dramatic increases in violent victimization for transgender and gender-nonconforming adults and children.</p>
<p>When laws permit transgender people to access sex-segregated spaces in accordance with their gender identities, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0335-z">crime rates do not increase</a>. There is <a href="https://www.lgbtmap.org/file/bathroom-ban-laws.pdf">no association</a> between trans-inclusive policies and more crime. As one of us wrote in a recent paper, this is likely because, just like cisgender folks, “<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4419750">transgender people use locker rooms and restrooms to change clothes and go to the bathroom</a>,” not for sexual gratification or predatory reasons.</p>
<p>Conversely, when trans people are forced by law to use sex-segregated spaces that align with the sex assigned to them at birth instead of their gender identity, two important facts should be noted. </p>
<p>First, no studies show that violent crime rates against cisgender women and girls in such spaces decrease. In other words, cisgender women and girls are no safer than they would be in the absence of anti-trans laws. Certainly, the possibility exists that a cisgender man might pose as a woman to go into certain spaces under <a href="https://perma.cc/C7DB-63RL">false pretenses</a>. But that same possibility remains regardless of whether transgender people are lawfully permitted in those spaces.</p>
<p>Second, trans people are <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306099">significantly more likely</a> to be victimized in sex-segregated spaces than are cisgender people. For instance, while incarcerated in facilities designated for men, trans women are <a href="https://perma.cc/N9QG-3BML">nine to 13 times</a> as likely to be sexually assaulted as the men with whom they are boarded. </p>
<p>In women’s prisons, correctional staff are responsible for 41% of women’s <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/sexual-victimization-prisons-and-jails-reported-inmates-2011-12-update">sexual victimization</a>, with cisgender women committing the balance of nearly all prisoner-on-prisoner violence. Similarly, trans boys and girls who are barred from using the washrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity are respectively <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542%2Fpeds.2018-2902">between 26% to 149% more likely</a> to be sexually victimized in the locations they are forced to use than cisgender youths.</p>
<p>In society at large, between <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf">84% and 90%</a> of all crimes of sexual violence are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, not a stranger lurking in the shadows – or the showers or restroom stalls. But trans and nonbinary people feel very unsafe in bathrooms and locker rooms, though others experience relative safety there. In fact, the <a href="https://perma.cc/ZZJ9-78M7">largest study of its kind</a> found that upward of 75% of trans men and 64% of trans women reported that they routinely avoid public restrooms to minimize their chances of being harassed or assaulted.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person cries out while being handled by police officers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529657/original/file-20230601-29-9sd8yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Qween Jean, a transgender rights activist, is arrested May 31, 2023, during a trans-rights demonstration in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/queen-jean-is-arrested-during-a-weekly-protest-in-support-news-photo/1258341307">Stephanie Keith/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lies drive harm</h2>
<p>Because <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-021-09590-0">criminological data does not support trans-exclusionary laws or policies</a>, advocates of anti-trans laws often resort to <a href="https://www.houstonpress.com/news/mass-shooters-are-almost-never-trans-13743586">lies</a>, flawed anecdotal evidence, or what fact-checkers have called “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-transgender-nashville-shooting-misinformation-cd62492d066d41e820c138256570978c">extreme cherry-picking</a>” to support their position. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4419750">one of us documented</a> how isolated news stories, often from notoriously <a href="https://perma.cc/N6XV-B3HD">transphobic tabloids</a>, conflate the actions of sexual predators with the “dangerousness” of trans women. Although there are undeniably examples of actual transgender people committing crimes, even deeply troubling ones, they are not evidence of any behavioral trends among the broader class of trans people. <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/tennessee-school-shooting-trans-people-guns/">No such</a> <a href="https://issuu.com/sfgnissues/docs/sfgn_04-06-23-smalls/s/22221040">data exists</a>.</p>
<p>We believe the spate of anti-trans proposals represents a textbook example of crime-control theater – an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000099">unnecessary</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000302">ineffective</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0734016817710695">harmful</a> legislative response to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2021.1952971">unfounded fearmongering</a>.</p>
<p>Anti-trans laws are not just baseless. They’re <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2019.1659048">hurtful and damaging</a>, especially to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anti-trans-moral-panics-endanger-all-young-people/">LGBTQ+ teenagers</a>. <a href="https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2023/">Recent polls</a> indicate that more than 60% of these people experience <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/01/mental-health-lgbtq-youth/">deteriorating mental health</a> – including depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts – as a result of laws and policies aimed at restricting their personhood.</p>
<p>The criminological research is clear that anti-trans laws do not help the people they are claimed to protect. In fact, these laws inflict harm on people who are even more vulnerable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry F. Fradella has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, but not with regard to anything relevant to the subject matter of this piece.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexis Rowland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Transgender people are more than four times as likely to be the victim of a crime as cisgender people.Henry F. Fradella, Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Affiliate Professor, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law., Arizona State UniversityAlexis Rowland, Ph.D. Student in Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2065022023-05-30T05:32:54Z2023-05-30T05:32:54ZRevenge, excitement, or profit: why do people commit arson?<p>The huge blaze that struck Randle Street in central Sydney last week is now the subject of an <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8210175/teens-sought-by-police-over-massive-sydney-cbd-blaze/">arson investigation</a>, authorities have confirmed.</p>
<p>Many details remain unclear, including the safety and whereabouts of some of the people who were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-27/wall-in-sydney-building-moves-after-major-fire/102401470">reportedly sleeping rough in the building</a>, as well as the nature of any criminal charges that may arise.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1663334039540097025"}"></div></p>
<p>Right now there’s also a fire burning on a southern Great Barrier Reef island, threatening a sensitive marine site, which local rangers are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-30/rangers-battle-suspicious-fire-on-great-barrier-reef-island/102408970">treating as suspicious</a>.</p>
<p>While arson is yet to be confirmed in either of these specific cases, it’s timely to look at the issue of arson more generally.</p>
<p>Aside from the personal and environmental implications, the financial burden of arson is huge. Recent data are difficult to obtain, although it was estimated that the total cost of arson in Australia was <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/rpp129.pdf">A$2.3 billion in 2011</a>, and the annual figure is likely to have increased since then.</p>
<p>There’s a lack of scientific research attempting to understand the arsonist, perhaps because the “typical arsonist” doesn’t exist. Or maybe it’s because so few arsons are solved, and the rate of successful convictions remains low.</p>
<p>However, the research that has been done suggests there are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B012369397700203X">six main</a> <a href="https://www.firehouse.com/community-risk/investigation-equipment/article/10464930/arson-investigation-the-six-motives-for-firesetting">types of</a> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shelby-Miller-8/publication/342276745_Applications_of_Criminology_to_the_Multidimensional_Crime_of_Arson/links/5eeb748092851ce9e7ecad80/Applications-of-Criminology-to-the-Multidimensional-Crime-of-Arson.pdf">arsonist</a>.</p>
<h2>6 types of arsonist</h2>
<p>Arson, as <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab1#:%7E:text=Arson%20is%20the%20act%20of,through%20the%20use%20of%20fire">defined</a> by the Australian Institute of Criminology, is the act of “intentionally and maliciously destroying or damaging property through the use of fire”.</p>
<p>For a fire to be classified as arson there must be intent – the intention to cause harm or damage.</p>
<p>Arson can also be the primary or secondary motive – is setting the fire the main purpose, or is the fire being used to disguise another activity?</p>
<p>Here are the main six underlying reasons why someone might commit arson:</p>
<p><strong>1. The ‘for profit’ arsonist</strong></p>
<p>There are many ways someone can profit from arson. This includes extortion, or destroying a property to clear a piece of land. But most commonly these crimes are attempts at insurance fraud.</p>
<p>There are different types of property insurance fraud, including residential, commercial and vehicular. Residential fraud is committed by the homeowner or tenant; commercial fraud is committed by an owner to destroy company statements or claim on insurance; and vehicular fraud may occur when someone can’t afford their repayments.</p>
<p>These are largely one-off crimes and are very focused, and the offender is easier to catch than with other types of arson because they have a direct link with the damaged property or its owner.</p>
<p><strong>2. Pyromaniacs</strong></p>
<p>These perpetrators light fires for thrills and attention. Their fires range from bins to occupied buildings, and the size and risk associated with the fires may increase over time as the arsonist needs more excitement with each event.</p>
<p>This type of offender is often voyeuristic, and may wait for emergency services to attend, sometimes even calling them themselves, as they want to be present at the scene. They may video or photograph the fire and the first responders.</p>
<p>As a result, for investigators it’s important to capture images of the crowd to see who was watching.</p>
<p>This category includes first responders who set fires in order to be a “hero” in attendance, seeking praise and recognition for their bravery.</p>
<p>For example, a New South Wales volunteer firefighter was charged in January 2021 for allegedly <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/rfs-member-charged-with-lighting-30-fires-in-nsw-20210124-p56wei.html">starting more than 30 fires</a> during that summer.</p>
<p><strong>3. Crime concealment</strong></p>
<p>For these offenders, the arson is secondary to the concealment of another serious crime, such as murder or theft.</p>
<p>Fire is a very successful means of destroying many forms of evidence, such as fingerprints that may have been left at a scene or clothing worn during the crime.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1512347816739360769"}"></div></p>
<p><strong>4. The revenge arsonist</strong></p>
<p>These offenders are emotionally driven, and set fires out of anger or hatred, or for revenge for a real or perceived wrong. The need for retaliation could be based in a personal slight – such as an affair, or having been dismissed from a job.</p>
<p>Targets vary from individuals to institutions. And because of the emotional state of the offender, these crimes are usually disorganised and use unsophisticated methods of starting the fire, meaning they leave more evidence behind than some other types.</p>
<p><strong>5. Extremist motivations</strong></p>
<p>Extremist arsonists are driven by religious, political or social agendas.</p>
<p>There are two types of extremist arsonist, the first being those reacting to a civil disturbance, such as the death of a person in custody. Activities may include vandalism and looting, and the purpose may be to draw attention to a perceived injustice. </p>
<p>For example, 36-year-old Jose A. Felan Jr was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in the United States after he <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/jose-felan-36-gets-6-12-years-in-prison-for-multiple-arsons-during-george-floyd-unrest/">set fires</a> at a school and two shops, during the riots that followed the police killing of George Floyd during an arrest in May 2020.</p>
<p>The second type are terrorist arsonists, known as pyro-terrorism, which is <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/pyro-terrorism-threat-arson-induced-forest-fires-future-terrorist">defined</a> as “the use of incendiary attacks to intimidate or coerce a government or civilian population”. These offenders may use arson as one of a range of measures, and work alone or in cells.</p>
<p>Because their crimes are premeditated with targets selected carefully to have the most social, economic or political impact, these offenders are often highly organised, and may use advanced incendiary devices. The purpose is to cause mass fear, beyond the actual target itself.</p>
<p><strong>6. Vandalism</strong></p>
<p>Vandal arsonists are typically juveniles, who set fire to bins, abandoned vehicles or empty buildings, and may do so to cover up other crimes such as theft. Often an additional factor in the starting of the fire is peer pressure or gang initiation, as these arsonists often act in groups.</p>
<p>For these offenders, arson can be what criminologists call a “gateway crime” – a crime that may lead to more severe criminal activity.</p>
<p>But if such offenders are given suitable support, rehabilitation can be highly successful to prevent them becoming serious, repeat offenders.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-rehabilitation-not-harsher-prison-sentences-makes-economic-sense-132213">Why rehabilitation – not harsher prison sentences – makes economic sense</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Although these are the main motives for arson, each does not act in a vacuum, and more than one may jointly contribute to the arsonist’s motivations. For example, someone may be murdered out of revenge, and then the offender sets a fire to conceal that crime or destroy evidence. </p>
<p>Arson is highly complex crime, with a wide range of social, psychological and environmental influences. More work needs to be done to understand the arsonist and their motivations, and how they can be identified, caught, convicted and hopefully rehabilitated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research highlights at least six different motivations for perpetrators that commit arson.Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of NewcastleJoel Robert McGregor, Lecturer in Criminology, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1971502023-05-02T15:00:01Z2023-05-02T15:00:01ZCrimestoppers: the charity providing an anonymous link between the public and the police for 35 years<p>Crimestoppers, the crime-fighting charity, has been an anonymous link between the UK public and the police for 35 years. From everyday concerns about drug dealing and dangerous driving to taking critical information on murders, Crimestoppers receives more than half a million reports each year. </p>
<p>But despite its ongoing success, there has been very little research into the inner workings of the charity. <a href="https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63087">My own study</a> found the anonymity offered by Crimestoppers enables people to come forward with information about violent or organised crime. In fact, this can be more of a motivating factor than a reward.</p>
<p>Originating in the US in the mid-1970s and replicated across the globe, Crimestoppers programmes often offer cash rewards for tip offs. The UK charity <a href="https://crimestoppers-uk.org/about-the-charity/our-story">was originally established</a> as the Community Action Trust in 1988. </p>
<p>It was largely in response to the death of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34433752">PC Keith Blakelock</a> during the Broadwater Farm estate riots in London in 1985. At the time, police said that someone knew who was responsible for his murder, but were too afraid to come forward.</p>
<p>While in England Crimestoppers was set up to address community mistrust and loss of confidence in policing, it was advertised differently across the rest of the UK. In Northern Ireland, residents were told to phone “<a href="https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/police/docs/CC_2006_Annual_Report_05-06.pdf">without fear and without involvement</a>”. And in Wales and Scotland, Crimestoppers has been framed as a friendly community service.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ta49SKAKeFE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A Crimestoppers advert from 1989.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Embracing television reconstructions has been critical to the growth of Crimestoppers <a href="https://csiworld.org/about-us">across the world</a>. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/39/2/269/363351">Research suggests</a> that media appeals in general can assist with solving crime in a small number of the most serious cases. </p>
<p>Contributions from appeals for information are thought to have helped bring some notorious criminals to justice. Serial killer, Peter Moore, came to the police’s attention in 1995, following an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53934380">anonymous tip off</a>. </p>
<p>And a Crimestoppers reward was offered for a violent robbery carried out by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65374137">John Cooper</a> in 1996. In 2011, he was eventually convicted of murdering four people in Pembrokeshire, Wales, as well as many other serious offences. Evidence from a string of burglaries and robberies had led police to suspect he was responsible for more serious crimes.</p>
<p>However, the extent of Crimestoppers’ support in solving such crimes is largely unknown due to the organisation’s guaranteed promise of anonymity. <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/evaluating-impact-crimestoppers">A study by the Home Office</a> 20 years ago outlined the benefits of the UK scheme, showing 17% of actionable information resulted in an arrest. </p>
<p>Nowadays, some insight is detailed in Crimestoppers’ <a href="https://crimestoppers-uk.org/news-campaigns/our-publications/impact-report">annual reports</a> which include outcomes of awareness campaigns and “most wanted” appeals.</p>
<p>During the course of <a href="https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63087">my research</a>, I discovered the charity has a strong relationship with the police, unlike the people who contact Crimestoppers. </p>
<p>Due to being unable to speak to anonymous callers themselves, I interviewed contact centre staff to gather their views and experiences. I also spoke with police officers who deal with Crimestoppers reports, as well as community-based officers who are often faced with people unwilling to report crime. </p>
<p>Participants suggested perceptions of fear and injustice impact on whether crimes are reported, especially in some close-knit communities. For example, a neighbourhood officer told me that sometimes generations of people are unlikely to go to the police, including members of his own family: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My grandmother, she’s the font of knowledge in the village where she lives, she wouldn’t be going to the police as a first port of call.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An <a href="https://www.policingreview.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/srpew_final_report.pdf">independent policing review</a> last year found that public confidence in the police has declined while the fear of crime continues to be a rising concern. </p>
<p>This is particularly true for those living in deprived areas and for people from minority ethnic backgrounds. <a href="https://crimestoppers-uk.org/getmedia/dfdff682-3152-478b-8beb-728d50f85048/Impact-Report-2022.pdf">Crimestoppers’ own survey</a> also suggests those groups are the most likely to contact them. </p>
<h2>The digital age</h2>
<p>One of the biggest changes over the past 35 years has been the move to online crime reporting. According to its own figures, Crimestoppers states <a href="https://crimestoppers-uk.org/getmedia/dfdff682-3152-478b-8beb-728d50f85048/Impact-Report-2022.pdf">75% of information</a> passed to the police now comes via its website.</p>
<p>There are often confidential police helplines for specific crimes (for example, domestic violence and hate crime), but Crimestoppers remains the primary anonymous crime reporting mechanism. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1477370820916439">One study suggests</a> Crimestoppers supports crowdsourcing of so-called “collective intelligence” through social networks, and this acts as a driver to online reporting. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The website of Crimestoppers and its phone number 0800555111." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C39%2C6560%2C4331&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523022/original/file-20230426-1743-28deg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crimestoppers was set up in the late 1980s and has since adapted to the digital age.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-november-17th-2017-homepage-758975134">chrisdorney/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2019, Crimestoppers was <a href="https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/10/crimestoppers-scoop-investigation/">criticised</a> for using cookies on its website, which allow for users to be tracked. But the charity maintained that it does not monitor individuals either online or offline. </p>
<h2>Rewards</h2>
<p>It also remains unclear whether Crimestoppers’ offer of cash rewards has stood the test of time. My research has <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/evaluating-impact-crimestoppers">mirrored previous studies</a> demonstrating that while police officers see a use in rewards, their availability is a motivating factor in only a minority of cases. </p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest value of rewards is in raising public interest within a busy media landscape. Crimestoppers recently offered its <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/crimestoppers-gives-update-200k-olivia-26623561">biggest reward of £200,000</a> in connection with the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, the 9-year old girl who was shot in Liverpool in September 2022. </p>
<p>Ultimately though, it is the reassurance offered by Crimestoppers’ anonymity guarantee and fuss-free participation which supports people in making reports, and enables the police to receive information they may otherwise have not received.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ella Rabaiotti is a former Probation Officer and worked for Crimestoppers Trust between 2016 and 2021.</span></em></p>Crimestoppers was originally founded in 1988 and now receives more than half a million reports each year.Ella Rabaiotti, Lecturer in Criminology, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2028042023-04-05T12:25:25Z2023-04-05T12:25:25Z‘Swarm’ is a dark, satirical look at how the absence of meaningful relationships can spawn a serial killer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519088/original/file-20230403-20-pd3r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=425%2C34%2C3236%2C2080&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dre finds comfort in the fantasy that she'll befriend her favorite pop star. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flxt.tmsimg.com/assets/p24057296_i_h8_aa.jpg">Amazon Studios</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: This article contains plot spoilers for “Swarm.”</em></p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14961048/">Swarm</a>,” the new streaming series created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, centers on a deranged superfan named Dre who becomes a serial killer. </p>
<p>Dre longs to meet a global pop star named Ni’Jah, <a href="https://www.vibe.com/news/movies-tv/swarm-co-creator-janine-nabers-beyonce-1234744447/">who’s based on Beyoncé</a>, and Dre’s obsession with the singer sparks a multistate murder spree that begins after the death of her only friend, Marissa.</p>
<p>As a criminologist, I look to understand what causes people to commit crimes, and I see more driving Dre than her extreme fixation on a celebrity. As the story unfolds, viewers learn about Dre’s childhood. To me, these early experiences explain a lot more about her crimes than her fandom does. </p>
<h2>Social isolation and criminal behavior</h2>
<p>In 1969, criminologist Travis Hirschi came up with what he called <a href="https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/36812_5.pdf">Social Bond Theory</a> to <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/social-control-theory-and-delinquency-multivariate-test#:%7E:text=Hirschi's%20social%20control%20theory%20suggests,in%20social%20rules%20and%20convention.">explain delinquency in adolescents</a>. </p>
<p>His theory, also known as Social Control Theory, suggests that criminal behavior is much more likely to happen when a person fails to develop normal societal bonds, which Hirschi divides into four categories: attachment to parents, peers and school; occupational and educational commitment; academic involvement; and belief in social rules and convention.</p>
<p>From the start of the series, it becomes clear that Dre has few friends outside of her foster sister, Marissa. After Marissa dies by suicide, Dre is truly alone in the world. She resorts to exotic dancing and living out of a cheap motel.</p>
<p>Then, in the series’ pivotal sixth episode, viewers learn that Dre is a product of the foster care system and was severely bullied in school. </p>
<p>Dre was taken in by Marissa’s parents as a foster child. However, Marissa’s parents struggled when Dre began exhibiting violent outbursts. So they returned her to state custody. It becomes clear that Dre has lived in at least three homes as a child, and she was already exhibiting symptoms of failure to develop normal bonds. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18575260/">2008 study</a> examining the delinquency in adolescents who grew up in foster care suggests that children who jump from home to home are more likely to engage in criminal behavior than adolescents with stable homes and permanent placements. Strong attachments play a large role as a foundation for receiving and giving care and contribute to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11061791/">healthy psychological development</a>.</p>
<h2>Fleeting relationships</h2>
<p>Given this troubled upbringing and the death of Marissa, Dre’s fixation on Ni’Jah represents the last existing person who hasn’t abandoned her. Holding on to the fantasy that she would one day meet Ni’Jah and befriend her gives Dre something to believe in and connect to. </p>
<p>Throughout the series, Dre encounters a number of people who seem to offer potential for the formation of healthy relationships. Each relationship is elusive, however, as Dre fails to overcome her fixation on Ni’Jah. A fellow stripper named Hailey seems to want to bond with Dre, but the feeling is not reciprocated. Dre also meets a caring man with loose connections to Ni’Jah. That connection is short-lived as well. Dre even inadvertently joins an all-female cult but ends up murdering the cult leader, who tries to keep Dre from seeing Ni’Jah perform at a festival. </p>
<p>Why did these budding relationships all fall apart? </p>
<p>Because the damage, according to Hirschi’s theory, had already been done. The ability to form healthy bonds is meant to be cultivated in adolescence. For Dre, that ship had already sailed.</p>
<p>People with unstable childhoods like Dre’s often end up suffering from an <a href="https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Attachment-Disorders-085.aspx">attachment disorder</a>, which refers to the inability to form meaningful relationships as an adult, often due to the failure to establish proper bonds as a child.</p>
<h2>On Beyhive and Barbz</h2>
<p>The underlying narrative in “Swarm” is exaggerated, but not far-fetched. </p>
<p>Stories of fans-cum-stalkers are relatively commonplace. Justin Beiber can lay claim to one of the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/03/justin-bieber-castration-plot-mastermind/317013/">creepier stalkers</a>. That man, who is now serving a life sentence in prison on unrelated charges, has a tattoo on his leg devoted to the singer and masterminded an elaborate plan to kill Bieber after the singer failed to respond to his fan mail.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman at a concert wearing sunglasses that read 'Justin Bieber.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519348/original/file-20230404-1181-vs7cz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fans of singer Justin Bieber at a 2022 concert in Rio de Janeiro.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/justin-bieber-fan-reacts-to-the-concert-of-the-brazilian-news-photo/1242950939?adppopup=true">Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Super fans have long been a prominent feature of popular culture, but social media has facilitated the emergence of full-fledged communities dedicated to celebrating, tracking – and protecting – stars. Beyonce has <a href="https://www.eonline.com/photos/28165/when-the-beyhive-defends-beyonce">her Beyhive</a>. <a href="https://yale-herald.com/2021/12/02/swifties-connection-and-obsession/">The Swifties</a> belong to Taylor Swift. <a href="https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/xwxn73/inside-the-rihanna-navy-her-most-extreme-super-fans-speak-out">Rihanna’s Navy</a> comes to her defense, while Nicki Minaj <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/meet-the-barbz-the-nicki-minaj-fandom-fighting-the-nicki-hate-train-705438/">has the Barbz</a> in her corner.</p>
<p>Of course, the overwhelming majority of these fans are passionate but harmless. However, for those who lack strong social connections, superfandom can evolve into blind, <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/selena-gomez-wants-the-bullying-of-hailey-bieber-to-stop">unquestioning devotion</a> to the celebrity. That sense of belonging can transform into a menacing adoration.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the series, Dre is arrested in her last desperate attempt to meet Ni'Jah. However, an idyllic ending ensues, even though what play out appears to be Dre’s fantasy.</p>
<p>In the last scene, Ni’Jah – whose face has been replaced with Marissa’s – saves Dre from security and the two leave the concert together. </p>
<p>Though Dre doesn’t say much, she radiates, for the first time in the series, a sense of calm, comfort and connection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenae Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What causes people to obsess over celebrities – to the point where they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make contact? Criminology may hold some answers.Jenae Harris, Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Kennesaw State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1998282023-03-17T13:15:31Z2023-03-17T13:15:31ZThe camera never lies? Our research found CCTV isn’t always dependable when it comes to murder investigations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514486/original/file-20230309-1177-u0roc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3840%2C2149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">"The camera never lies," goes the old adage. But how true is that?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/elevated-security-camera-surveillance-footage-crowd-2198446515">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a victim or suspect of a crime, or witness to an offence, you may find your actions, behaviour and character scrutinised by the police or a barrister using CCTV footage. You may assume all the relevant footage has been gathered and viewed. You may sit on a jury and be expected to evaluate CCTV footage to help determine whether you find a defendant guilty or innocent. </p>
<p>You may believe you will see all the key images. You may trust the camera never lies. </p>
<p>However, the evidence we gathered during our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/10439463.2021.1879075?needAccess=true&role=button">study</a> of British murder investigations and trials reveals how, like other forms of evidence such as DNA and fingerprints, CCTV footage requires careful interpretation and evaluation and can be misleading. </p>
<p>Instead of providing an absolute “truth”, different meanings can be obtained from the same footage. But understanding the challenges and risks associated with CCTV footage is vital in a fair and transparent system to prevent possible <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/legal/glossary/miscarriage-of-justice">miscarriages of justice</a>.</p>
<h2>Evidence</h2>
<p>The justice system often relies upon digital <a href="https://www.npcc.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/publications/publications-log/2020/national-digital-forensic-science-strategy.pdf">evidence</a> to support investigations and prosecutions and CCTV is one of the most relied upon forms. Recent <a href="https://clarionuk.com/resources/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-in-london/">estimates</a> suggest there are more than 7.3 million cameras in the UK, which can capture a person up to 70 times per day. </p>
<p>The public may be filmed on council-owned CCTV, by cameras in commercial premises, or at residential premises (home cameras or <a href="https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/smart-video-doorbells/article/genuinely-useful-things-you-can-do-with-a-smart-doorbell-a0JXE2q1niZk">smart doorbells</a>, as well as on public transport and by dash cams.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man sits at a desk in front of a bank of screens, each showing footage from CCTV cameras." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514644/original/file-20230310-18-zjd7oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CCTV is one of the most popular forms of digital forensic evidence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/industry-40-modern-factory-security-operator-1936528570">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our study of 44 British murder investigations, we showed how CCTV provides many benefits to investigators. It can help identify suspects and witnesses, and implicate or eliminate suspects. It can also help to corroborate or refute accounts provided by suspects and witnesses. However, our findings also indicate how CCTV can be unreliable and problematic.</p>
<h2>Shortcomings</h2>
<p>CCTV is sometimes inaccessible or lost because the detective who is sent to retrieve the footage lacks the skills, training or equipment to recover it in a timely manner. This is especially important since CCTV is often <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-016-0218-2">deleted</a> within three weeks of being recorded. We found that it was often over-written within 7 to 10 days. </p>
<p>At other times, owners are unable to access systems or cannot manage the volume of CCTV requested, for instance, when taking buses out of service for footage to be downloaded. And even when footage is successfully seized, there may not be officers available to view it all. </p>
<p>There is also the risk that important footage which could exonerate a suspect is not <a href="https://www.cps.gov.uk/about-cps/disclosure#:%7E:text=Disclosure%20is%20providing%20the%20defence,is%20done%20properly%2C%20and%20promptly">disclosed</a> to the defence, which could mean innocent people are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1752928X18301859?via%3Dihub">imprisoned</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lQRfM4Nt6dI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 2022 Channel 4 News investigation looked at whether CCTV is helping to put innocent people behind bars.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Detectives must frequently make sense of poor-quality images that are blurry or grainy. This is not easy. In some of the investigations we observed, the police tried to enhance poor-quality images, though this was not always successful. </p>
<p>Investigators must also decide whether to draw on <a href="https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/expert-evidence">experts</a> to interpret footage and present evidence at court. However, the police have no clear guidance to help determine whether and when to draw on such expertise. We observed cases where officers decided against expert input because they were confident of their own interpretations.</p>
<p>Our study also revealed how some detectives or CCTV officers are used repeatedly to view or interpret footage because they are regarded by others (or assign themselves) as <a href="https://theconversation.com/facial-recognition-research-reveals-new-abilities-of-super-recognisers-128414">“super-recognisers”</a>. These are people who may be better at recognising faces than others. However, there is no <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-super-recognisers-to-the-face-blind-how-tests-reveal-the-underlying-cognitive-processes-176589">robust measure</a> for determining whether someone is a super-recogniser. Furthermore, if super-recognisers are incorrectly viewed as expert witnesses, their evidence could be overvalued during a police investigation or at court.</p>
<p>By the time CCTV footage is shown to a jury, it has been choreographed carefully by the police and prosecution barrister. They are often adept at selecting, organising and editing footage into slick packages. </p>
<p>These techniques are also used by the defence who deliberate over whether to use moving footage or still images, at what speed to show the clips and at what point to add commentary. This is to demonstrate an <a href="https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/elements/article/view/9453">“alternative truth”</a> and provide a contested interpretation of the same footage. It might be difficult for juries to determine how the footage has been edited.</p>
<h2>Gold standard?</h2>
<p>Murder investigations are generally regarded to be the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10439463.2013.771538">gold standard</a> of criminal investigation, due to the investment of time, resources and expertise. Nevertheless, we uncovered many challenges, errors and risks involved in the use of CCTV. These are likely to be even greater in other kinds of criminal investigation, where staffing and knowledge of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1355030621001295">digital evidence</a> may be more limited.</p>
<p>The complexities of CCTV evidence need to be understood by everyone involved in handling, interpreting and presenting footage, as well as by those of us whose actions and accounts may be scrutinised on the basis of CCTV footage. </p>
<p>The challenges and risks identified here are likely to intensify as digital technologies advance - demonstrated by recent concerns with <a href="https://www.bsia.co.uk/zappfiles/bsia-front/public-guides/form_347_automated_facial%20recognition_a_guide_to_ethical_and_legal_use-compressed.pdf">automated facial recognition technologies</a> and the risk of <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-2-billion-images-and-720-000-hours-of-video-are-shared-online-daily-can-you-sort-real-from-fake-148630">deepfake videos</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was funded by The Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was funded by The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>CCTV is a popular form of digital evidence but it can be unreliable and problematic.Helen Jones, Research Fellow, University of South WalesFiona Brookman, Professor of Criminology, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1996212023-02-17T16:45:04Z2023-02-17T16:45:04ZExpert Q&A: why do people commit murder-suicides?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510355/original/file-20230215-3929-ej40s2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=57%2C16%2C5406%2C3506&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/girl-holds-lighted-candle-her-hands-1174053094">EvGavrilov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The deaths of Epsom College Head Emma Pattison and her daughter Lettie are a possible example of the rare and tragic phenomenon of murder-suicide. Pattison’s husband is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-64544884">believed to have shot</a> his wife and child before taking his own life. We asked Sandra Flynn, an expert in forensic mental health at the University of Manchester, about why people commit this horrific act and what we should understand about it.</em></p>
<h2>What kind of motivation can be behind these acts?</h2>
<p>As with other forms of murder, the motivations for murder-suicide (which academic researchers refer to as homicide-suicide) are extremely diverse. There is no simple explanation – complex psychological mechanisms underpin these acts, which are not fully understood. </p>
<p>Researchers have <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33988927/">examined</a> the motive for past cases, which have included mental health, relationship problems, alcohol and substance use, physical health problems, criminal and legal issues, job or financial difficulties and domestic violence. More recently, a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178920301944">review of cases</a> found negative childhood experiences to be risk factors, as are characteristics like gender, age and financial situation.</p>
<p>It is important to note that these characteristics and experiences are common to many people in the general population, but incidence of murder-suicide is extremely rare. For the most part, our understanding of these cases comes from descriptive accounts. </p>
<p>This is limited further by the fact that the people that could explain what happened are often dead. Psychological autopsies can piece together information from surviving family members and friends and death notes, which can help us to better understand motives. </p>
<p>For what we do know about characteristics and motivation, there is a great deal of consistency internationally. Jealousy, revenge, mental illness, financial problems and a history of domestic abuse have all been reported as factors in murder-suicide cases around the world.</p>
<h2>What makes family murder-suicide different from other cases?</h2>
<p>Filicide-suicides – where a parent takes the life of their child or children as well as their own – are commonly motivated by altruistic motives. This is often <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16394226/">driven by a desire</a> to ease a child’s suffering, based on actual medical conditions or delusional beliefs that the child is in danger.</p>
<p>When a parent is experiencing suicidal thoughts, they often consider their child an extension of themselves. They may have a desire to not <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524838018821955">abandon the child</a>, or leave them behind to face the world alone without a parent. </p>
<p>Other filicides are motivated by romantic jealousy, revenge and domestic violence, triggered by separation. For example, jealousy caused by knowing or suspecting a partner is attracted to someone else, or after separation, jealousy over the new family an ex-partner has formed. </p>
<p>These are factors often seen in filicide and familicide <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/car.2327">perpetrated by men</a>. Mental illness is a more prominent factor in <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058981#:%7E:text=In%20the%20majority%20of%20cases,health%20and%20other%20support%20services.">maternal filicide</a>, but it is common in both.</p>
<h2>What are the connections between gender and murder-suicide?</h2>
<p>These acts are predominantly <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24314498/">committed by men</a> (usually white and middle class) and victims are more likely to be women and children.</p>
<p>One <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35523087/">recent study</a> examining differences between male and female perpetrators of filicide-suicide found that relationship problems and mental illness featured for both, but appear differently for men and women.</p>
<p>With male perpetrators, there is often a history of violence and domestic abuse with subsequent legal consequences. For women, relationship conflict and mental illness, combined with concerns around a child’s health, contribute to the incidents. Men more commonly commit familicide (spouse and child) and have several victims, including adults.</p>
<p>The relationship to the victim also tends to differ by gender. For example, women are less likely to kill their spouse and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31769068/">take their own life</a>. They are also less likely than men to kill outside of the family, such as a mass shooting or through suicide-terrorism.</p>
<h2>What are common misconceptions or myths that influence how people understand these cases?</h2>
<p>There is a perception that murder-suicides are common, when in fact they are rare events. The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health reported that there are <a href="https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/reports/annual-report-2022/">approximately 16 cases per year</a> in England and Wales, a fraction compared to thousands of suicides. </p>
<p>The portrayal of murder-suicide in the media can also influence how we perceive the perpetrator. When it comes to incidents involving parents who have killed their children, mothers tend to receive more <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706221/">sympathetic press coverage</a> than fathers.</p>
<p>These incidents are rare and there is no simple explanation for why people commit murder-suicide. Because there is limited data, we do need to be cautious about how we interpret the research and cases reported in the media. Most of all, we must always be mindful that behind the research are grieving families and communities who have experienced a devastating loss.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, the following services can provide you with support:</em></p>
<p><em>In the UK and Ireland – call Samaritans UK at 116 123.</em></p>
<p><em>In the US – call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or IMAlive at 1-800-784-2433.</em></p>
<p><em>In Australia – call Lifeline Australia at 13 11 14.</em></p>
<p><em>In other countries – visit IASP or Suicide.org to find a helpline in your country.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Flynn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are many different reasons why men and women commit these acts, but the small number of cases makes it difficult to track.Sandra Flynn, Lecturer in Psychology and Mental Health, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1941652022-12-27T19:20:36Z2022-12-27T19:20:36ZFor burglars, it’s the most wonderful time of the year: how to keep your home safe these holidays<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494002/original/file-20221108-23-n12318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C8000%2C5305&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The lead-up to the holiday period is often referred to as the silly season — but it is when offenders get serious; burglary <a href="https://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Pages/bocsar_datasets/Offence.aspx">rates</a> <a href="https://pfes.nt.gov.au/police/community-safety/nt-crime-statistics/statistical-publications">tend</a> to <a href="https://www.police.wa.gov.au/Crime/CrimeStatistics#/">increase</a> during the festive season.</p>
<p>Why? Homes around this time of year are often full of Christmas presents, so there is a lot of new merchandise to attract burglars. And sometimes <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14732254221122617">people</a> also break into houses looking to steal food and goods they need, or items they can pass on as gifts – and burglars know there’s a good chance the home will be empty during the holiday season.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ivRf8-QAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">research</a> has focused on finding out more about why offenders commit burglary, what they’re looking for, and how they decide which house to target. Here’s what you need to know.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497789/original/file-20221128-24-tti4co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The lead-up to the holiday period is often referred to as the silly season — but it is when offenders get serious.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-go-for-the-food-what-children-and-young-people-told-us-about-why-they-steal-from-houses-192857">'I go for the food': what children and young people told us about why they steal from houses</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How do burglars pick which house to target?</h2>
<p>Burglars tell us they choose houses that are easy to access, often looking out for unlocked windows and doors.</p>
<p>Some kind of cover is important, too. Are there large or overgrown plants they can hide behind? Are they hidden from view of main roads or neighbours? </p>
<p>Finally, they want the burglary to be worth it; ideally, they want valuables that are easy to access, conceal and sell on. Examples include online package deliveries, small electronics, jewellery, cash or gift vouchers. </p>
<p>Any valuables visible from windows or left in gardens or driveways are considered <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi489">fair game</a>. </p>
<h2>Protecting your home while you are away</h2>
<p>Over the holiday period many of us take some well-deserved time away, so how can you reduce the risk of burglary while you’re out of town? It helps to understand what “types” of burglars there are.</p>
<p>We sort burglars into three categories:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>“opportunists” are not out to burgle but will if they see something they fancy</p></li>
<li><p>“searchers” are planning to burgle but have not selected the premises yet; and</p></li>
<li><p>“planners” are more professional and will watch or “case” a property in preparation for a burglary. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>To best deter opportunists, keep valuables out of sight. Garage doors should stay shut and don’t leave empty cardboard boxes lying around near the bins. These empty boxes advertise your new Christmas acquisitions, and should be kept out of sight away from the kerb until bin day.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Boxes pile up on a porch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497790/original/file-20221128-15-ua0zj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don’t make it obvious you’re out of town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To reduce the risk of becoming a target for searchers, lock your doors and windows. Remove hiding places from your front door or rear access so they cannot remain hidden while breaking into the house. </p>
<p>We also know searchers look for houses that are obviously empty of people. If you’re going away, ask someone to put out and bring in your bins and collect your mail, so a loaded letterbox doesn’t advertise an empty home.</p>
<p>Planners usually target homes that will produce a significant haul but are deterred by sophisticated security systems and alarms. They can often recognise a decoy security camera for what it is. </p>
<p>All burglars we’ve interviewed have reported not liking dogs, alarms, neighbours or anyone who could potentially identify them. </p>
<p>Our previous <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi489">research</a> shows burglars are aware of old tricks such as leaving a radio or light on constantly while you are away. Instead, you could try using timer-based indoor lights that come on in the evenings.</p>
<p>You should also resist the urge to announce your holiday plans on social media, and make sure your home contents insurance is up to date and you have individual items photographed and insured.</p>
<h2>Older children home alone during the holidays? Make a plan</h2>
<p>School holidays are long and most parents’ annual leave won’t doesn’t cover the entirety of the school break. That means older children are often left home alone while their parents are at work, particularly in January. It’s important you speak to your children about how to reduce the risk of your house becoming a target while they are home alone.</p>
<p>If your children are coming and going during the school holidays, make sure they know how to lock up the house and remind them not to leave their valuables in view. </p>
<p>It is common for young people to leave new bikes, skateboards and scooters outside the front door. Put reminders up so they remember to take them inside, or out of view.</p>
<p>When young people return home, teach them to take notice of anything that looks out of place. If they suspect someone has been in the house, tell them not to enter but go to a trusted neighbour, call their emergency contact, or contact the police. That way they stay safe and do not interrupt a crime in progress and put themselves in danger. </p>
<p>Our recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14732254221122617">research</a> showed when young people target a house, the most common method they use is to knock on the door and see if someone is home. If it looks like someone is coming to the door, they run.</p>
<p>We quite often tell young people at home not to open the door when parents and caregivers are out. You might consider whether you feel comfortable with them making it clear someone <em>is</em> home (by calling out or making some noise inside) but not opening the door. It’s up to you to develop a strategy you and your children feel comfortable with.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/home-alone-how-to-keep-your-kids-safe-and-out-of-trouble-when-youre-at-work-these-holidays-105581">Home alone: how to keep your kids safe (and out of trouble) when you’re at work these holidays</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our research has focused on finding out more about why offenders commit burglary, what they’re looking for and how they decide which house to target. Here’s what you need to know.Natalie Gately, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Edith Cowan UniversitySuzanne Rock, Lecturer and Researcher in Criminology, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1928572022-11-01T19:00:59Z2022-11-01T19:00:59Z‘I go for the food’: what children and young people told us about why they steal from houses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492214/original/file-20221027-18054-ici8ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C27%2C4608%2C3421&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/recorded-crime-offenders/latest-release#youth-offenders">figures</a> from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show theft and burglary are among the most common offences committed by young people.</p>
<p>We wanted to find out from children why they committed burglary, which can exact a huge financial and emotional toll on victims.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14732254221122617">study</a>, recently published in the journal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14732254221122617">Youth Justice</a>, involved interviews with children presenting at the Perth Children’s Court who reported they had burgled.</p>
<p>We interviewed 50 children between the ages of 11 and 17 years who told us why they stole, what they stole, and how they learned how to burgle. </p>
<p>We found children rarely planned or “staked” premises. They usually committed burglaries on the spur of the moment with friends, and generally to steal items they felt they needed – like food or drugs – out of boredom or while drunk or high. </p>
<p>Most young people chose a target that had “signs” of being an empty home (such as no cars in the driveway). This was commonly tested by a young person knocking on a door.</p>
<p>Other ways homes were picked was when they saw items they wanted through windows or in gardens that were “just sitting there” and, in their words, “just there for us to take”. </p>
<p>The time spent selecting a target was minimal, with many tending to favour places that could obviously be accessed easily via, for example, an open window or door.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A door is open on a house." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490574/original/file-20221019-20-c1leoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many said they favour places that could obviously be accessed easily.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More need than greed</h2>
<p>Children’s reasoning for why they burgled was more out of need than greed. </p>
<p>One child said they stole because they were “poor” and “had nothing”. </p>
<p>Eight of the 50 children we spoke to said they only stole food, often looking for fresh food from the fridge to eat in the moment, and frozen or tinned items to take home to family.</p>
<p>When asked why they stole, one child said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had nothing to eat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I got stuff from the freezer. I go for the food, but I didn’t take anything else.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Commonly stolen items included money, drugs, jewellery, food and mobile phones. Most young people reported keeping the items or gifting them to friends or family. </p>
<p>Those items not kept were often sold to drug dealers, with one child telling us they stole</p>
<blockquote>
<p>just what was around: jewellery, money, anything really that we could sell to get drugs.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young person looks in a fridge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490575/original/file-20221019-19-1lv2e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some children burgled because they were looking for food.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/home-alone-how-to-keep-your-kids-safe-and-out-of-trouble-when-youre-at-work-these-holidays-105581">Home alone: how to keep your kids safe (and out of trouble) when you’re at work these holidays</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Drug use and burglary</h2>
<p>Many children reported stealing to obtain drugs or money to buy drugs. One child targeted a certain place because</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I knew they had dope in there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another said they stole because</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I needed the fix.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In one case, a child was “employed” to steal from drug dealers’ homes known to have large quantities of drugs and money. </p>
<p>Others reported only burgling because they were intoxicated. As one child put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was just drunk and being stupid.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Motivations for burglary</h2>
<p>We sorted these young burglars into categories based on their motivation (using <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/burglars-burglary-prevention-and-offender">categories</a> developed by previous criminology research).</p>
<p>The majority fell into the “opportunistic” category. These were characterised by the opportunity posed to the child, such as an open window in an affluent area or valuables in view. As one child put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was just out of the blue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We just walked into a house.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I just saw toys and stole the toys. No, it wasn’t planned – just walked past and that’s it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another category – “searchers” – said that while they had intended to burgle, they had not picked a property and would instead roam the streets looking for a house. As one child put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t plan it, we just knock on the people’s door and if they aren’t home we go in. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although intention to burgle was present for children in this group, the element of planning was minimal. There was overlap with “opportunists”, as they targeted premises based on the ease of entry without being caught. </p>
<p>The background lives of these children were often chaotic. Most were not attending school regularly, if at all. Most had learned to burgle from family members. As one child put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[I’ve] been there and seen it; Dad used to take me along with him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most committed their burglaries in groups with friends (78%) or family members (10%). </p>
<p>This snapshot of young burglars calls for a better understanding of the reasons for “food-only” theft as a matter of urgency. </p>
<p>These findings could also be used to support measures such as Youth Drug Courts to address the underlying drug behaviours that contribute to criminal behaviours. </p>
<p>We need holistic interventions that address the economic and social disadvantages that drive children to burgle.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-handsome-soldier-with-a-medical-bill-how-romance-scammers-make-you-fall-in-love-with-them-127820">A handsome soldier with a 'medical bill': how romance scammers make you fall in love with them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192857/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Gately receives funding from Edith Cowan University and the Western Australia Police Force. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suzanne Rock receives funding from Edith Cowan University and Western Australia Police Force.</span></em></p>We interviewed 50 children between the ages of 11 and 17 years who told us why they stole, what they stole, and how they learned how to burgle.Natalie Gately, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Edith Cowan UniversitySuzanne Rock, Lecturer and Researcher in Criminology, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1893152022-08-30T01:53:49Z2022-08-30T01:53:49ZWhen remains are found in a suitcase, forensics can learn a lot from the insects trapped within<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481512/original/file-20220829-14-zfm6r5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C283%2C3249%2C1954&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paola Magni</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A crime scene can present itself in any form and size.</p>
<p>In recent weeks, an Aotearoa New Zealand family who’d purchased abandoned goods from a storage locker made the harrowing discovery of two sets of human remains <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/police-identify-two-children-whose-remains-were-found-in-suitcases-in-new-zealand">hidden inside two suitcases</a>.</p>
<p>Sadly, this is not a unique case – bodies of murder victims are found in suitcases with astonishing regularity. But they present a particular challenge for police investigating the crime, which is where forensic science comes in.</p>
<h2>Why suitcases?</h2>
<p>Forensic case history and crime news are sadly full of bodies found in suitcases, bags, wheelie bins, car trunks, fridges and freezers. Examples of such finds include a suitcase in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/womans-body-found-in-suitcase-left-for-month-at-tokyo-train-station">busy Tokyo train station</a> in 2015, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/investigation-after-teens-in-tiktok-video-find-body-parts-in-suitcase-at-seattle-beach/news-story/886c1e58057108d68f5a36e18f3f60a2">a suitcase on a Seattle beach</a> in 2020, and the 2019 case of human remains in a suitcase left on the side of <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/60-minutes-karlie-pearce-stevenson-khandalyce-pearce-body-in-suitcase-murder/dd21ed75-5f16-4511-989b-11110b9a0814">a South Australian highway</a>. </p>
<p>There’s a simple reason why suitcases are so common in these situations. While most crime movies depict bodies abandoned above ground or buried in clandestine shallow graves, in reality murder victims are more often concealed in items arranged at the last minute.</p>
<p>These are things that are easy to obtain, accessible, large enough to fit a body, and easy to transport (preferably with wheels). They may also hide the smell of decomposition for a time – useful for the criminal to find an alibi or disappear. </p>
<p>Forensic researchers call such places “limited access environments”, because they limit, delay or totally impede one of the natural steps that happen after death: the arrival of hordes of insects.</p>
<p>The job of scientists like <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/13/1/78/1075838">forensic entomologists</a> is to assist crime investigation, but also to develop research that makes this task less difficult.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/forensic-entomology-the-time-of-death-is-everything-2037">Forensic entomology: the time of death is everything</a>
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<h2>Insects are key</h2>
<p>In a criminal investigation involving a decomposing body, forensic entomologists can use insects to help <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32876421/">estimate the time since death</a>, retrace the movements of criminals and victims, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/flies-maggots-and-methamphetamine-how-insects-can-reveal-drugs-and-poisons-at-crime-scenes-176981">identify the presence of drugs</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34591184/">foreign DNA</a>.</p>
<p>Carrion insects – such as blue and green bottle <a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/blow-fly-insect">blowflies</a>, <a href="https://www.qm.qld.gov.au/Explore/Find+out+about/animals+of+queensland/insects/flies/common+species/flesh+flies">flesh flies</a>, <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/animals/insects/house-fly/">house flies</a> and <a href="https://nhm.org/stories/coffin-fly">coffin flies</a> – have highly specialised olfactory systems they use to detect the smell of decomposition.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An iridescent blue-green fly sitting on a green lead" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481529/original/file-20220829-27-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Green bottle blowflies are a common carrion insect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">dani daniar/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If a cadaver is left undisturbed on the ground in a temperate environment, carrion insects will soon colonise it, attracted by the smells produced by the bacteria-mediated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death">decay process</a>. Within a few hours, the insects will lay eggs on the body’s orifices and wounds, and the tiny larvae hatched from them will start consuming the body.</p>
<p>But a suitcase physically limits access for the insects. And so far, forensic research on how insect involvement changes in such limited access environments has received little attention.</p>
<p>To date, only two pilot studies on decomposition process in suitcases have been completed, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24747669/">one in the United Kingdom</a> and another by our team <a href="https://irispublishers.com/gjfsm/fulltext/the-effect-of-suitcase-concealment-on-insect-colonization-a-pilot-study-in-western-australia.ID.000513.php">in Western Australia</a>. Both studies show carrion insects are extremely resourceful when it comes to getting access to concealed bodies.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/forensic-science-isnt-reliable-or-unreliable-it-depends-on-the-questions-youre-trying-to-answer-123020">Forensic science isn't 'reliable' or 'unreliable' – it depends on the questions you're trying to answer</a>
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<h2>Suitcases in the bush</h2>
<p>Hidden in a patch of bushland in Western Australia, we are currently running the largest-ever experiment on decomposition process in suitcases and wheelie bins, with almost 70 samples.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An open air area under a tin shed with rainbow coloured suitcases and small wheelie bins in a grid pattern" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481528/original/file-20220829-18-cbl87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suitcases and wheelie bins with stillborn piglets are being used in the largest limited access environment study to date.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paola Magni</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This first-of-its-kind work will provide useful data to investigate similar cases around the world. Each suitcase and wheelie bin contains a stillborn piglet, simulating a dead body; controls are placed in the environment for comparison. We have placed instruments for recording temperature, humidity and amount of rain both in the field and inside the containers.</p>
<p>The experiment started in early winter 2022 and will end in the summer; the first data will be presented in the world’s largest forensic science conference in February 2023.</p>
<p>Despite an initial delay in insect access during the cold and rainy WA winter, within a month of placing the suitcases we have observed egg clusters of blowflies on and around the suitcase zippers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Close up of a black suitcase zipper showing white specks of insect eggs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481509/original/file-20220829-25-4cjaya.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Insects will lay eggs on the surface of limited access environments, so their offspring can reach the contents within.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paola Magni</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As we opened the suitcases at set intervals, we found the larvae of blowflies, along with coffin flies and some beetles active in the remains. This means the offspring of large flies and beetles must reach the body through the teeth of the zipper. Meanwhile, smaller flies can cross through the zipper as adults, and lay their eggs directly on the decomposing remains.</p>
<p>Once larvae complete their life cycle and emerge as adult flies, none of them can escape the suitcase. These trapped insects represent a rich source of information, as we know the habits and growth rates of various species, and can find toxicology data preserved in their exoskeletons.</p>
<p>From this, a forensic entomology expert can infer the time or season of death, possible relocation of the body, and assist in the interpretation of the causes and circumstances of death.</p>
<p>The investigation of human remains in a suitcase can often represent a Pandora’s box, full of complicated problems. But with the help of a humble carrion-eating fly trapped within, we gain a treasure trove of vital information that can help us solve crimes.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/identifying-the-dead-after-mass-disasters-is-a-crucial-part-of-grieving-heres-how-forensic-experts-do-it-180616">Identifying the dead after mass disasters is a crucial part of grieving. Here's how forensic experts do it</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Research ongoing is performed in collaboration with Miss Hannah Andrews and Prof. Ian Dadour.</span></em></p>The remains of murder victims often turn up in suitcases, bins, and similar items. Forensic researchers in Australia are leading the way in helping to solve such cases.Paola A. Magni, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1829702022-06-30T14:45:23Z2022-06-30T14:45:23ZHow your brainwaves could be used in criminal trials<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469794/original/file-20220620-14-ypj54o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=80%2C8%2C5896%2C3975&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/patient-brain-testing-using-encephalography-medical-2005932185">Roman Zaiets/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American Kevin Strickland was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59396598">exonerated</a> after spending 42 years in prison for being wrongfully convicted of a triple murder in November 2021. His 1978 conviction was based on mistaken identification of an eyewitness. The eyewitness later said that police pressured her into identifying Strickland, and attempted to have her testimony recanted but failed. She died in 2015.</p>
<p>Law enforcement agencies worldwide struggle with the unreliability of eyewitness identification and scarcity of physical clues at crime scenes. There is a <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/0238181ccc2a07f238634115e62cf511/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=28146">wealth of evidence</a> showing that mistaken eyewitness identification is a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1111565">contributing factor</a> in wrongful convictions. Police <a href="https://www.astm.org/jfs14032j.html">only collect physical evidence</a> in approximately 15% or <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/confessions-crown-court-trials">less</a> of crime scenes. This makes non-physical evidence like eyewitness testimony extremely important.</p>
<p>Strickland and other victims of wrongful identification, including <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thomas-raynard-james-florida-man-wrongfully-convicted-released/">Thomas Raynard James</a> – exonerated in April 2022 after spending 32 years in prison – might have been saved from lengthy prison sentences with innovative technology. </p>
<p>Developed by the <a href="https://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/rosenfeld/documents/MemoryDetection69-90.pdf">late Peter Rosenfeld</a>, a professor at Northwestern University, the Complex Trial Protocol (CTP) is considered a reliable and sound method for analysing a specific brainwave, known as the P300. This relatively inexpensive and non-invasive technique could be used to determine if a witness or a suspect recognises crucial pieces of information related to a crime, only known to that person and the authorities.</p>
<h2>How it works</h2>
<p>We have all been in situations where our attention was gripped by hearing our name mentioned in a social setting. This reflex has been a feature of survival since the beginning of humanity to enable us to detect whether a particular sound or sight was a threat. This <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195374148.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195374148-e-007">involuntary reaction</a> is one of the leading theories underpinning this phenomenon.</p>
<p>The P300 is an electrical brainwave detectable by placing electrodes on a person’s scalp. It appears on an electroencephalogram (EEG) as a positive or negative deflection (a downward or upward looking curve) about 300 to 600 milliseconds after a person is presented with a novel and meaningful stimulus. This reaction is considered a <a href="https://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/rosenfeld/documents/MemoryDetection69-90.pdf">reliable index of memory recognition</a>. It can show when a person recognises an individual’s name, the sweet taste of chocolate, or the sound of an artist’s voice.</p>
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<img alt="Two charts showing how the P300 brainwave appears on an EEG." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471167/original/file-20220627-12-b8n0bn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The baseline appearance of a P300 wave for an ‘innocent’ test subject (left), compared to how it appears in a ‘guilty’ subject (right) who recognises the probe information. Pz refers to the location of the electrode – over the hemispheric midline of the Parietal cortex.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://research.tees.ac.uk/en/publications/an-independent-validation-of-the-eeg-based-complex-trial-protocol">Funicelli, et al, 2021</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The CTP is a particular method for applying a concealed information test, a technique already used regularly in forensic investigations, such as in identity parades. The logic behind this is easy to understand. A witness or a suspect is presented with a crucial piece of information (the “probe”), mixed in with a series of neutral alternatives (“irrelevants”).</p>
<p>In this test, investigators analyse the interviewee’s brain activity via electrodes attached to their scalp. They then use a statistical calculation to determine if they recognise the probe – the face of an attacker or a weapon – in comparison to the irrelevants.</p>
<h2>Using it in the field</h2>
<p>So far, the CTP has primarily been tested in a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33655464/">laboratory setting</a>, usually with young, healthy, university-educated adults under controlled conditions. The CTP has been the subject of dozens of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167876016307309">experiments</a> across four independent laboratories spanning at least four countries so far. Experiments have used different scenarios such as <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29083483/">mock theft</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20579312/">mock terrorism</a>. I am planning more field experiments to compare the success of the CTP with conventional photo parades and their subjective “I’m sure it’s him” responses from eyewitnesses. </p>
<p>Other methods similar to the CTP have been used in India, the US and New Zealand, in the context of a concealed information test. More independent studies with these methodologies are necessary before it becomes mainstream. With more research on the CTP, I hope that this memory detection technique could be admissible in UK courts in a matter of years. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-a-brain-can-be-caught-lying-should-we-admit-that-evidence-to-court-heres-what-legal-experts-think-80263">If a brain can be caught lying, should we admit that evidence to court? Here's what legal experts think</a>
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<p>Performing the test on a suspect or eyewitness prior to formal interview could confirm whether or not they recognise a murder weapon or the offender’s face. The results of the test would then be used to assess their credibility – for example, if they contradict the test’s findings in an interview.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to know if photo identification using brainwave analysis with the CTP would have prevented the miscarriages of justice mentioned above. But preliminary findings from my ongoing research suggest the CTP could be an asset for law enforcement, enabling investigators to draw out evidence from the brain of suspects and eyewitnesses.</p>
<p>The potential for this technology is not without its pitfalls. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462434/">A major threat</a> to its usefulness is when relevant information is accidentally released in the public domain. For example, someone accused of a crime based on evidence from a brainwave analysis could claim that the witness recognised their face from the press, thus skewing the results of the test. This would be difficult to navigate in some situations, but could be mitigated by law enforcement keeping their cards closer to their chest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michel Funicelli is a member of the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group and of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology.</span></em></p>An expert explains the technology behind a brainwave test that could change the way crimes are investigated.Michel Funicelli, Lecturer in Policing, Teesside UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1692692021-11-17T13:13:33Z2021-11-17T13:13:33ZCrime control: what South Africa can learn from China<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431478/original/file-20211111-25-1jwmupv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Esther Poon/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Comparative criminology is not just an academic exercise. In view of Africa’s ongoing and deepening <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/where-africa-china-relationship-headed-2021">engagement</a> with China, it is worth asking what South Africa can learn from that culture when it comes to some of its most pressing social problems. </p>
<p>The People’s Republic of China has been <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/crime-rate-statistics">very successful</a> at crime control. For their parts, Western jurisdictions, have demonstrably neglected rehabilitation and <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivism-rates-by-country">failed dismally</a> at resettling former criminals.</p>
<p>With this in mind, I asked in a <a href="http://ojs.tgwsak.co.za/index.php/TGW/article/view/272/259">recent paper</a> what lessons South Africa might take away from a post-Mao era Chinese criminal justice system in terms of crime control.</p>
<p>The cue for my thinking is an <a href="https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18243714W/Prisons_around_the_world">observation</a> by Frederick Allen, a US comparative criminologist. Cross-cultural learning, he said, “provides us with an opportunity to evaluate and understand our own system. It gives us a perspective that is difficult to gain from within our own system.”</p>
<p>I collected and coded data on rehabilitation and resettlement practices of criminal offenders in the People’s Republic of China. This presented a road map for their re-entry into society. The themes selected ranged from resettlement to incarceration. </p>
<p>Here I consider one essential take-away from China to transplant to South Africa. That individual responsibility for crime should be balanced with an understanding of the impact of structural oppressions on crime trends. It’s known, for example, that the structural violence embedded in racism, inequality and unemployment fuels crime.</p>
<p>My study was informed by criminologist John Braithwaite’s <a href="http://johnbraithwaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/1999_Crime-Shame-and-Reintegratio.pdf">seminal distinction</a> between “stigmatising shaming” and “integrative shaming” cultures. He noted that different cultures have different ways to shame people who have been in prison. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ex-offenders-should-be-made-prison-wardens-in-south-africa-heres-why-162316">Ex-offenders should be made prison wardens in South Africa. Here's why</a>
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<p>In societies like the US and South Africa, they are often discriminated against and stigmatised. This drives them away from resettlement and into the arms of criminal sub-cultures. In countries such as China and Japan everything possible is done to resettle ex-offenders and reintegrate them into society. </p>
<p>The argument is that the flowering of this kind of integrative shaming (between 1949 and 1996) in China <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248967367_Crime_prevention_in_a_communitarian_society_Bang-jiao_and_Tiao-jie_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China">reduced recidivism rates</a> – the likelihood of former criminals re-offending. </p>
<p>It is possible to intersperse the data from China with observations on how these could complement existing rehabilitation trends in South African corrections. My findings represent an effort to grow such features in South Africa’s harsh, stigmatising shaming culture. </p>
<h2>Individuals and structural oppression</h2>
<p>For the Chinese, sustainable rehabilitation of ex-offenders is not first prize. In this culture, crime prevention must start at a young age when the correct values should be absorbed by children. </p>
<p>The idea of individual responsibility for crime, however, should be balanced against an understanding of the impact which structural forms of oppression have on crime as triggers. These include inequality, unemployment, poverty, racism and sexism. </p>
<p>As Allen <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096466399400300407">explains</a>, the Chinese reframe the idea of individual responsibility within a pragmatic perspective: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Responsibility for deviant behaviour is usually attributed to the external environment … Consequently, the entire rehabilitation process is based on the task of re-educating the offender … to respond to the environment within a socialist orientation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even in the West, criminologists such as <a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/jreiman.cfm">Jeffrey Reiman</a> and the much-cited <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Quinney">Richard Quinney</a> insist on an accounting of the state’s responsibility for creating and maintaining these structural triggers. For example, Robert Weiss has <a href="https://catalog.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/1854529">pointed out</a> that the most consistent relationship with crime is not between unemployment and imprisonment or even between crime and imprisonment. It’s between inequality and imprisonment. </p>
<p>This idea is demonstrated by <a href="https://catalog.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/1854529">research findings</a> in Japan and the Netherlands (and Poland before 1990). Regarding the situation in South Africa, the well-known French economist <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/transcript-of-nelson-mandela-annual-lecture-2015">Thomas Piketty</a> has recently argued that in terms of ownership inequality and income inequality, South Africa is at the “top of its class”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uOdIfpRS5CE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Picketty on South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>South Africa needs to give serious attention to <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-wont-become-less-violent-until-its-more-equal-103116">addressing inequality</a> if it’s committed to combating its runaway <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/514708/south-africas-latest-crime-stats-everything-you-need-to-know-3/">crime rates</a>. But not uncritically so.</p>
<h2>A critical eye on China</h2>
<p>The Chinese have very little patience with re-offending or recidivism. Every year thousands of re-offenders are <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act50/5740/2017/en/">executed</a> for crimes ranging from petty offences to serious crimes such as murder, robbery and rape. South Africa has an unsustainably high and rising <a href="https://www.umes.edu/uploadedFiles/_WEBSITES/AJCJS/Content/VOL12.1.%20MURHULA%20FINAL.pdf">rate of re-offending</a> (86-94%). This is one of the highest in the world, so the Chinese management of re-offenders should be of particular interest. </p>
<p>Even though the death penalty is outlawed in South Africa, there might be a case for re-introducing it under carefully considered, selected circumstances. A notable Chinese innovation is the imposition of the death penalty suspended for two years. This is to give the offender an opportunity to reform. Nuance is everything.</p>
<p>Similarly, South Africa is a country suffering under endemic and systemic <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-corruption-in-south-africa-isnt-simply-about-zuma-and-the-guptas-113056">trends of corruption</a>. A one-off appeal to the <a href="http://english.court.gov.cn">People’s Court</a> in Beijing is acceptable, but playing for time and wasting valuable judicial resources (as in <a href="https://time.com/6078187/south-africa-courts-ruling-against-jacob-zuma/">the case</a> of South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma) would not be tolerated in China. </p>
<p>But despite an admirable rate of 6%-8% recidivism at the turn of the century, post-Maoist People’s Republic of China is an authoritarian, post-communist, hyper-consumerist society. So South Africans might be cautioned to tolerate a certain level of recidivism. Finland, a Western socialist democracy, for example, has a very acceptable <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1462474512473883">rate of recidivism</a> hovering around 30%.</p>
<h2>Takeaways</h2>
<p>There are many valuable takeaways from the Chinese criminal justice system. These could assist and enrich crime control strategies in South Africa. I explored just one in this article. In my <a href="http://ojs.tgwsak.co.za/index.php/TGW/article/view/272/259">research paper</a> I aim for a nuanced, profound and careful calibration of these ideas for transplanting to South Africa. </p>
<p>The idea of rehabilitation may have become almost redundant under South African conditions. But these ideas derived from the Chinese in the name of cross-cultural comparative criminology could conceivably assist effective crime control in a society still reeling from the trauma of conflicts, past and present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Casper Lӧtter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China has been very successful at crime control while South Africa has neglected rehabilitation and failed dismally at resettling ex-offenders.Casper Lӧtter, Research fellow, North-West UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1714602021-11-16T13:18:51Z2021-11-16T13:18:51ZThe concrete effects of body cameras on police accountability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430901/original/file-20211108-17-t9x7xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C80%2C2914%2C1544&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police officers wear body cameras in Oakland, California, on Dec. 4, 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/police-officers-wearing-body-cameras-form-a-line-in-east-news-photo/459970458?adppopup=true">Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Without video evidence, it’s unlikely we would have ever heard of <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/george-floyd-87675">George Floyd</a> or witnessed the prosecution of his killer, a Minneapolis police officer.</p>
<p>The recording of Floyd’s killing echoed the documentation in the deaths of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/us/michael-brown-ferguson-video-claims/index.html">Michael Brown</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/04/i-cant-breathe-eric-garner-chokehold-death-video">Eric Garner</a>, two Black men who were killed at the hands of police.</p>
<p>The circulation of such videos – witness cellphones, dashcams and police body-worn cameras – have helped awaken a protest movement centered on police accountability and systemic racism in the United States.</p>
<p>They have also diminished trust in law enforcement, which has dipped to its lowest level since 1993, according to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/352304/black-confidence-police-recovers-2020-low.aspx">2020 Gallup Survey</a>. Nineteen percent of Black Americans said they trust police, compared to 56% of white Americans. And a majority of those polled, 56%, called for major reforms in policing, including 88% of Black people and 51% of white people.</p>
<p>Much discussion on police reform revolves around <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/meaningful-police-reform-requires-accountability-and-cultural-sensitivity/">police officer recruitment</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/17/988331517/former-police-officer-says-training-methods-for-cops-need-to-change">training processes</a> and re-budgeting or <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-the-phrase-explained.html">“defunding” the police</a>.</p>
<p>But another way to reform policing is to make police services more transparent and officers more accountable. Over the past decade, the implementation of body camera technology has rapidly expanded across major metropolitan police departments, including Washington, New York and Chicago.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/suat.cfm">criminologists</a> and <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/tekin.cfm">economists</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w29019">our recent study</a> has found that providing police officers with body cameras has a substantive effect on investigations of police accountability. The cameras have also helped reduce racial bias against citizen complainants.</p>
<h2>Increased fairness in investigations</h2>
<p>The vast majority of U.S. public complaints against police officers are dismissed.</p>
<p>Only 2.1% of the citizen complaints filed in Chicago between 2010 and 2016 resulted in a disciplinary action against police officers, according to the <a href="https://invisible.institute/press-release">Invisible Institute</a>, a journalism organization that “collects and publishes information about police misconduct in Chicago” in its Citizens Police Data Project. This rate is about one-third lower when complainants are African Americans.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1098611115613320">a similar pattern</a> in cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>Traditional strategies to address police misconduct have focused on internal affairs divisions in police departments, which investigate possible law-breaking incidents and professional misconduct within police forces, or citizen oversight review boards, which investigate citizen complaints. But both of these have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd.html">criticized for being biased</a> against citizens.</p>
<p>Such investigations of police misconduct have relied heavily on eyewitness accounts, often producing “he said/she said” patterns of flawed evidence and, thus, inconclusive results.</p>
<p>This has changed, however, with the introduction of body camera technology.</p>
<p>While there have been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12412">dozens of studies</a> on the impact of body cameras on police behavior – with some promising outcomes in the reduction in police wrongdoings – their effect on the resolution of citizen complaints has been relatively understudied.</p>
<p>We recently studied an eight-year period – 2013 to 2020 – of citizen complaint data from Chicago’s <a href="https://www.chicagocopa.org/">Civilian Office of Police Accountability</a>. During that span, the Chicago Police Department assigned these cameras to its officers in a staggered fashion, district by district across a 17-month period, from June 2016 to December 2017.</p>
<p>This allowed us to conduct the first study to estimate their effect on the outcomes of citizen complaint investigations across multiple time frames.</p>
<p>We found a significant effect on police accountability following the implementation of body cameras. Police officers were 64% more likely to be subject to disciplinary action after a complaint investigation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protestors gather in North Carolina." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426566/original/file-20211014-21-1gizuu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protestors gather in Elizabeth City, N.C., as elected officials discuss the possible release of police body camera footage from the shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr. on April 21, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-gather-outside-a-government-building-during-news-photo/1232487956?adppopup=true">Sean Rayford/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Consistent with the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cico.12388?casa_token=alnq4Qzi-yAAAAAA%3ACesmSC_ojtKpD079bx530g843DUg9_HH0ph1Vrfu5MyFLzvi_1KX6Bsn-LpIH4Rrlo4FhcSDBF8avxg">existing studies</a>, we identified a considerable degree of racial disparity in the resolution of citizen complaints prior to the implementation of police body cameras. Complaints from Black people were more likely to be dismissed – 53% vs. 38% – and less likely to be sustained – 10% vs. 21% – than those of White people.</p>
<p>But following their widespread implementation in Chicago, body cameras largely eliminated such racial disparities, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w29019">according to our study</a>.</p>
<p>Complainants from all racial groups benefited from body cameras, with a greater overall rate of disciplinary action. We found that the percentages of dismissed citizen complaints were reduced to 16%, 18% and 15% for white, Black and Hispanic complainants, respectively.</p>
<p>Our findings initially illustrated the existence of racial bias in the dismissal of police complainants. They subsequently show that the introduction of body cameras can change this. And the continued implementation of such cameras is likely to continue reducing the disparities that play a large role in mistrust of law enforcement by people of color.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Many policymakers see this technology as a potential game-changer in police-citizen relations. It can protect officers from spurious complaints and make them more accountable for actual misconduct.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/legislatures-require-police-body-camera-use-statewide-magazine2021.aspx">Seven states</a> – Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Carolina – have already mandated the use of body cameras.</p>
<p>Because body cameras produce an objective accounting of the interactions between police and citizens, they have the potential to overcome previous weaknesses in the quality of evidence</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171460/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suat Cubukcu is affiliated with Orion Policy Institute, an independent non-profit think tank. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erdal Tekin, Nusret Sahin, and Volkan Topalli do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Police body-worn cameras increase disciplinary action against officers and reduce racial bias against citizen complainants, according to a recent study.Suat Cubukcu, Professorial Lecturer, American UniversityErdal Tekin, Professor Department of Public Administration and Policy, American UniversityNusret Sahin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Stockton UniversityVolkan Topalli, Professor of Criminal Justice, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1693182021-10-17T11:55:58Z2021-10-17T11:55:58ZA test to diagnose psychopaths can help identify fish behaviours that could benefit aquaculture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426019/original/file-20211012-27-16wyizm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5760%2C3819&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some lumpfish are friendly, others not so much.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In November 1888, fear stalked the streets of London as the Whitechapel Murderer claimed his latest victim. The unusually gruesome attacks had puzzled investigators, so police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond examined the victims for clues that might help reveal the killer’s identity. Dr. Bond concluded that the violence of these attacks meant that the Whitechapel Murderer — <a href="https://whitechapeljack.com/the-whitechapel-murders/">who would later become known as Jack the Ripper</a> — was a reclusive man with a strong impulsive drive.</p>
<p>Dr. Bond had created the first offender profile, applying a psychological technique that assumes an individual’s behaviour is consistent over time and that similar crimes are committed by similar offenders. These assumptions are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0004865814530732">controversial among psychologists</a>, although police investigators have since used this approach to create criminal profiles that narrow suspect lists for unsolved cases.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous profiling tool is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412959537.n134">Hare Psychopathy Checklist</a>. This test scores responses to a series of questions to build a personality profile, which is then used to predict the likelihood of a person showing <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3233/RNN-139001">psychopathic behaviour</a>.</p>
<h2>Profiling personalities</h2>
<p>Personality profiling is not unique to criminology. The method is used to identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0140509">health risks</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/SD-02-2015-0023">aid personnel recruitment</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.37870/joqie.v2i2.111">develop education programs</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103653">build dating apps</a>. Despite this wide range of applications, there is one thing all these approaches have in common: they are almost exclusively used on humans.</p>
<p>Biologists recognize that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2004.00618.x">animals have personality traits</a> that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.12.022">consistent across time</a>. However, animal behaviour is often studied in large groups of animals so that data can be collected to investigate wide-scale trends. This means the need to build detailed personality profiles on an individual scale is uncommon. </p>
<p>Unless, as demonstrated by the case of Jack the Ripper, there are unknown individuals within a population that exhibit a rare behaviour and are avoiding detection.</p>
<h2>Underwater mystery</h2>
<p>Cleaner fish remove and eat parasites from the skin of other fishes. Some species of cleaner fish are used in salmon aquaculture to help control parasitic sea lice. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/cyclopterus-lumpus">Lumpfish</a> are a commonly used cleaner fish, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/raq.12194">millions of juveniles</a> are released into salmon farms each year. However, only a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2018.01.026">minority of lumpfish</a> (around 20 per cent) actually clean salmon of sea lice, while the rest either ignore salmon or compete for pellet food.</p>
<p>It is unclear why only certain lumpfish clean salmon and observing this behaviour is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-014-0397-1">exceedingly rare</a>. As part of a research team at the <a href="https://www.swansea.ac.uk/bioscience/csar/">Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Research at Swansea University</a>, my colleagues and I tried to solve this mystery by following the same logic as the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A lumpfish near a measuring ruler" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425558/original/file-20211008-18-1k81smu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Applying a personality profiling approach to lumpfish — and potentially other animals — can reveal useful information about their behaviour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AUTHOR)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We designed a series of behavioural tests to build detailed personality profiles of lumpfish, in hope of identifying the individuals that showed cleaning behaviour. This involved testing for variation in activity, aggression, anxiety, boldness and sociality of individual lumpfish over repeated sessions, and then recording how these individuals interacted with salmon.</p>
<h2>Friend or foe?</h2>
<p>We found that most lumpfish completely ignored salmon and had very few interactions. However, lumpfish with “bold and non-aggressive” personality profiles spent long periods visually inspecting salmon in a co-operative manner. This would give these individuals opportunity to clean sea lice from salmon and help reduce parasite numbers in farms. </p>
<p>Profiling analysis revealed an unexpected second group of lumpfish with “active and social” personality profiles. These individuals caused salmon to flee, which suggests confrontation between the fish that would not be beneficial for cleaning in farms. </p>
<p>Our results showed that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105459">personality influences behavioural interaction between lumpfish and salmon</a>. While some lumpfish are well suited for cleaning parasites, other individuals hinder cleaning and should not be used in aquaculture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="two lumpfish in a tank" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425552/original/file-20211008-19-1qd8hr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lumpfish are raised in hatcheries to supply salmon farms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Emily Costello)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future animal profiling</h2>
<p>Profiling can be used to predict which individuals are likely to show cleaning behaviour. Not only will this increase the efficiency of cleaner fish for controlling sea lice in farms, it will also help improve fish welfare by removing lumpfish not suited for a farm environment. </p>
<p>Ongoing research collaborations between the <a href="https://www.uoguelph.ca/ib/">University of Guelph</a> and <a href="https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/index-eng.html">Fisheries and Oceans Canada</a> aim to adapt this new approach so that it can be applied on a commercial scale. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/salmon-farms-are-in-crisis-heres-how-scientists-are-trying-to-save-them-94538">Salmon farms are in crisis – here's how scientists are trying to save them</a>
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<hr>
<p>Despite its sinister beginnings, personality profiling has proven effective at predicting the behaviour of humans, and now lumpfish. This approach could provide new ways for studying animal behaviour by giving detailed insight on an individual scale.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Whittaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Personality profiling reveals hidden behaviour of cleaner fish used to control parasites in salmon aquaculture.Ben Whittaker, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Integrative Biology, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1605242021-05-14T04:57:10Z2021-05-14T04:57:10ZArt by Indigenous prisoners can forge links with culture and a future away from crime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400488/original/file-20210513-18-1fr2xfe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C14%2C4902%2C2325&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Torch artist and Barkindji man Trevor Mitchell at work on a painting. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://thetorch.org.au/exhibitions/7844456/">The Torch</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Featuring over 350 artworks created by more than 320 artists, <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/">The Torch</a>’s annual exhibition, <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/exhibitions/7844456/">Confined 12</a>, is its largest to date. All of the artists in the Victorian not-for-profit organisation’s show are Indigenous and either in prison or recently released. </p>
<p>The exhibition and the program that precedes it allows them to be seen not as “criminals” or “offenders”, but as people of value, proud Indigenous men and women, citizens and artists. </p>
<p>Bringing about this <a href="https://study.sagepub.com/system/files/Maruna%2C_Shadd_-_Redemption_Scripts_and_Desistance.pdf">identity change</a> is critical for exiting the cycle of crime and prison. It’s a difficult and challenging process, but people willing to engage with the art produced can make a big difference. </p>
<h2>Teaching art inside</h2>
<p>In 2011, artist and The Torch CEO, Kent Morris, started visiting Indigenous men and women in the Victorian prison system to teach art. </p>
<p>He found students who felt disconnected from family, country and culture. They wanted to know just as much about how to paint as who they were and where they were from. </p>
<p>Since then, the organisation has been supporting Indigenous people in Victoria’s prison system to learn about and (re)connect with their cultural heritage, develop their artistic skills and practice, and learn about the arts industry. </p>
<p>Participants are then able to exhibit and sell their artwork through The Torch’s <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/shop-2/">online shop</a> and the annual <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/exhibition/confined-12/">Confined</a>, <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/exhibition/banj-banj-nawnta/">and other</a>, exhibitions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Indigenous artwork" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400491/original/file-20210513-18-stxi1x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zac (Wadawurrung peoples) Overseeing Bunjil 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CNbQXv0BwC0/">The Torch/Instagram</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his classic <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14164hw">1958 ethnographic study</a> of New Jersey State Prison, Gresham M. Sykes outlined a number of fundamental deprivations that feature in daily prison life which he termed the “pains of imprisonment”. They include the loss of liberty, autonomy and security. </p>
<p>Art has the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/22/not-everyones-an-artist-but-all-prisoners-would-benefit-from-practising-art">power to buffer</a> the damaging psychological impacts of prison, which Sykes pointed out, should be minimised or eliminated if efforts at rehabilitation are to be effective. Art-making and viewing is good for emotional regulation, psychological <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238602084_A_Place_for_Art_in_Prison_Art_as_A_Tool_for_Rehabilitation_and_Management">health and well-being</a>.</p>
<p>Similar art programs for people in prison include the annual <a href="https://fremantleprison.com.au/whats-on/insider-art/">Insider Art</a> exhibition in WA, <a href="https://www.koestlerarts.org.uk/">Koestler Arts</a> in the UK and the <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/pcap">University of Michigan Creative Arts Project</a>. But these programs and organisations don’t leverage the power of art to maximise individual and community change like The Torch and there are no other programs specifically for Indigenous artists in prison or recently released.</p>
<p>The Torch produces and distributes texts and images to educate participants about Indigenous nations, languages, country, stories, technologies and aesthetic traditions. </p>
<p>One artist involved in The Torch exhibition <a href="https://www.indigenousjustice.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/mp/files/resources/files/evaluation-torch-report16mar2019final1.pdf">described</a> the powerful effect art practice had on them: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I do my art it’s like a mood stabiliser. It helps me stay focused and I feel more settled. I’d rather do my art than see a counsellor.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399751/original/file-20210510-18-zuszfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confined 10. Photo by James Henry.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-sentences-what-creative-writing-by-prisoners-tells-us-about-the-inside-130783">Life sentences – what creative writing by prisoners tells us about the inside</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A different path</h2>
<p>Reducing the number of people returning to prison after release is one of Corrections Victoria’s <a href="https://www.corrections.vic.gov.au/corrections-victoria">strategic priorities</a>. Efforts to reduce reoffending can include clinical treatment programs (for instance to <a href="https://www.corrections.vic.gov.au/release/transitional-programs">treat mental health conditions or addiction</a>) alongside practical support to find housing, welfare support and if possible, employment after release. </p>
<p>Long-term abstinence from criminal behaviour, called “desistance”, can be a difficult, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1748895816634812">painful</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article-abstract/57/5/1041/2624018?redirectedFrom=fulltext">fragile</a> process. After the social rejection of prison, it involves successful community integration, self and social acceptance. </p>
<p>It can also involve becoming someone different, someone new. As criminologist Fergus McNeil <a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.2044-8333.2011.02039.x?casa_token=XpILm0wKAqMAAAAA%3AVLmxkxsiLwIY2C4xbGNLeNce0GSg_D7XaJXOOYeOv_N5X5a-HgRz5i_MNExnmnCvZiAC9KTvDaHGBnl5VA">has pointed out</a>, “people do not simply desist, they desist into something”. </p>
<p>Artist Chris Austin (Gunditjmara) explains how the program helped him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the past I was a crook, you know, a jail bird but now I am an artist. My daughter is so very proud of that. I never used to think of myself that way. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/COY7OCVjOqg","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Audience participation</h2>
<p>By embracing participants as artists rather than ex-offenders, The Torch provides an avenue to change. This part of the process involves audience participation — a partnership with the wider community. </p>
<p>The annual exhibitions allow others to celebrate and accept the artists whose work is on show. Selling a work of art provides validation and a source of income. Artist <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/artists/0037f000018z3qjqac/">Flick Chafer-Smith</a> (Ngarrindjeri) says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I love the idea that someone has seen my painting and loved what I’ve done and paid their money, and have it on display in their home. It gives me so much pride.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this way, identity is co-created. Participants who exhibit and sell their work with The Torch receive 100% of the sale price. This income can foster independence and lessen reliance on welfare, family and friends. In 2020, sales from The Torch’s exhibitions topped more than <a href="https://www.indigenousjustice.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/mp/files/resources/files/evaluation-torch-report16mar2019final1.pdf">$250,000</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://thetorch.org.au/wp-content/uploads/EVALUATION_Torch-Report16Mar2019FINAL1.pdf">The Torch reports</a> that of 66 participants in 2017–18 only 11% returned to prison. This is in stark comparison to the <a href="https://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/statistics/sentencing-trends/released-prisoners-returning-to-prison">44.2% of Victorian prisoners</a> who returned to prison within two years of release (the rate of recidivism <a href="https://www.aboriginaljustice.vic.gov.au/the-agreement/aboriginal-over-representation-in-the-justice-system/aboriginal-cohorts-under-justice">rises to 53.4%</a> for Victorian Indigenous prisoners).</p>
<p>Indigenous Australians are incarcerated <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-are-indigenous-australians-the-most-incarcerated-people-on-earth-78528">at the highest rate</a> of any people in the world. The art exhibited by The Torch — and the people who engage with it as creators and viewers — can transform lives and light a new way forward. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-criminals-or-passive-victims-media-need-to-reframe-their-representation-of-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-158561">Not criminals or passive victims: media need to reframe their representation of Aboriginal deaths in custody</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Torch’s <a href="https://thetorch.org.au/exhibitions/7844456/">Confined 12</a> exhibition is on from 13 May until 6 June at Glen Eira City Council Gallery.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Ryder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With 350 artworks created by 320 Indigenous artists who are in or recently released from prison, The Torch is making a difference to how people are seen and how they see themselves.Jeremy Ryder, Research Assistant, Law and Criminal Justice Tutor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1585922021-04-20T12:28:41Z2021-04-20T12:28:41ZNo visits and barely any calls – pandemic makes separation even scarier for people with a family member in prison<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395483/original/file-20210416-13-1nurhn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5362%2C3274&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Texas woman shows a picture of her 21-year-old son, who has been incarcerated during the pandemic. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakPrisonerVaccines/40ab859b11d7497dbbea99c4d50ee05c">AP Photo/LM Otero</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jails and prisons in the United States had a coronavirus infection rate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/10/us/covid-prison-outbreak.html">three times greater than the general population</a>, with an average of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/10/us/covid-prison-outbreak.html">1,400 new COVID-19 infections and seven deaths every day</a> over the past year. </p>
<p>America’s correctional facilities are notoriously bad for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002214650804900105">spreading infectious diseases</a>. <a href="https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08030416">Millions of people constantly cycle in and out</a> of them every year and they have limited medical staff and supplies. People in prison also spend extended periods in crowded indoor spaces, with <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112326?utm_source=TrendMD_Collection&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Understanding_Health_Equity&utm_content=Stress&casa_token=SvH9YY3qGH4AAAAA%3AD5f6nPApQmU4tY3YnJ_FeqLuVYsz2Bi3438erPXTkQrvWXiybzGHZa5fu0ZBRgBews26MAtMMXx7tg">poor air circulation and ventilation</a>. </p>
<p>For many people who are incarcerated, either awaiting trial in jail or imprisoned after conviction, being locked in a <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-the-fear-is-real-prisoners-at-high-risk-for-contracting-covid-19-81913925649">pandemic hot spot has been terrifying</a>. And for the 6.5 million Americans who have a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023119829332">family member incarcerated</a>, COVID-19 has made an already <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3953802/">highly stressful situation</a> much worse, according to our criminology research.</p>
<p>Throughout summer 2020, <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z12O3vTA1yqco7kGLTmN8IF0uUfdlDxZQTTzETRbEmY/edit?usp=sharing">we surveyed</a> more than 500 people who have a family member incarcerated in Texas – <a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-texas-prisons-0cd4abba679ac501ad3cb567dc7509c2">a state with the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks</a> in correctional facilities. Nearly 200 provided personal statements about having a loved one incarcerated during the pandemic. </p>
<p>People conveyed deep concern about the conditions of their family member’s confinement and struggled to cope with new pandemic restrictions on visits and other communication. Many feared their family member would die of COVID-19, alone, in prison – as <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons">2,564 incarcerated people in the U.S. have already done this year</a>.</p>
<h2>‘We don’t incarcerate, we torture’</h2>
<p>With more than <a href="https://txdps.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/dce4d7da662945178ad5fbf3981fa35c">34,000 positive COVID-19 cases in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice</a> so far, infection rates in Texas prisons are <a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/83635/Profile%20of%20COVID%20deaths%20in%20custody.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y">40% higher than the national prison population average</a>. Texas has recorded some of the <a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/83635/Profile%20of%20COVID%20deaths%20in%20custody.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y">highest number of COVID-19 deaths of incarcerated people nationwide</a>: <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons">187 deaths as of April 16, 2021</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photo of the TDCJ headquarters with a sign outside painted like the flag of Texas" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395474/original/file-20210416-19-k3pinu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, based in Huntsville, runs nearly 100 detention facilities, including 50 state prisons and dozens of jails.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/with-afp-story-by-chantel-valery-us-justice-execution-news-photo/171090061?adppopup=true">Chantal Valery/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our study participants belonged to the <a href="https://tifa.org/">Texas Inmate Family Association</a>, a nonprofit organization that provides support to people with family incarcerated in the state. The survey was conducted anonymously, so we include only limited personal details about the respondents and their family members here and have not verified their assertions.</p>
<p>Our survey showed that people with a family member incarcerated during the pandemic experienced extreme distress. Seventy-nine percent were very concerned that their loved one would contract COVID-19 in prison. The vast majority were women with a child or spouse incarcerated. </p>
<p>“My son has been locked in a cell with temperatures over 100 degrees for up to 23-plus hours a day for weeks on end now due to COVID,” one 74-year-old woman who lives near San Marcos told us. “I fear he will either perish from the conditions or somehow take his own life.” </p>
<p>Many Texas prisons <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/failing_grades.html">lack masks, soap and hand sanitizer</a>. Yet family are not allowed to bring sanitizer into prisons: It is <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/03/06/when-purell-is-contraband-how-do-you-contain-coronavirus">considered contraband</a> in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-prison-hand-sanitizer-contraband-invs/index.html">federal prisons and state prisons</a> in over a dozen states.</p>
<p>One father compared the conditions his child was experiencing in prison “to a concentration camp.” </p>
<p>Even before the pandemic, a mother told us, having a child in prison was stressful because of “the disregard the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system, in general, has for the well-being and rehabilitation of the inmates. Living conditions are deplorable, the food is not nutritious, dental and medical care is too difficult to access, [and] there are too many extended lockdowns.” </p>
<p>“We don’t incarcerate, we torture,” she said. </p>
<p>The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been sued in the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/09/12/493608371/with-no-air-conditioning-texas-prisoners-live-in-cruel-conditions-suit-alleges">past over prison conditions</a> and <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/03/30/texas-inmates-sue-prison-over-coronavirus-practices/">recently over its coronavirus policies and practices</a>.</p>
<h2>‘We have lost a part of us’</h2>
<p>Incarceration always physically separates family members; that’s part of the punishment. And during COVID-19, it is a particularly harsh punishment. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Guard opens the gate for a person in a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395475/original/file-20210416-17-1mxqqyp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Robertson Unit maximum security prison facility, outside Abilene, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/guard-on-duty-at-the-robertson-unit-maximum-security-prison-news-photo/71441701?adppopup=true">Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>A woman in San Antonio told us, “The hardest part of this pandemic is not having my husband…by my side.”</p>
<p>Her husband has been incarcerated for 11 years. </p>
<p>In Texas prisons, all types of contact with the outside world – including <a href="https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Hundreds-of-COVID-cases-surface-at-state-jail-in-15407169.php">video and phone calls</a> – were severely limited and visitation <a href="https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-texas/269-38e0b2c8-3cdc-4afd-acfb-5ab12ca39566">barred completely</a> on March 13, 2020, when Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster. That included juvenile facilities.</p>
<p>“Phones have been disabled during COVID and [the] few calls are only 5 minutes,” said a Houston woman whose son is incarcerated at the Huntsville Penitentiary in Texas. “It is all so hard on inmates, but so, so hard for families.”</p>
<p>Texas <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/09/texas-prisons-visitation/">reopened jails and prisons to visits</a> on March 15, 2021.</p>
<p>But the separation will have already taken a high toll on once-intimate relationships, our research shows.</p>
<p>“We have lost a part of us being separated for so long. We are not the same people,” said one 49-year-old woman last summer, whose incarcerated fiancé had been unable to communicate with her. </p>
<p>“My fiancé has lost hope and is struggling, and it breaks my heart.” </p>
<h2>‘Worried sick’</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wCnDQNgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">criminologists</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=R7p6oW8AAAAJ&hl=en">who</a> study the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002817719308396">health consequences of incarceration</a>, we know that <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo5485741.html">worry over the well-being of an incarcerated loved one</a> is a common and severe stressor. Studies show that having a family member incarcerated is detrimental to the psychological and physical <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953620304834?casa_token=QBet58jx-UIAAAAA:PPFPZzBXr2d9Zh8g9frj_FZSx1N_3Kg2mczNa-UDKNW47cAV_GV2ggcHk5AlkSNQFyCqMjpZIgw">health of parents</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122411436234?casa_token=6m1AF6q_Qs8AAAAA%3AO8weNSL3bgzBVYYbYmKc9XGSfmeRvar9QonQDT_z337SW8Dmc6a3yQF4e32vtccWuzhLCv-ov7d_4A">spouses</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/40/1/146/4964052?login=true">children</a>. </p>
<p>The stress of knowing an incarcerated family member could become ill with a deadly virus adds to existing fear they will be mistreated or assaulted in prison. </p>
<p>Several family members of the people we interviewed did indeed contract COVID-19. One woman, whose husband had recently tested positive, said she had difficulty getting in touch with nurses to update her on his condition. </p>
<p>“I am worried sick,” she said. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Some people said they were kept in the dark about their family member’s illness.</p>
<p>“I did not even know he had contracted COVID-19 until several weeks after,” said one woman of her husband. </p>
<p>“He was on lockdown, and couldn’t call home.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Testa receives funding from Aging Research in Criminal Justice Health Network (ARCH), National Institutes of Health, and Bureau of Justice Assistance</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chantal Fahmy received funding from the Aging Research in Criminal Justice Health (ARCH) Network, National Institutes of Health and from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p>For the 6.5 million Americans who have an incarcerated family member, COVID-19 has made an already stressful situation much worse by drastically limiting communication and raising fears of death.Alexander Testa, Assistant Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice, The University of Texas at San AntonioChantal Fahmy, Assistant Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice, The University of Texas at San AntonioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573312021-03-26T02:14:15Z2021-03-26T02:14:15ZMen are more likely to commit violent crimes. Why is this so and how do we change it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391309/original/file-20210324-23-1365phk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Criminology is the study of individual and social factors associated with crime and the people who perpetrate it. One of the discipline’s well-established truths is that men commit violent and sexual offences <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/crime-victimisation-australia/latest-release#physical-assault">at far higher rates</a> than women. </p>
<p>Men are also the most likely victims of physical violence across the board, but <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/recorded-crime-victims/latest-release">women are far more likely than men</a> to be victims of sexual, familial and domestic violence.</p>
<p>Rates of imprisonment give us tangible evidence of this gender imbalance.</p>
<p>Across Australia, only <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7015303/australias-female-prison-population-boom/">about 8% of prisoners</a> are women. While prison population figures provide only a very rough guide to criminal behaviour, we can safely assert that <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/prisoners-australia/latest-release">men perpetrate the vast majority</a> of criminal conduct, and certainly violent conduct.</p>
<p>What does the research tell us about the patterns behind this alarming fact? </p>
<p>In the early days of criminological enquiry, much attention was given to the Y chromosome – the determinant of male sex organs. This line of research, referred to broadly as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivist_school_(criminology)#:%7E:text=Biological%20positivism%20is%20a%20theory,criminals%20and%20some%20are%20not.">biological positivism</a>, gave rise to explanations that “men can’t help themselves”. Fortunately, these theorists hold very little sway in criminological circles today.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cultural-misogyny-and-why-mens-aggression-to-women-is-so-often-expressed-through-sex-157680">'Cultural misogyny' and why men's aggression to women is so often expressed through sex</a>
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<p>More contemporary attention is given to factors associated with the societies in which we live. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html">Social learning theory</a> posits that men are more likely than women to associate with antisocial peers. </p>
<p>Other scholars are interested in the way in which key life experiences influence the propensity to commit crime. Known as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178916300684">developmental and life course criminology</a>, it suggests the causes of crime are a result of a linking of individual characteristics, such as impulsiveness, with a person’s environmental factors such as their family, schooling, religion, neighbourhood and the way they were parented, including any exposure to <a href="https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/2017/08/30/investigating-complex-links-between-maltreatment-and-youth-offending">neglect and maltreatment</a>. Renowned criminologist <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2003.tb00987.x">David Farrington</a> has suggested these factors play out differently for males and females.</p>
<p>Into the sociological frame, too, comes <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/strain-theory-sociology">strain theory</a>, which proposes that difficult circumstances or life stresses can produce anger and frustration that may lead to violence. The <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/mar03/angeracross">gender divide</a> is explained by the evidence that men are likely to react violently to such strains. Women, according to this theory, are more likely to internalise their responses.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2780644?seq=1">Edgework theory</a> pursues the idea that men are more likely than women to engage in risk-taking behaviour, even to the edge of acceptable conduct. Men in the criminal justice system are best described, on this view, as “risky thrill-seekers” while women caught up in the same system are more likely to be described as “at risk”.</p>
<p>The science of psychology, too, plays an important role here. Psychological studies suggest <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/CICrimJust/2001/5.pdf">gender role identification</a> − internalised characteristics culturally regarded as appropriate behaviour for men and women − rather than gender itself is crucial to the experience of anger, its expression and control. </p>
<p>How are these gender divides created and shaped? Criminologists such as <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/female-crime-ngaire-naffine/10.4324/9781315646992?context=ubx&refId=0b096287-5f8c-468b-9a17-d04d29c23146">Ngaire Naffine</a> have offered the view that there has always been an entrenched belief in the “natural” order of things, which associates masculinity with dominance and status. In this view, individuals construct their beliefs according to their class, ethnicity and sexuality, but the result is always a reinforcement of dominant patterns of masculinity. One can observe these patterns in competition for status, bravado among peers, the drive for power and control, shamelessness, and a lack of concern for others.</p>
<p>Women, by contrast, are less likely to display these traits because society (including the criminal justice system) has positioned them as needing greater protection, with consequent patronising benevolence.</p>
<p>In summary, men disproportionately exhibit far more anti-social behaviour than women. When it comes to sexual crimes, men are far more likely to commit them, and women are far more likely to be the victims. The easy cultural dismissal that “boys will be boys” simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and is actively doing damage. </p>
<p>So how best can we respond to the problem of violence perpetrated by men?</p>
<p>Law reform is necessary to ensure the practice of law is in line with prevailing social norms and priorities. This has certainly not always been the case. For example, until the 1970s there was no such thing, legally, as rape in marriage. Even in the first iteration of reform to the law, a prosecution could only proceed if there was evidence of actual bodily harm to the victim. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-do-we-go-from-here-with-the-allegations-about-christian-porter-156497">Where do we go from here with the allegations about Christian Porter?</a>
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<p>There have been other pleasing law reforms too. Today, in many jurisdictions, police provide victim assistance services, prosecution counsel are trained in handling traumatised clients, limits have been placed on cross-examination practices, and directions to juries do not carry the same cautions regarding corroborative evidence that were standard a decade ago.</p>
<p>Legal change is necessary, but it is not enough. For the most part, the law comes in only after the damage has been done. </p>
<p>Of greater importance in the drive for change is the value that societies must place on teaching all men to respect and value the worth of all people, regardless of gender, race, or creed. When that is socially learned, and flawed expectations of masculinity are put to one side, men will be less likely to engage in risky behaviours and internalise gendered expectations. They will also be more likely to draw on pro-social coping mechanisms when under stress, and more likely to reject the notion that masculinity must identify with power, control, shamelessness and independence. </p>
<p>Creating conditions beyond individual responses is important too. Mass movements and marches like the ones witnessed this month have provided great impetus to the social and political conditions required for positive change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rick Sarre is the president of the SA Council for Civil Liberties. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catia Malvaso receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award), the Australian Institute of Criminology (Criminology Research Grants), and the Channel 7 Children's Research Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Day and Ben Livings do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In criminology, there are many theories to account for why men are more likely than women to commit crimes – and they may hold the key to changing those figures.Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South AustraliaAndrew Day, Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of MelbourneBen Livings, Associate Professor of Criminal Law and Evidence, University of South AustraliaCatia Malvaso, Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychology and Public Health, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1536492021-01-31T18:56:24Z2021-01-31T18:56:24ZWe analysed almost 500,000 police reports of domestic violence. Mental health was an issue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381231/original/file-20210128-17-11uw0te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1000%2C660&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sydney-nsw-australia-february-11-2020-1643342308">Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rare access to almost half a million police reports of domestic violence has revealed a hidden picture of mental health issues in perpetrators and victims. </p>
<p>This is academics’ first attempt in the world to use computers to mine the text of so many police reports. These would otherwise have taken humans years to read and analyse.</p>
<p>As part of our recently <a href="https://www.jmir.org/2020/12/e23725/">published research</a>, we discovered many more mentions of mental health issues in these police reports than expected. </p>
<p>We have already used those data to identify lesser-known groups vulnerable to domestic violence, including people with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946720301240">autism spectrum disorder</a> and in yet-to-be-published research, people in nursing homes. But our findings could also have other implications for public health, victims, perpetrators and policing.</p>
<h2>Here’s what we did</h2>
<p>Police are often the first to attend domestic violence events. As well as details such as the names and ages of the people involved, police also write up a narrative description of the event, including any observable injuries, drug and alcohol information, and mental health.</p>
<p>The NSW Police Force told us that in 2017 alone, officers attended 123,330 domestic violence events. This gives some idea of the scale of the problem and the challenge of reading, processing and pulling together the volumes of information these reports contain.</p>
<p>So we developed a way of mining the text to automatically extract certain information. We analysed almost half a million (492,393) domestic violence police records in New South Wales, covering a 12-year period (2005-16).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/out-of-the-shadows-the-rise-of-domestic-violence-in-australia-29280">Out of the shadows: the rise of domestic violence in Australia</a>
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<p>To illustrate the advantage of automatic text processing, we estimate it would have taken one person around 160 years to read and process the reports. That’s based on 14 reports a day, working 220 days a year (unlike computers, humans take holidays).</p>
<p>Although the source records were not de-identified (it would have taken too long), we only extracted anonymised information (mentions of mental illness) to ensure privacy. </p>
<h2>Here’s what we found</h2>
<p>We focused on domestic violence events that mentioned a single perpetrator against a single victim (416,441). Within those, we identified more than 120 different mental illnesses for victims and perpetrators in almost 65,000 police-attended domestic violence events over those years.</p>
<p>These ranged from generic disorder descriptions (for example, mood disorders, self-harm) to highly specific conditions (for example, oppositional defiant disorder, dissociative personality disorder) for victims and perpetrators.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Many prescription medications around bathroom sink" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381233/original/file-20210128-15-16dj1jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Police gathered information on victims’ and perpetrators’ mental health from many sources, including medicines observed at the scene.</span>
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<p>A total of 16% of domestic violence events examined had at least one mention of a mental illness for either the perpetrator or the victim. In more than three-quarters (76%) of these events, mental illness was mentioned for the perpetrator only, 17% for the victim only, and 7% for both victim and perpetrator. </p>
<p>Overall, mood affective disorders, which include depression or bipolar disorder, were the most common in both victims and perpetrators.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/domestic-violence-soars-after-natural-disasters-preventing-it-needs-to-be-part-of-the-emergency-response-151838">Domestic violence soars after natural disasters. Preventing it needs to be part of the emergency response</a>
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<p>One key finding was a steady increase over time in domestic violence involving alcohol abuse in perpetrators aged 15-64 years. Another was the number of domestic violence cases with victims over 55 years said to have dementia. </p>
<p>While the records contained many more reports of mental health issues than we might expect, this is likely a big underestimate. This is because police do not systematically seek information on people’s mental health state when they attend domestic violence events.</p>
<h2>We need to be careful when interpreting these results</h2>
<p>We know police reports don’t capture all cases of domestic violence. We also need to be careful when using reports of mental health based on interviews with victims, perpetrators and third parties who are not mental health professionals (such as parents).</p>
<p>However, police reports draw on a range of sources, including the victims, perpetrators and witnesses. They also consider evidence at the scene (such as medications and signs of drug and alcohol use).</p>
<p>Due to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10488-012-0430-z">stigma issues</a>, people might not be comfortable or willing to share their own mental health issues with others, including police.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-reporting-on-mental-illness-violence-and-crime-needs-to-change-144856">Media reporting on mental illness, violence and crime needs to change</a>
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<h2>What could this data be used for?</h2>
<p>Rather than stigmatise people with mental health issues, our research can potentially dispel myths about domestic violence and mental health, and raise awareness about certain groups’ vulnerability.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946720301240">our research</a> has identified vulnerable groups at risk of being victims of domestic violence, including people with autism spectrum disorders, carers, and people in specific settings (such as nursing homes). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Elderly woman's hands on a walking frame" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381232/original/file-20210128-19-1i63h9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">We showed people with dementia in nursing homes are another vulnerable group when it comes to domestic violence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/elderly-hands-on-walker-637534318">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946720301240">We showed</a> the perpetrators of domestic violence against people with autism spectrum disorders were more likely to be their family or carers. And the most common conditions in perpetrators were developmental conditions and intellectual disability; for non-autistic perpetrators, schizophrenia and substance abuse were most common. </p>
<p>From a public health perspective, this rich information also gives us extra insights not captured in data sources such as emergency department presentations, which cover only the more severe cases of domestic violence that result in significant physical injury.</p>
<p>And our data could also help police handle domestic violence events where mental health is an issue.</p>
<p>We are currently using artificial intelligence methods on the data from text mining and other sources to predict future domestic violence events by individuals with particular profiles.</p>
<h2>There are concerns</h2>
<p>This study raises the issue of how we use “<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-big-data-13780">big data</a>” and how we share information between the police and mental health services.</p>
<p>We argue the potential benefits outweigh the potential harms, especially as analyses like ours can potentially increase community safety, lead to better outcomes for people with mental illnesses, and inform interactions with police.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-big-data-13780">Explainer: what is big data?</a>
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<p>We suggest the public should be consulted about their views on “big data” issues, including any privacy concerns, rather than decisions being made solely by government officials and academics. This is important given the “big data” tsunami that has engulfed us, representing a significant public asset.</p>
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<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone
you know, call the <a href="https://www.1800respect.org.au/">National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service</a> (1800RESPECT) on 1800 737 732 or <a href="https://www.lifeline.org.au/">Lifeline</a> on 13 11 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153649/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Karystianis received funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the NHMRC Centres of Research Excellence. He currently receives funding from the NHMRC Medical Research Future Fund. The NSW Police Force provided access to the records mentioned in this article and advised on police procedure.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Butler receives funding from NHMRC. The NSW Police Force provided access to the records mentioned in this article and advised on police procedure.</span></em></p>We discovered many more mental health issues were recorded for both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence than we thought. Now it’s time to use our findings to improve public safety.Dr George Karystianis, Research fellow, UNSW SydneyTony Butler, Professor and Program Head, Justice Health Research Program, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1494202020-11-05T20:31:15Z2020-11-05T20:31:15ZPolice and politics have been dangerously intertwined during the 2020 U.S. presidential election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367813/original/file-20201105-15-1h6v5lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3589%2C2387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police speak to a group of Trump supporters who were campaigning near a polling station on Nov. 3, 2020, in Honolulu. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Marco Garcia)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>American police have been inserted into the 2020 presidential elections in ways arguably unseen since the 1960s. Three days before Nov. 3 elections, a group of Black voters marching to a voting location in Graham, N.C., was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/us/north-carolina-police-pepper-spray-polls/index.html">pepper sprayed by police</a>. The police deemed the march “unsafe and unlawful,” while civil rights organizations referred to police intervention as “voter intimidation.”</p>
<p>Chantal Stevens, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, noted that there should be “a way to close the book on voter suppression and police violence if we are to start a new chapter in our story that recognizes the importance of protecting everyone’s right to vote.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A CBS news report on North Carolina police using pepper spray during a voting rally.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I have always told my introductory criminology students that to know where power lies in a society they need to ask three related questions: Who are the police officers? Who are the majority of those brought before the courts for criminal activities? Who are those in prison? </p>
<h2>Police and politics</h2>
<p>The police constitute both a critical infrastructure and symbol of political power. Around the world, police and politics are intertwined in deeper ways than may seem evident. British criminologist Robert Reiner’s 1985 book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-the-police-9780198769255"><em>The Politics of the Police</em></a>, engages with the seemingly inevitable tendency of the police to get embroiled in controversies and political contestations. </p>
<p>British sociologist Jock Young points out that through managing social behaviours, the police are <a href="https://sk.sagepub.com/books/the-exclusive-society">important markers of who belongs inside civil society</a>.</p>
<p>Police and politics are “<a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/64107/">terrible twins</a>” — policing is highly sensitive to the political climate, and the process for appointing police chiefs is not necessarily apolitical. The effects are felt in the number of sworn officers, number and types of policing tools and technologies and arguably, conduct of officers. </p>
<h2>Trump, Biden and police division(s)</h2>
<p>Prior to the 2020 election, United States President Donald Trump was generally reluctant to criticize the police for excessive use of force. In 2017, Trump gave police advice for when making arrests: “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/28/16059536/trump-cops-speech-gang-violence-long-island">Please, don’t be too nice</a>.” His infamous response to mass protests across the U.S. after the death of George Floyd was “<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/05/trumps-response-to-george-floyd-turmoil-abject-failure-presidential-leadership">when the looting starts, the shooting starts</a>.” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">In May, President Trump explains his tweet on looting and shooting.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Such comments earned Trump tremendous support among police unions. For example, the Police Benevolent Association, the largest police union in New York, endorsed Trump in August and thereby “<a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/decision-2020/nypd-says-unions-trump-presidential-endorsement-wont-affect-enforcement/2679463/">broke with a longstanding tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates</a>.”</p>
<p>Public demonstrations over police violence in the U.S. became a watershed moment for defining who was considered a friend of the police. Any critique, however objective and balanced, seemed unwelcome. Joe Biden advocated for police reforms and took a knee while mourning with families of victims of police violence. These appeared to have alienated him from police organizations. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Joe Biden takes a knee in front of five performers in costume" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367762/original/file-20201105-16-n8q3rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden takes a knee as he poses for photos with performers at East Las Vegas Community Center on Oct. 9, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)</span></span>
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<p>Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, responded that “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/04/police-groups-joe-biden-300222">for Joe Biden, police are shaking their heads because he used to be a stand-up guy who backed law enforcement</a>.” </p>
<p>Trump, on the other hand, became the beneficiary of politicized policing. </p>
<h2>Condoning police violence</h2>
<p>Political policing was evident in the buildup to and during voting in the 2020 election. While on board an armoured tank deployed to control non-violent people protesting against police brutality, a police officer thanked an armed militia, stating: “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kenosha-police-thanked-armed-militia-and-gave-water-2020-8">We appreciate you guys, we really do</a>.” </p>
<p>On Aug. 25, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse opened fire on a Black Lives Matter protest, and is facing charges in the fatal shooting of two people and injuring of a third. Rittenhouse considered himself a militia member and was “<a href="https://www.insider.com/kyle-rittenhouse-who-shot-kenosha-protesters-was-obsessed-with-cops-2020-8">obsessed with blue lives matter</a>,” a counter movement in support of police. </p>
<p>Trump, recognizing that Rittenhouse was one of his supporters, refused to condemn his action, saying that Rittenhouse “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/politics/trump-supporters-violence/index.html">probably would have been killed</a>.”</p>
<p>The Rittenhouse episode demonstrates a mutually intelligible correspondence between Trump and the police regarding whose violence could be condoned.</p>
<h2>Police affiliations</h2>
<p>Trump’s silence in the face of police violence was rewarded with loyalty and support in the 2020 election. </p>
<p>During the elections, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/miami-officer-facing-discipline-after-wearing-trump-mask-while-uniform-n1244039">a Miami police officer wore a “Trump 2020” face mask at a polling booth</a>. His action was considered “voter intimidation” and questioned the impartiality of police officers regarding the outcome of the elections.</p>
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<p>Michael McHale, the president of the National Association of Police Organizations that represents about 1,000 police unions, put the police union’s perspective succinctly at the Republican Party’s national convention in August: “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-26/republican-convention-california-trump-police-leader-endorsement">Your choices are the most pro-law-enforcement president we have ever had or the most radical anti-police ticket in our history</a>.” </p>
<p>Speaking out against police violence cost Biden the support of a union that supported Barack Obama and Biden in 2008 and 2012. Following Hillary Clinton’s electoral upset, investigative journalist Michelle McPhee described the police as “<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/11/09/the-hidden-trump-voter-police/71MUxHoqBzNCKZZcpH42nO/story.html">the hidden Trump voter</a>.”</p>
<h2>Consequences of politicized policing</h2>
<p>Police unions and departments have historically played a role on issues <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000486589002300402">relating to law and order, welfare of officers and associated policy</a>. Citizens employed by police departments and unions also have the inalienable right to vote. These two roles need to be separated from brazen partisanship to influence electoral outcomes. </p>
<p>These issues have consequences for the police and the idea of democracy. Politicized policing intimidates voters from certain demographics. It emboldens <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/armed-men-once-patrolled-polls-will-they-reappear-november/">regular citizens to take on policing duties at polls and serve as self-appointed vote watchers</a>. It erodes police legitimacy, as they become viewed as a mere tool in the hands of a political candidate or party.</p>
<p>The inability of people to vote due to fear of violence or intimidation by police such as the pepper spraying of marchers going to the polls may make the difference in highly competitive electoral contests. Voter suppression produces undemocratic outcomes. Disenfranchisement of segments of the population is one probable consequence, as people may fear for their lives given the history of sectarian violence in the U.S.</p>
<p>The erosion of democracy is often a painstakingly slow process with a definite end. One state governor in Nigeria criticized the police for direct interference in an election, accusing them of <a href="https://punchng.com/ekiti-election-thugs-snatching-ballot-boxes-under-police-watch-fayose/">supervising ballot snatching and providing cover for those reported to be engaged in illegal sharing of money on election day</a>. </p>
<p>The conduct of U.S. police is not yet at that level. However, whoever wins the 2020 presidential election must enact measures to control police politicization.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Temitope Oriola’s research team (with Charles T. Adeyanju, University of Prince Edward Island and Nicole Neverson, Ryerson University) received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for their work on use of force by police.</span></em></p>Police organizations in the United States have become political players in the election. This is due to politicians’ responses to the Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality movements.Temitope Oriola, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.