Frontline professionals such as social workers and civil servants play a crucial role in countering violent extremism.Because of their direct contac twith society,first liners are tasked with detecting individuals that may threaten national security and the democratic rule of law. Preliminary screening takes place during the pre-crime phase. However, without clear evidence or concrete indicators of unlawful action or physical violence, it is challenging to determine when someone poses a threat. There are no set patterns that can be used to identify cognitive radicalization processes that will result in violent extremism. Furthermore, prevention targets ideas and ideologies with no clear framework for assessing terrorism-risk. This article examines how civil servants responsible for public order, security and safety deal with their mandate to engage in early detection, and discusses the side effects that accompany this practice. Based on openinterviews with fifteen local security professionals in the Netherlands, we focus here on the risk assessments made by these professionals. To understand their performance, we used the following two research questions: First, what criteria do local security professionals use to determine whether or not someone forms a potential risk? Second, how do local security professionals substantiate their assessments of the radicalization processes that will develop into violent extremism? We conclude that such initial risk weightings rely strongly on ‘gut feelings’ or intuition. We conclude that this subjectivitymayleadto prejudiceand/oradministrativearbitrariness in relationtopreliminary risk assessment of particular youth.
In our highly digitalized society, cybercrime has become a common crime. However, because research into cybercriminals is in its infancy, our knowledge about cybercriminals is still limited. One of the main considerations is whether cybercriminals have higher intellectual capabilities than traditional criminals or even the general population. Although criminological studies clearly show that traditional criminals have lower intellectual capabilities, little is known about the relationship between cybercrime and intelligence. The current study adds to the literature by exploring the relationship between CITO-test scores and cybercrime in the Netherlands. The CITO final test is a standardized test for primary school students - usually taken at the age of 11 or 12 - and highly correlated with IQ-scores. Data from Statistics Netherlands were used to compare CITO-test scores of 143 apprehended cybercriminals with those of 143 apprehended traditional criminals and 143 non-criminals, matched on age, sex, and country of birth. Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses were used to compare CITO test scores between cybercriminals, traditional criminals, and non-criminals. Additionally, a discordant sibling design was used to control for unmeasured confounding by family factors. Findings reveal that cybercriminals have significantly higher CITO test scores compared to traditional criminals and significantly lower CITO test scores compared to non-criminals.
Crime scene investigations are highly complex environments that require the CSI to engage in complex decision-making. CSIs must rely on personal experience, context information, and scientific knowledge about the fundamental principles of forensic science to both find and correctly interpret ambiguous traces and accurately reconstruct a scene. Differences in CSI decision making can arise in multiple stages of a crime scene investigation. Given its crucial role in forensic investigation, CSI decision-making must be further studied to understand how differences may arise during the stages of a crime scene investigation. The following exploratory research project is a first step at comparing how crime scene investigations of violent robberies are conducted between 25 crime scene investigators from nine countries across the world.Through a mock crime scene and semi-structured interview, we observed that CSIs have adopted a variety of investigation approaches. The results show that CSIs have different working strategies and make different decisions when it comes to the construction of relevant hypotheses, their search strategy, and the collection of traces. These different decisions may, amongst other factors, be due to the use of prior information, a CSI’s knowledge and experience, and the perceived goal of their investigation. We suggest the development of more practical guidelines to aid CSIs through a hypothetico-deductive reasoning process, where (a) CSIs are supported in the correct use of contextual information, (b) outside knowledge and expertise are integrated into this process, and (c) CSIs are guided in the evaluation of the utility of their traces.
MULTIFILE
