Producing evidence that can be used in court is a central goal of criminal investigations. Forensic science focuses with considerable success on the production of pieces of evidence from specific sources. However, less is known about how a team of investigating police officers progressively produces a body of evidence during the course of a criminal investigation. This literature review uses Weickian sensemaking to analyse what is known about this process in criminal investigations into organised crime. Focusing on the criminal investigation team, collective sensemaking is used as a lens through which to place the reasoning processes used in constructing evidence in a social context. In addition to describing three constituent parts of collective sensemaking relevant for criminal investigations, six factors are identified that influence the quality of collective sensemaking. Building on these results, nine focal points are presented for analysing the sensemaking processes in a criminal investigation team, aimed at advancing knowledge about the production of evidence in criminal investigations of organised crime. Furthermore, a definition of evidence is developed that is suitable for studying sensemaking in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation.
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In the present study, how crime scene investigators are informed before going to a crime scene was investigated. In order to gain more insight in the flow of information from emergency call to crime scene, semi-structured interviews were conducted in three different police regions with six crime scene investigators, six forensic team leaders, and six crime scene investigators.Results indicate that information that crime scene investigators receive before going to a crime scene is usually limited. Most information is provided on-site by the uniformed police officers, forensic medical examiner, and tactical investigation team. This information flow is underexposed, and there are no guidelines about how it is recorded.Even though all parties are provided with limited information, incidents are quickly labelled by emergency call responders and forensic team leaders. The influence of the framing process that occurs as a result is underestimated. Furthermore, emergency call responders and forensic team leaders have different goals in the investigative process and hardly take into account the specific needs of the crime scene investigator. In order to better meet the needs of crime scene investigators, further research about the content of the provided information, as well as at what moment it should be shared, is needed. Also, in order to determine afterward what role information may have played in the decision-making at the crime scene the recording of information should be better safeguarded.
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Het project Cracking the Criminal Mind is een samenwerking tussen politie-experts en studenten. In een learning community wordt getracht om te anticiperen op nieuwe, frauduleuze verdienmethodes. Welke strategieën zouden criminelen – al dan niet gebruikmakend van nieuwe digitale afschermingsmethodes – kunnen bedenken om geld te verdienen en om uit zicht te blijven van politie en justitie? Het identificeren van innovatieve criminele verdienmethoden vindt plaats in een learning community waar politie-experts en studenten met verschillende soorten kennis en expertise samenkomen. Deelnemers aan de learning community denken ook na over strategieën om de geïdentificeerde verdienmethoden tijdig te herkennen en te verstoren.
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This article examines the network structure, criminal cooperation, and external interactions of cybercriminal networks. Its contribution is empirical and inductive. The core of this study involved carrying out 10 case analyses on closed cybercrime investigations – all with financial motivations on the part of the offenders - in the UK and beyond. Each analysis involved investigator interview and access to unpublished law enforcement files. The comparison of these cases resulted in a wide range of findings on these cybercriminal networks, including: a common division between the scam/attack components and the money components; the presence of offline/local elements; a broad, and sometimes blurred, spectrum of cybercriminal behaviour and organisation. An overarching theme across the cases that we observe is that cybercriminal business models are relatively stable.
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Forensic reports use various types of conclusions, such as a categorical (CAT) conclusion or a likelihood ratio (LR). In order to correctly assess the evidence, users of forensic reports need to understand the conclusion and its evidential strength. The aim of this paper is to study the interpretation of the evidential strength of forensic conclusions by criminal justice professionals. In an online questionnaire 269 professionals assessed 768 reports on fingerprint examination and answered questions that measured self-proclaimed and actual understanding of the reports and conclusions. The reports entailed CAT, verbal LR and numerical LR conclusions with low or high evidential strength and were assessed by crime scene investigators, police detectives, public prosecutors, criminal lawyers, and judges. The results show that about a quarter of all questions measuring actual understanding of the reports were answered incorrectly. The CAT conclusion was best understood for the weak conclusions, the three strong conclusions were all assessed similarly. The weak CAT conclusion correctly emphasizes the uncertainty of any conclusion type used. However, most participants underestimated the strength of this weak CAT conclusion compared to the other weak conclusion types. Looking at the self-proclaimed understanding of all professionals, they in general overestimated their actual understanding of all conclusion types.
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The past two decades, a disproportionate growth of females entering the criminal justice system and forensic mental health services has been observed worldwide. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the background of women who are convicted for violent offenses. What is their criminal history, what are their motives for offending and in which way do they differ from men convicted for violent offenses? In this study, criminal histories and the offenses for which they were admitted to forensic care were analyzed of 218 women and 218 men who have been treated between 1984 and 2014 with a mandatory treatment order in one of four Dutch forensic psychiatric settings admitting both men and women. It is concluded that there are important differences in violent offending between male and female patients. Most importantly, female violence was more often directed towards their close environment, like their children, and driven by relational frustration. Furthermore, female patients received lower punishments compared to male patients and were more often considered to be diminished accountable for their offenses due to a mental illness.
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ENGLISH: A vast and growing body of research has shown that crime tends to run in families. However, previous studies focused only on traditional crimes and research on familial risk factors for cyber offending is very scarce. To address this gap in the literature, the present study examines the criminal behavior of the family members of a sample of cyber offenders prosecuted in the Netherlands. The sample consists of 979 cyber offenders prosecuted for computer trespassing between 2001 and 2018, and two matched groups of 979 traditional offenders and 979 non-offenders. Judicial information and kinship data from Dutch Statistics were used to measure criminal behavior among family members. Both traditional offenders and cyber offenders were found to be more likely to have criminal fathers, mothers, and siblings than non-offenders. Additional analyses, however, showed different patterns between cyber offenders who were only prosecuted for cyber offenses and those who also committed traditional crimes. While the former group of cyber offenders were similar to non-offenders in terms of family offending, the latter group of cyber offenders were more similar to traditional offenders. Overall, these results suggest that the traditional mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of crime can only partially explain cybercrime involvement. NEDERLANDS: Uit een groot en groeiend aantal onderzoeken blijkt dat criminaliteit vaak in families voorkomt. Eerdere studies richtten zich echter alleen op traditionele misdrijven en onderzoek naar familiaire risicofactoren voor cybercriminaliteit is zeer schaars. Om deze leemte in de literatuur op te vullen, onderzoekt deze studie het criminele gedrag van familieleden van een steekproef van cyberdelinquenten die in Nederland worden vervolgd. De steekproef bestaat uit 979 cyberdelinquenten die tussen 2001 en 2018 zijn vervolgd voor computervredebreuk, en twee gematchte groepen van 979 traditionele delinquenten en 979 niet-delinquenten. Justitiële informatie en verwantschapsgegevens van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek werden gebruikt om crimineel gedrag onder familieleden te meten. Zowel traditionele daders als cybercriminelen bleken vaker criminele vaders, moeders en broers en zussen te hebben dan niet-daders. Aanvullende analyses lieten echter verschillende patronen zien tussen cyberdelinquenten die alleen werden vervolgd voor cyberdelicten en degenen die ook traditionele delicten pleegden. Terwijl de eerste groep cyberdelinquenten vergelijkbaar was met niet-delinquenten wat betreft gezinsdelinquentie, leek de tweede groep cyberdelinquenten meer op traditionele delinquenten. In het algemeen suggereren deze resultaten dat de traditionele mechanismen van intergenerationele overdracht van criminaliteit de betrokkenheid bij cybercriminaliteit slechts gedeeltelijk kunnen verklaren.
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Technological innovations enable rapid DNA analysis implementation possibilities. Concordantly, rapid DNA devices are being used in practice. However, the effects of implementing rapid DNA technologies in the crime scene investigation procedure have only been evaluated to a limited extent. In this study a field experiment was set up comparing 47 real crime scene cases following a rapid DNA analysis procedure outside of the laboratory (decentral), with 50 cases following the regular DNA analysis procedure at the forensic laboratory. The impact on duration of the investigative process, and on the quality of the analyzed trace results (97 blood and 38 saliva traces) was measured. The results of the study show that the duration of the investigation process has been significantly reduced in cases where the decentral rapid DNA procedure was deployed, compared to cases where the regular procedure was used. Most of the delay in the regular process lies in the procedural steps during the police investigation, not in the DNA analysis, which highlights the importance of an effective work process and having sufficient capacity available. This study also shows that rapid DNA techniques are less sensitive than regular DNA analysis equipment. The device used in this study was only to a limited extent suitable for the analysis of saliva traces secured at the crime scene and can mainly be used for the analysis of visible blood traces with an expected high DNA quantity of a single donor.
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Aims and objectives. The Forensic Early Warning Signs of Aggression Inventory (FESAI) was developed to assist nurses and patients in identifying early warning signs and constructing individual early detection plans (EDP) for the prevention of aggressive incidents. The aims of this research were as follows: First, to study the prevalence of early warning signs of aggression, measured with the FESAI, in a sample of forensic patients, and second, to explore whether there are any types of warning signs typical of diagnostic subgroups or offender subgroups. Background. Reconstructing patients’ changes in behaviour prior to aggressive incidents may contribute to identify early warning signs specific to the individual patient. The EDP comprises an early intervention strategy suggested by the patient and approved by the nurses. Implementation of EDP may enhance efficient risk assessment and management. Design. An explorative design was used to review existing records and to monitor frequencies of early warning signs. Methods. Early detection plans of 171 patients from two forensic hospital wards were examined. Frequency distributions were estimated by recording the early warning signs on the FESAI. Rank order correlation analyses were conducted to compare diagnostic subgroups and offender subgroups concerning types and frequencies of warning signs. Results. The FESAI categories with the highest frequency rank were the following: (1) anger, (2) social withdrawal, (3) superficial contact and (4) non-aggressive antisocial behaviour. There were no significant differences between subgroups of patients concerning the ranks of the four categories of early warning signs. Conclusion. The results suggest that the FESAI covers very well the wide variety of occurred warning signs reported in the EDPs. No group profiles of warning signs were found to be specific to diagnosis or offence type. Relevance to clinical practice. Applying the FESAI to develop individual EDPs appears to be a promising approach to enhance risk assessment and management.
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De wijkagent wordt nogal eens gezien als het visitekaartje van de politie naar de burger. De wijkagent beweegt zich tussen de burgers, tussen een groot aantal partners in de wijk en heeft intern te maken met verschillende afdelingen als de recherche en de surveillancedienst. Met al deze partijen wil hij verbinding maken én behouden. In dit onderzoek wordt de wijkagent in het Haagse stadsdeel Laak gevolgd in zijn dagelijkse werkpraktijk. De wijkagent probeert de verbindende factor te zijn als het gaat om veiligheid in de wijk. Iets wat niet altijd lukt. De wijkagent kán ook niet alle burgers bereiken. Veel andere maatschappelijke organisaties leunen op de politie, omdat zij niet met 24 uursdiensten werken en minder doorzettingsmacht hebben. Dit leidt tot grote ergernis van de wijkagent. Intern is de recherche een belangrijke partner, maar door de verschillende culturen en andere agenda's is deze samenwerking niet zo sterk als die zou kunnen zijn. 'Verbinden' als doelstelling bij het werk van de wijkagent is gemakkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. Bij de Nationale Politie is er voor de wijkagent een belangrijke rol weggelegd. Het vergt nog de nodige aandachtom deze ambitie waar te maken. ABSTRACT The community police officer is often seen as the 'business card' of the police to citizens. The community police officer operates amongst citizens, between a large number of local partners and deals within the police organisation with many different departments such as criminal investigation and surveillance. The goal is to create and maintain bonds with al different stakeholders. In this research, community police officers in the district 'Laak' in The Hague are followed during their daily routine. The community police officer tries to act as the bonding figure in relation to safety in the local community. A goal that is not always achieved. It is not possible for community police officers to reach all citizens. Many other community organisations lean on the police as they do not work in 24-hour shifts and have less vigour. This leads to much frustration amongst community police officers. Within the organisation the department of criminal investigation is an important partner but due to cultural differences and diverging agendas, co-operation is not as strong as it could be. 'Bonding' as the goal of community police officers is easier said than done. The community police officer has an important role within the National Police. It will take more attention to fulfil this ambition.
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