The police’s use of facial recognition technologies allows them to verify identification in real-time by mapping facial features into indicators that can be compared with other data stored in its database or in online social networks. Advances in facial recognition technologies have changed law enforcement agencies’ operations, improving their ability to identify suspects, investigate crimes, and deter criminal behavior. Most applications are used in tracking and identifying potential terrorists, searching for abducted and missing persons, and security surveillance at airports, (...) national borders, and large public gatherings. However, for facial recognition technologies to fulfill their potential, they must not only be adopted by the police, but the public must also support their routine use. Using a secondary data analysis of a public opinion survey conducted by the Pew Research Center among a representative sample of US residents (N = 5307), we investigated the factors associated with the public`s expectations about the positive and negative outcomes of the police’s adoption of facial recognition technologies. Our results show that public attitudes to FRT are balanced, indicating awareness of the public for potential advantages, but also disadvantages of police adoption of FRT. Privacy considerations and familiarity with the technology were found to be critical for the explanation of public attitudes expressing both positive and negative expectations from the police adoption of facial recognition technology. Our study contributes to the understanding of the factors associated with public attitudes police’s use of facial recognition technologies. (shrink)

Quality-of-life policing, responsive to the concerns of urban communities, presents a profound paradox. On the one hand, the collateral effects of drug use, especially in public and in racially fragmented, low-income communities, result in levels of crime and fear of crime that renders the communities almost uninhabitable; on the other, the collateral effects of policing drug crime, for these same communities, destroy the community's human fabric. A "new" generation of legal scholars have embraced and transformed the Broken Windows model of (...) policing urban communities. These theorists share a "social norms"perspective: they suggest that law's direct threat of imposing sanctions is not the sole means of constraining conduct. A variety of other devices, including non-legal, "social" norms, may supplement the law's coercive power. The social norms "take" on the Broken Windows argument is that public low-level crime undermines the social structures of local communities. Inner city blight sends a distinct message: that community members reject or ignore norms supporting law-abiding behavior in favor of norms supporting law-breaking. Accordingly, social norms theorists advocate empowering police and local communities through a variety of traditional and newly minted public order offenses (such as anti-loitering statutes and youth curfews) as means of attacking high crime in urban and predominantly minority neighborhoods. In this article, I take up the challenge of public order policing. My claim is that the sort of preventative policing social norms theorists advocate can and should be separated from reactive "investigative" policing directed at apprehending criminals. Separating preventative and investigative policing means that the police, as currently constituted, are the wrong people to engage in preventative policing. Instead, the appropriate people include municipal officials with no power to engage in investigation but who have the authority to enforce norms of public order. My proposal is to radically restructure the manner in which we think about the legitimacy of various policing practices and the type of authority the police wield. Our current focus on constitutional remedies for low-level police abuses has failed to ameliorate the justified resentment expressed by individuals and local communities subject to heightened amounts of increasingly invasive policing.The attempt to limit police authority through prospective constitutional (and other) norms that control their ability to search, seize, and interrogate suspects is properly confined to the police's investigative role. Limits do not work to constrain their ability to police public order and engage in crime prevention. Yet even at the investigative stage, the Court has already replaced the rule-based due-process model of authority with a series of role-based exceptions to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments' constitutional requirements. Both role- and rule-based concepts of authority concern the proper scope of legitimate authority. Rule-based authority has its basis in adherence to the content of particular rules; role-based authority is based in the powers afforded individuals in particular roles of public authority. Whereas rule-based authority derives its legitimacy primarily from the government's right to promulgate norms, role-based authority gains legitimacy from the degree to which the official's role is matched to the circumstances triggering authority. (shrink)

In the digital age, the use of advanced technology is becoming a new paradigm in police work, criminal justice, and the penal system. Algorithms promise to predict delinquent behaviour, identify potentially dangerous persons, and support crime investigation. Algorithm-based applications are often deployed in this context, laying the groundwork for a ‘smart criminal justice’. In this qualitative study based on 32 interviews with criminal justice and police officials, we explore the reasons why and extent to which such a (...) smart criminal justice system has already been established in Switzerland, and the benefits perceived by users. Drawing upon this research, we address the spread, application, technical background, institutional implementation, and psychological aspects of the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system. We find that the Swiss criminal justice system is already significantly shaped by algorithms, a change motivated by political expectations and demands for efficiency. Until now, algorithms have only been used at a low level of automation and technical complexity and the levels of benefit perceived vary. This study also identifies the need for critical evaluation and research-based optimization of the implementation of advanced technology. Societal implications, as well as the legal foundations of the use of algorithms, are often insufficiently taken into account. By discussing the main challenges to and issues with algorithm use in this field, this work lays the foundation for further research and debate regarding how to guarantee that ‘smart’ criminal justice is actually carried out smartly. (shrink)

This essay begins with a current case involving racial profiling and DNA testing. The two combine to raise some troubling issues involving the use of each in police investigation. It is argued that racial profiling is unethical and ought to be avoided and that DNA testing on general populations of innocent people is fraught with dangers.

_Investigative Ethics: Ethics for Police Detectives and Criminal Investigators_ presents applied philosophical analyses of the ethical issues that arise for police detectives and other investigators in contemporary society. Explores ethical issues relating to investigative independence, rights of victims and suspects, use of informants, entrapment, privacy and surveillance, undercover operations, deception, and suspect interviewing Represents the first monograph providing a detailed consideration of ethical issues in police investigations Features authorship by an applied philosopher specializing in police ethics, (...) and a former UK senior police officer Combined authorship ensures the text is anchored in actual police practice as well as providing high quality ethical analysis. (shrink)

Establishing common ground in police investigative interviews is essential in preventing misperceptions and miscommunications, to enable a witness’s best evidence to be collected. However eliciting a consistent account of an allegation from individuals with an Intellectual Disability (ID) is dependent on the skill of the interviewing police officer and the communicative competence of a witness with ID. Acknowledging the specialist nature of this process, the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act in England and Wales allows trained intermediaries to (...) facilitate communication between vulnerable individuals in legal settings such as forensic interviews. Intermediaries i.e., communication specialists, often recruit legally permitted low technology communication aids such as line drawings to facilitate interviews. Typically, common ground is established through shared attention and talk but this article uses multimodality Conversation Analysis to analyse the manner in which common ground in intermediary-mediated police interviews is established in other ways, i.e., firstly, through recruiting and using low technology communication aids in real interviews, and secondly through the embodied physical actions associated with manipulating those aids. Line drawings are examined here, enabling the answers given by witnesses with an ID to be semantically aligned with the questions being asked by the interviewing officers, by establishing common ground. Aids are shown to bypass documented difficulties with attention and staying on topic that individuals with ID typically experience, thus enabling them to verbally provide investigation-relevant evidence. (shrink)

Ethical analysis of armed drones has to date focused heavily on their use in foreign wars or counterterrorism operations, but it is important also to consider the potential use of armed drones in domestic law enforcement. Governments around the world are already making drones available to police for purposes including border control, criminal investigation, rescue missions, traffic management, and the monitoring of public assemblies. Unarmed and controlled remotely, these camera-equipped aircraft provide a powerful and mobile surveillance capacity that (...) can be highly effective in detecting suspicious activity and guiding police operations. In addition, for situations where criminal violence presents a danger to public safety, some governments appear to be readying their police to neutralize threats using drones that are also equipped with weapons. In anticipation of that potential development, this article discusses whether or how police should use armed drones. It applies some of the established ethical principles on police use of force (necessity, proportionality, and precaution), and it explores some of the challenges a drone-using, “tele-present” police officer is likely to face in seeking to adhere to those principles. (shrink)

The paper sets out the challenges facing the Police in respect of the detection and prevention of the volume crime of burglary. A discussion of data mining and decision support technologies that have the potential to address these issues is undertaken and illustrated with reference the authors’ work with three Police Services. The focus is upon the use of “soft” forensic evidence which refers to modus operandi and the temporal and geographical features of the crime, rather than “hard” (...) evidence such as DNA or fingerprint evidence. Three objectives underpin this paper. First, given the continuing expansion of forensic computing and its role in the emergent discipline of Crime Science, it is timely to present a review of existing methodologies and research. Second, it is important to extract some practical lessons concerning the application of computer science within this forensic domain. Finally, from the lessons to date, a set of conclusions will be advanced, including the need for multidisciplinary input to guide further developments in the design of such systems. The objectives are achieved by first considering the task performed by the intended systems users. The discussion proceeds by identifying the portions of these tasks for which automation would be both beneficial and feasible. The knowledge discovery from databases process is then described, starting with an examination of the data that police collect and the reasons for storing it. The discussion progresses to the development of crime matching and predictive knowledge which are operationalised in decision support software. The paper concludes by arguing that computer science technologies which can support criminal investigations are wide ranging and include geographical information systems displays, clustering and link analysis algorithms and the more complex use of data mining technology for profiling crimes or offenders and matching and predicting crimes. We also argue that knowledge from disciplines such as forensic psychology, criminology and statistics are essential to the efficient design of operationally valid systems. (shrink)

During spring 2009 a Swedish senior paediatric intensivist and associate professor was detained and later prosecuted for mercy-killing a child with severe brain damage. The intensivist was accused of having used high doses of thiopental after having withdrawn life-sustaining treatment when the child was imminently dying. After more than 2.5 years of investigation the physician was acquitted by the Stockholm City Court. The court additionally stated that the physician had provided good end-of-life care. Since the trial it has become (...) evident that the accusation was based on a problematic medicolegal report. Nevertheless, the event has had severe negative consequences for the physician personally and professionally, and probably also, in general, for patients in the final stage of life. This case illustrates, together with other cases, that there is a lack of correspondence between ethical soft law/healthcare law and the Penal Code. To optimise medical practice we suggest that the criminal law be carefully examined and if possible changed. Furthermore, we suggest a peer-review system for assessing medicolegal reports in cases of suspected homicide. (shrink)

In this paper my concern is with the collective moral responsibility of criminal investigators for the outcomes of their investigations, bearing in mind that it is important to distinguish collective moral responsibility from, and relate it to, individual moral responsibility. In what sense, if any, are police detectives individually and collectively morally responsible for their success (or, for that matter, their failure) in gathering sufficient evidence to identify, arrest, and charge an offender who has committed a serious crime? Alternatively, (...) in what sense are they morally responsible in cases where they identify, arrest, and charge an innocent person? And in what sense, if any, are police detectives individually and collectively morally responsible for the ultimate outcome of the trial, the finding by the courts of someone they have investigated and charged with a serious crime to be guilty or innocent? (shrink)

This book provides an overview of computer techniques and tools — especially from artificial intelligence (AI) — for handling legal evidence, police intelligence, crime analysis or detection, and forensic testing, with a sustained discussion of methods for the modelling of reasoning and forming an opinion about the evidence, methods for the modelling of argumentation, and computational approaches to dealing with legal, or any, narratives. By the 2000s, the modelling of reasoning on legal evidence has emerged as a significant area (...) within the well-established field of AI & Law. An overview such as this one has never been attempted before. It offers a panoramic view of topics, techniques and tools. It is more than a survey, as topic after topic, the reader can get a closer view of approaches and techniques. One aim is to introduce practitioners of AI to the modelling legal evidence. Another aim is to introduce legal professionals, as well as the more technically oriented among law enforcement professionals, or researchers in police science, to information technology resources from which their own respective field stands to benefit. Computer scientists must not blunder into design choices resulting in tools objectionable for legal professionals, so it is important to be aware of ongoing controversies. A survey is provided of argumentation tools or methods for reasoning about the evidence. Another class of tools considered here is intended to assist in organisational aspects of managing of the evidence. Moreover, tools appropriate for crime detection, intelligence, and investigation include tools based on link analysis and data mining. Concepts and techniques are introduced, along with case studies. So are areas in the forensic sciences. Special chapters are devoted to VIRTOPSY (a procedure for legal medicine) and FLINTS (a tool for the police). This is both an introductory book (possibly a textbook), and a reference for specialists from various quarters. (shrink)

Over 30 million people worldwide have taken a commercial at-home DNA test, because they were interested in their genetic ancestry, disease predisposition or inherited traits. Yet, these consumer DNA data are also increasingly used for a very different purpose: to identify suspects in criminal investigations. By matching a suspect’s DNA with DNA from a suspect’s distant relatives who have taken a commercial at-home DNA test, law enforcement can zero in on a perpetrator. Such forensic use of consumer DNA data has (...) been performed in over 200 criminal investigations. However, this practice of so-called investigative genetic genealogy raises ethical concerns. In this paper, we aim to broaden the bioethical analysis on IGG by showing the limitations of an individual-based model. We discuss two concerns central in the debate: privacy and informed consent. However, we argue that IGG raises pressing ethical concerns that extend beyond these individual-focused issues. The very nature of the genetic information entails that relatives may also be affected by the individual customer’s choices. In this respect, we explore to what extent the ethical approach in the biomedical genetic context on consent and consequences for relatives can be helpful for the debate on IGG. We argue that an individual-based model has significant limitations in an IGG context. The ethical debate is further complicated by the international, transgenerational and commercial nature of IGG. We conclude that IGG should not only be approached as an individual but also—and perhaps primarily—as a collective issue. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

There is a concern according to which analyzing crime scene DNA to determine biogeographic origin and skin color of suspects can lead to discrimination against minority populations. This article summarizes and explains some of those parts of the investigation process that can give rise to discrimination. The second part of the paper offers an analysis of the notion of discrimination and presents different accounts of the exact ground of its moral wrongness. As it will emerge, these different accounts lead (...) to different assessments of the use of DNA phenotype analyses in police investigations. -/- ----- Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Befürchtung, dass eine Erweiterung der DNA-Analyse von Tatortspuren für Zwecke der Polizeiarbeit zu Diskriminierungen führen wird. Diese Erwartung bezieht sich insbesondere auf die Ermittlung der sogenannten biogeografischen Abstammung und der Hautschattierung. In dieser Untersuchung werden einige Stellen im Ermittlungsprozess, an denen auf Grundlage solcher Analysen Diskriminierungspotential auftreten könnte, zunächst gesammelt und dargelegt. Im zweiten Teil wird dann der Diskriminierungsbegriff genauer beleuchtet. Dabei wird sich zeigen, dass verschiedene Positionen zu der Frage, was genau eine Diskriminierung moralisch problematisch macht, zu unterschiedlichen Einschätzungen der DNA-Phänotypisierung in der Polizeiarbeit führen. (shrink)

Advances in forensic techniques have expanded the temporal horizon of criminal investigations, facilitating investigation of historic crimes that would previously have been considered unsolvable. Public enthusiasm for pursuing historic crimes is exemplified by recent high-profile trials of celebrities accused of historic sexual offences. These circumstances give new urgency to the question of how we should decide which historic offences to investigate. A satisfactory answer must take into account the ways in which the passage of time can erode the benefits (...) of criminal investigation, the costs associated with investigating old crimes, and the need to prioritize investigations in the face of limited police resources. This article emphasizes the first of these factors. It begins by considering the moral goals of a criminal justice system and the contribution of criminal investigations to the achievement of these goals, distinguishing between contributions that depend on further steps in the criminal justice process, such as prosecution and punishment, and contributions that can have value independently of these further steps. Using this important distinction, the article then examines a range of factors that relate the passage of time to criminal justice goals, including the seriousness of the crime; deterioration of evidence; death of the offender, victim and others affected by the crime; and diminished psychological connectedness between those affected by the crime and their current selves. While the range and non-uniformity of relevant factors preclude a simple answer to the question of when historic crimes should be investigated and call instead for case-by-case assessment, we find that the analysis does support some general conclusions that can guide such an assessment. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a debate, centrally between James Turner Johnson and James F. Childress, on how to understand the just war tradition. The international arena has historically served as the context for demonstrating the normative and political utility of the just war tradition. Contemporary experience shows, however, that violence is not only a distant issue, but it is also a local, domestic problem. Investigation into contemporary police practice, a lacuna in Christian ethics, with regard to (...) the justifiable use of force can help clarify which understanding of the just war tradition is preferable. (shrink)

Non-recent child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation have received recent attention. Victims often do not report their ordeal at the time the incident occurred, and it is increas...

This article explores the trend of increasing automation in law enforcement and criminal justice settings through three use cases: predictive policing, machine evidence and recidivism algorithms. The focus lies on artificial-intelligence-driven tools and technologies employed, whether at pre-investigation stages or within criminal proceedings, in order to decode human behaviour and facilitate decision-making as to whom to investigate, arrest, prosecute, and eventually punish. In this context, this article first underlines the existence of a persistent dilemma between the goal of increasing (...) the operational efficiency of police and judicial authorities and that of safeguarding fundamental rights of the affected individuals. Subsequently, it shifts the focus onto key principles of criminal procedure and the presumption of innocence in particular. Using Article 6 ECHR and the Directive (EU) 2016/343 as a starting point, it discusses challenges relating to the protective scope of presumption of innocence, the burden of proof rule and the _in dubio pro reo_ principle as core elements of it. Given the transformations law enforcement and criminal proceedings go through in the era of algorithms, big data and artificial intelligence, this article advocates the adoption of specific procedural safeguards that will uphold rule of law requirements, and particularly transparency, fairness and explainability. In doing so, it also takes into account EU legislative initiatives, including the reform of the EU data protection _acquis_, the E-evidence Proposal, and the Proposal for an EU AI Act. Additionally, it argues in favour of revisiting the protective scope of key fundamental rights, considering, _inter alia_, the new dimensions suspicion has acquired. (shrink)

Although DNA profiling has been an important forensic research technique since the late 1980s, for a long time, it had not captured much attention from either academics or the public so far.In recent years, this neglect seems to have ended. Not only has wide-spread media coverage of events such as 9/11 and the 2004 tsunami brought about widespread knowledge of the usefulness of forensic DNA identification, the development of large databases containing DNA profiles of both suspected and convicted criminals has (...) in the last few years also triggered a discussion on the intrusiveness of these measures into a number of civil rights.Indeed, although the increasing use of DNA based techniques in the criminal justice system promises to offer some great benefits for a society that is permeated with risk-aversion, at the same time it also gives rise to some worrying ethical and social consequences.In this article, we confine ourselves to an analysis of the practice of DNA sample retention by government agencies that use these samples to derive digital storable DNA profiles. While this practice seems unnecessary for the purpose of criminal investigation, it carries some severe risks for genetic privacy rights which have hardly been explored so far. (shrink)

I argue that a compelling way to articulate what is wrong with racial profiling in policing is to view racial profiling as a violation of the presumption of innocence. I discuss the communicative nature of the presumption of innocence as an expression of social trust and a protection against the social condemnation of being undeservingly investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for committing a crime. I argue that, given its communicative dimension, failures to extend the presumption of innocence are an expression of (...) disrespect. I take the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy as an example of racial profiling and argue that its use of race-based forms of suspicion as reasons for making stops is a violation of the presumption of innocence. I maintain that this systemic failure to extend the presumption of innocence to profiled groups reveals the essentially disrespectful nature of the NYPD policy. (shrink)

Legal inference is fundamental for building and verifying hypotheses in police investigations. In this study, we build a Natural Language Inference dataset in Korean for the legal domain, focusing on criminal court verdicts. We developed an adversarial hypothesis collection tool that can challenge the annotators and give us a deep understanding of the data, and a hypothesis network construction tool with visualized graphs to show a use case scenario of the developed model. The data is augmented using a combination (...) of Easy Data Augmentation approaches and round-trip translation, as crowd-sourcing might not be an option for datasets with sensible data. We extensively discuss challenges we have encountered, such as the annotator’s limited domain knowledge, issues in the data augmentation process, problems with handling long contexts and suggest possible solutions to the issues. Our work shows that creating legal inference datasets with limited resources is feasible and proposes further research in this area. (shrink)

This paper critically investigates a possible tension between beliefs about the usefulness of police and prisons and awareness of the harms some communities face at the hands of criminal justice systems. If a person feels well-served by police and prison systems but becomes aware of the ways they are endangering some communities, they may feel they have a responsibility to work to transform or dismantle criminal justice systems, potentially sacrificing the safety they have gained from them. This paper (...) considers more closely the understanding of safety underlying such a perceived ‘responsibility to sacrifice’. It clarifies an understanding of safety motivating both current systems of policing and incarceration and the idea of a responsibility to sacrifice: namely, the idea that safety is an exchangeable good, that is, that one person’s safety could be guaranteed by compromising another’s. It considers an available alternative understanding of safety as a shared good. The paper concludes by arguing that individuals do not have a ‘responsibility to sacrifice’ but instead have responsibilities to (a) understand that feelings of/beliefs about safety are deeply racialized, (b) cultivate habits and practices that build capacity for responding to harm, danger, and our perceptions of harm and danger; and (c) transform the realities of structural racism that protect white people and endanger others. (shrink)

The number of police departments carrying Narcan keeps increasing at a fast pace throughout the U.S., as it is considered an effective measure to fight the opioid epidemic. However, there have been strong oppositions to the idea of the police Narcan use. Still, in 2018, the nation is debating about it. Though not clearly visible to the public, there are important ethical arguments against the police Narcan use which necessarily involve understanding of the ethical roles and responsibilities (...) of police as the law enforcement agency and apprehension of the moral status of a non-therapeutic opioid use. The authors of the paper investigate, primarily, the existing ethical controversies surrounding the police Narcan use while touching upon the issue of the decriminalizing drug policy in the U.S. The authors conclude that the police can carry and administer Narcan without self-contradiction and that the policymakers’ investigation on the drug decriminalization policy should begin with the understanding of the “common morality” of the American public, the ethical view shared and practiced by the greatest number of people. (shrink)

The paper defends an interactive theory of the distinctiveness of criminal law. It argues that criminal law’s distinctive behavior can be connected to the interaction between five traits: it is an institutional practice administered by a large and special bureaucracy, playing a substantial role in authorizing the use of coercive police force, leading to a harsh sanctioning regime linked, at least in part, with core wrongs and notions of personal responsibility. Although none of these features is exclusive to criminal (...) law, their interaction leads to modes of behavior that set it apart from other institutions. The paper argues that putting attention on the effects of this interaction provides us with powerful tools to both understand and asses the value and problems of criminal law. (shrink)

The familiar irony of ‘real existing socialism’ is that it never was. Socialist ideals were used to legitimize regimes that fell far short of realizing those ideals – indeed, that violently repressed anyone who tried to realize them. This paper suggests that the derogatory concept of ‘the criminal’ may be allowing liberal ideals to operate in contemporary political philosophy and real politics in a worryingly similar manner. By depoliticizing deep dissent from the prevailing order of property, this concept can obscure (...) what I call the legitimation gap. This is the gulf between (a) liberal accounts of state legitimacy, and (b) the actual functioning of liberal states. Feminists have long pointed out that the exclusion of what is deemed ‘personal’ from political consideration is itself a political move. I propose that the construction of the criminal as a category opposed to the political works similarly to perpetuate unjust forms of social power. (shrink)

In China, the increasing traffic pressure has created traffic policing problems such as the heavy workloads of traffic police, as well as more conflicts between traffic police and road users. The treatment of traffic policing as a semiotic practice provides both a new perspective in and a helpful approach to dealing with these problems, yet few studies have investigated how semiotic resources are used in traffic policing interactions. This article examines the supportive role of semiotic resources in traffic (...) policing, and draws upon genre and exchanges involved as an illustration. The data include three audio recordings of traffic accident handling cases in Shanghai, China. Through qualitative analysis of the data from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this article identifies the genre stages in traffic accident handling and their logico-semantic relations, and situates the typical exchanges and moves used by traffic police in different stages. It also discusses the usefulness of semiotic resources for traffic policing and the implications of these resources in tackling the existing problems of traffic policing in China. (shrink)

Background: The guarantee of human rights in the healthcare of individuals with mental disorders is a global challenge. Health practices frequently fail to integrate relational ethical principles in the promotion of holistic and inclusive care. It is therefore crucial to investigate how healthcare professionals perceive and conduct their practices in this context. Objective: To understand, in the light of Relational Ethics, the perceptions and conduct of healthcare professionals regarding the guarantee of human rights and the recovery process of individuals with (...) mental disorders. Research Design: An exploratory study was conducted using ideas storming techniques and field notes for data recording, which were analyzed through Thematic Analysis and discussed in the light of the core elements of Relational Ethics. Participants and Research Context: The study involved 26 healthcare professionals (15 community health workers, 5 nurses, 3 nursing assistants, 2 doctors, and 1 pharmacy assistant) from a primary healthcare unit in a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, during the application of the module “Recovery and Right to Health” of the WHO QualityRights training. Ethical Considerations: The research project to which this study belongs was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the School of Nursing at Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo (report number 6.257.303). Findings: Three themes were identified: (1) Feeling worthless when facing the lack of structure of mental health services: appearance, accessibility, and privacy; (2) dealing with barriers to the recovery of individuals with psychosocial, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities; and (3) an ethical duty: to understand the roles of families and other supporters in promoting recovery. These themes primarily explored resource scarcity, social stigma, and emotional support. Conclusions: The study reinforces the need for practices that integrate ethical care, respect for autonomy, and dialogue, which are fundamental to ensuring human rights and facilitating the recovery process. (shrink)

Soon it may be possible to promote the rehabilitation of criminal offenders through _neurointerventions_ (interventions which exert direct physical, chemical or biological effects on the brain). Some jurisdictions already utilise neurointerventions to diminish the risk of sexual or drug-related reoffending. And investigation is underway into several other neurointerventions that might also have rehabilitative applications within criminal justice—for example, pharmacotherapy to reduce aggression or impulsivity. Ethical debate on the use of neurointerventions to facilitate rehabilitation—henceforth ‘neurorehabilitation’—has proceeded on two assumptions: that (...) we have instrumental reasons for employing neurorehabilitation (e.g. because it helps protect the public from crime); and that its permissibility depends upon whether its use unjustifiably infringes offenders’ rights. This paper defends a different, hitherto neglected thought. I argue we have rights-based reasons to offer neurorehabilitation to offenders—in other words, that offenders have a _moral right_ to neurorehabilitation. I identify three considerations which support a moral right to conventional rehabilitative interventions—(1) as a countermeasure to the debilitating side-effects of punishment; (2) as a derivative right of the right to hope for renewed liberty; and (3) as compensation for structural injustice. I argue these considerations extend to support a moral right to neurorehabilitation in the following instance: when neurorehabilitation would be part of the _most effective_ package for facilitating rehabilitation, and can be carried out at reasonable cost. I then defend my argument against potential objections, including the objection that neurorehabilitation is a bad option for offenders to have and the charge of over-medicalisation. (shrink)

Over the past decades, the psychological science has accumulated a large corpus of empirical knowledge about police interviews, deception detection, and suspects’ confessions. However, it is unclear whether European police forces’ practices and beliefs are consistent with recommendations derived from this empirical literature. The study described in this report is part of a larger research project examining European police investigators’ practices and beliefs. An online survey was administered to Guardia Civil (n = 89) and Policía Nacional investigators (...) (n = 126). The survey inquired about the length, frequency and electronic recording of interviews, the suspects’ use of their right to remain silent, investigators’ self-reported skills in distinguishing between truthful and deceptive statements, their estimates of the frequency of (false) confessions, and their use of specific interview tactics. The outcomes provide insights into investigators’ knowledge and practices, highlight specific needs, and allow for a comparison between European and North American police forces. (shrink)

The rapid implementation and continuing expansion of forensic DNA databases around the world has been supported by claims about their effectiveness in criminal investigations and challenged by assertions of the resulting intrusiveness into individual privacy. These two competing perspectives provide the basis for ongoing considerations about the categories of persons who should be subject to non-consensual DNA sampling and profile retention as well as the uses to which such profiles should be put. This paper uses the example of the current (...) arrangements for forensic DNA databasing in England and Wales to discuss the ways in which the legislative and operational basis for police DNA databasing is reliant upon continuous deliberations over these and other matters by a range of key stakeholders. We also assess the effects of the recent innovative use of DNA databasing for “familial searching” in this jurisdiction in order to show how agreed understandings about the appropriate uses of DNA can become unsettled and reformulated even where their investigative effectiveness is uncontested. We conclude by making some observations about the future of what is recognized to be the largest forensic DNA database in the world. (shrink)

The mystery does not always end when the crime has been solved. Indeed, the most insolvable problems of crime and punishment are not so much who committed the crime, but how to see that justice is done. Now, in this illuminating volume, one of America's great legal thinkers, Norval Morris, addresses some of the most perplexing and controversial questions of justice in a highly singular fashion--by examining them in fictional form, in what he calls "parables of the law." The protagonist (...) of these stories, the figure who must see that justice is done, is Eric Blair, a name familiar to most readers: it's the real name of George Orwell. In fact, Morris has set his tales in the time and place of Orwell's famous essay, "Shooting an Elephant," in Moulmein, Burma, in the 1920s. What might seem a curious strategy at first glance--borrowing Orwell's persona to narrate these tales--is actually a brilliant stroke. For in Eric Blair we have an ideal narrator to highlight the complexities of justice: an untrained police lieutenant and junior magistrate, uncertain of judgement--and all the more likely to anguish over judgement, and to examine every facet of a case before deciding. And in 1920s Moulmein we have a neutral time and space in which to consider--free of our own political, religious, or social prejudices--a set of contemporary legal and moral questions that rarely find so calm an arena. And these stories certainly address some highly charged issues--capital punishment, insanity as a murder defense, the "battered wife syndrome" as a murder defense, child custody, "parental neglect" due to religious conviction--to name a few. In each tale, Norval Morris excels at placing Blair at the center of a controversy that has no easy answer, and that he and he alone must decide. In the title story, for instance, a retarded boy, whose only understanding of sex comes from the brothel in which he works, accidentally murders a young girl while raping her, his only defense being "Please sir, I paid her." Blair can see that the boy doesn't realize that he has committed a crime, but both the Burmese and the European community of Moulmein demand the boy's execution. Does capital punishment make sense in such an instance? Does it ever make sense? To broaden our understanding of these intricate cases, Morris concludes each story with a perceptive and often provocative commentary on each issue. After "Brothel Boy," for instance, Morris points out that no reputable study has ever shown capital punishment to be an effective deterrent to future murders, and more surprisingly, that paroled murderers commit proportionately fewer homicides than paroled felons who used a firearm in the commission of their crime. Norval Morris is one of America's foremost experts on crime and punishment, and the stories collected here represent the culmination of a lifetime of thought on the major criminal law debates of our time. A reader of these tales will come away with a deeper understanding of these debates and with a profound respect for the intricacies of justice and the complexity of the law. (shrink)

Traditional notions of crime control often position the police against an individual, known or not yet known, who is responsible for the commission of a crime. However, with increasingly sophisticated technology, policing increasingly prioritizes the prevention of crime, making it necessary to ascertain who, or what class of persons, may be the next likely criminal before a crime can be committed, termed predictive policing. This causes a shift from individualized suspicion toward predictive profiling that may sway the expectations of (...) a police patrol. Classically, where a patrol officer forms reasonable suspicion prior to a stop, it is based upon his/her analysis of the situation taken as a whole in context. However, where a predictive profile is employed, information available to the officer accordingly adjusts his/her perception of context and affects the application of the reasonable suspicion standard. This article addresses the way in which new approaches to forming reasonable suspicion affect the due process protection of individuals’ fundamental rights. It argues that while an officer still operates with good faith discretion, using predictive profiling causes reasonable suspicion to be based on an augmented understanding of reality and as a result, due process guarantees are weakened. The rights to non-discrimination and the presumption of innocence are assessed and argued as illustrative of this weakening and shift in policing standards. The article ultimately argues that while predictive policing cannot be categorically labeled as inconsistent with criminal justice, changes as seemingly moderate as the manner in which discretion operates have larger effects on individuals’ rights. (shrink)

A classic debate concerns whether reasonableness should be understood statistically (e.g., reasonableness is what is common) or prescriptively (e.g., reasonableness is what is good). This Article elaborates and defends a third possibility. Reasonableness is a partly statistical and partly prescriptive “hybrid,” reflecting both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Experiments reveal that people apply reasonableness as a hybrid concept, and the Article argues that a hybrid account offers the best general theory of reasonableness. -/- First, the Article investigates how (...) ordinary people judge what is reasonable. Reasonableness sits at the core of countless legal standards, yet little work has investigated how ordinary people (i.e., potential jurors) actually make reasonableness judgments. Experiments reveal that judgments of reasonableness are systematically intermediate between judgments of the relevant average and ideal across numerous legal domains. For example, participants’ mean judgment of the legally reasonable number of weeks’ delay before a criminal trial (ten weeks) falls between the judged average (seventeen weeks) and ideal (seven weeks). So too for the reasonable num- ber of days to accept a contract offer, the reasonable rate of attorneys’ fees, the reasonable loan interest rate, and the reasonable annual number of loud events on a football field in a residential neighborhood. Judgment of reasonableness is better predicted by both statistical and prescriptive factors than by either factor alone. -/- This Article uses this experimental discovery to develop a normative view of reasonableness. It elaborates an account of reasonableness as a hybrid standard, arguing that this view offers the best general theory of reasonableness, one that applies correctly across multiple legal domains. Moreover, this hybrid feature is the historical essence of legal reasonableness: the original use of the “reasonable person” and the “man on the Clapham omnibus” aimed to reflect both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Empirically, reasonableness is a hybrid judgment. And normatively, reasonableness should be applied as a hybrid standard. (shrink)

Personal, creative writing as a process for reflection on patient care and socialization into medicine (“reflective writing”) has important potential uses in educating medical students and residents. Based on the authors’ experiences with a range of writing activities in academic medical settings, this article sets forth a conceptual model for considering the processes and effects of such writing. The first phase (writing) is individual and solitary, consisting of personal reflection and creation. Here, introspection and imagination guide learners from loss of (...) certainty to reclaiming a personal voice; identifying the patient’s voice; acknowledging simultaneously valid yet often conflicting perspectives; and recognizing and responding to the range of emotions triggered in patient care. The next phase (small-group reading and discussion) is public and communal, where sharing one’s writing results in acknowledging vulnerability, risk-taking, and self-disclosure. Listening to others’ writing becomes an exercise in mindfulness and presence, including witnessing suffering and confusion experienced by others. Specific pedagogical goals in three arenas-professional development, patient care and practitioner well-being – are linked to the writing/reading/listening process. The intent of presenting this model is to help frame future intellectual inquiry and investigation into this innovative pedagogical modality. (shrink)

Investigating Animal Abuse Crime Scenes: A Field Guide is designed for first responders-such as animal control officers and police officers-as well as forensic scientists and other criminal justice professionals who are who are tasked with processing and analyzing animal crime scenes and evidence. The book serves equally as a useful resource for those in the field and laboratory, in addition to those professionals who are further along in the investigative and judicial process.

In a very general sense, hybrid can be understood to be any organism that is the product of two (or more) organisms where each parent belongs to a different kind. For example; the offspring from two or more parent organisms, each belonging to a separate species (or genera), is called a “hybrid”. “Hybridity” refers to the phenomenal character of being a hybrid. And “hybridization ” refers to both natural and artificial processes of generating hybrids. These processes include (...) mechanisms of selective cross-breeding and cross-fertilization of parents of different species for the purpose of producing hybrid offspring. In addition to these processes, “hybridization ” also refers to natural and artificial processes of whole genome duplication that result in the doubling or trebling of the sets of chromosomes of the organism. This entry provides an overview of the impact of hybridity on agriculture. It begins with an historical sketch that traces the early horticulturalists’ and naturalists’ investigations of hybrids. This starts with the observations of Thomas Fairchild and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; and leads to the explanation of its mechanism by Gregor Mendel, James Watson and Francis Crick, and Ernst Mayr; and the eventual manipulation of hybrids and hybridization by Barbara McClintock. Following this, the reader is introduced to a number of key terms and concepts in use within current research as well as highlighting diverse ethical concerns that center on hybridization. Recent research that attempts to ascertain the role of hybridization in adaptive change will be introduced. This will include research on the evolution of crop species, increased biodiversity, and the use of hybrids to manipulate phenotypically desirable traits in agricultural crops. The focus of the discussion is on a particularly significant type of naturally occurring hybridization, polyploidy hybridization. Polyploids are organisms which have more than two complete genomes in each cell. This kind of hybridization is ubiquitous among crop plants. The role of polyploidy in plant evolution and the affects of polyploidy on plants and animals will be reviewed. A critical discussion of its agricultural value in the production of fertile polyploid hybrids highlights key epistemological, ontological, and ethical issues. These are illuminated with reference to the distinct processes of artificial and natural hybridization. A survey of these different kinds of hybridization includes the ethical and economic impacts of hybridity on global nutrition, the environment, and considerations of some practical implications for the agricultural industry. Tracking the role of hybrids, the process of hybridization, and the current impacts of it for agriculture requires knowledge of the history of its early conceptualization, understanding, and use. This is the topic of the following section. (shrink)

Decision-makers in institutional and non-institutional contexts are sometimes confronted with the issue of whether to use generalisations expressing the statistical incidence of a negative trait in a disadvantaged and discriminated-against social group in order to draw an inference concerning a member of that group. If a criminal court were confronted with such a question, what answer should it give? First, the article argues that, our qualms notwithstanding, morality does not demand that these generalisations be disregarded. In doing so, the article (...) addresses the relationship between factual accuracy and the demands of morality in criminal trials. Second, the article considers the implications of this conclusion for the legal question as to whether the evidence at issue should be excluded, in particular, on grounds of unfairness — pursuant to section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. (shrink)

In the article “Fifty Years of U.S. Mass Incarceration and What It Means for Bioethics,” Sean Valles provides an important reminder of the consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and identifies potential roles for bioethicists in addressing this system. My limited view—that of a physician who conducts court‐ordered investigations and monitoring of health services behind bars—is that the ongoing failure of most academic and professional organizations to be more effective in this much‐ignored area stems from the lack of (...) leaders and staff who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. As conditions behind bars worsen, and a new war on drugs recoils the spring of mass incarceration, there is a pressing need to train, recruit, and promote people who know the realities of the criminal (and immigration) justice system and its impact on health and well‐being. This step can bring a more powerful engagement of bioethics regarding housing, employment, and health care and policing, as well as the numerous and harmful elements of jails, prisons, and detention settings. I provide examples of partners I learn from in this arena, as well as some discrete and technical areas for possible investigation. (shrink)

The act of “embezzlement” provided for in Article 183 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania gives rise to a number of both theoretical and practical problems. First of all, various authors do not agree whether embezzlement constitutes a substantive or formal element. In the author’s opinion, embezzlement is deemed complete when possession of the property of others is taken illegally and there is a real possibility, perceived by the perpetrator, to manage it, to use it or to (...) dispose of it or misappropriation is made of a property right, giving the perpetrator a possibility to receive other persons’ property or property benefit immediately or in the future, to treat the property of others as one’s own. That is, when a real possibility, perceived by the perpetrator, to treat the property of others as one’s own arises but not when the damage is caused. In this case, particular importance is adduced to the condition that the perpetrator must clearly perceive his/her possibility to treat the property of others as one’s own. In case such a possibility has not been perceived by the perpetrator, we cannot state that embezzlement is complete. The moment of completeness and the fact that in practice there may be cases where no real damage is caused to a legal entity when the perpetrator embezzles property of the former (see the example in footnote 15), show that the criminal act provided for in Article 183 of the Criminal Code contains a formal element. When evaluating practical problems, the article overviews two rulings of the Supreme Court of Lithuania that are of particular importance for the formation of the case-law. Before the ruling of the Supreme Court of Lithuania of 8 May 2012, this court used to formulate somewhat erroneous case-law in examining cases concerning accusations raised on the basis of Article 183 of the Criminal Code. In cases where the head (shareholder) of a company was accused of embezzlement and used all the “cashed” funds of the company only for the interests and benefit of the company, the court used to evaluate the factual circumstances of the case not as indicative of the fault of the defendant, but only as indicative of the purpose of his/her act. Even if it was determined that the perpetrator did not perceive the real possibility to treat the company’s property as his/her own and always used to regard the property which came to his/her disposal as the company’s property, the court used to qualify the perpetrator’s act as embezzlement, by reasoning that the purpose of the perpetrator’s act was not a circumstance relevant for such qualification. It can be stated that in such a manner the court failed to distinguish between the concept of purpose and the concept of fault, failed to evaluate the features of the subjective part individually, and assessed them in their entirety. Due to such a mistake, the court created an impression that the concepts of fault and purpose in the case were confused. By its ruling of 8 May 2012 the Supreme Court of Lithuania corrected those mistakes, however, its instruction to investigate whether “cashed” funds were not used “for personal needs” and whether the company suffered damage introduced a confusion into the investigation of cases of this type and their examination in court, as the concept of “personal needs” was not absolutely clear, whereas the fact of suffering damage was not necessary in order to qualify an act under Article 183 of the Criminal Code. In the author’s opinion, the Supreme Court of Lithuania should pronounce clearly that the cases where the head (shareholder) of the company has not perceived the real possibility to treat the other person’s property as his/her own will not be regarded as property embezzlement and there will be no deliberation in the person’s act. The absence of such perception would be confirmed by the fact that the perpetrator has used absolutely all “cashed” money of the legal entity only for the interest and benefit of the company. (shrink)

Black mothers often are responsible for teaching their children how to respond to police violence. Through 30 in-depth interviews with black mothers from diverse social class backgrounds, I investigate how they address the gendered racial vulnerability of their children in the “police talk,” a socialization practice designed to prepare children for police encounters. I identify mothers’ primary discourse as “the making it home” framework, which encapsulates in parent–child socialization their use of double consciousness around the police. (...) This framework marginalizes girls’ experiences in three ways: it conceptualizes boys as the primary targets of police, while constructing girls as collateral targets of police violence; it emphasizes masculine forms of violence; and it is directed almost exclusively at boys. An intersectional analysis is applied to redress the limitations of the police talk and to highlight the need for structural reforms to recognize and combat police violence against black women and girls. (shrink)

People v. Strauss-Kahn is an ideal lens through which to examine the operation of a criminal justice system that privileges the presumption of guilt, or, to use the words of the US Supreme Court in the 2012 decisions Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, has become “a system of pleas, not a system of trials.” It is both an excellent example of a transparent and objective invocation of the criminal sanction, and a sharp counterpoint to the vast majority of (...) cases where law enforcement conclusions are privileged and rarely second-guessed. As analyses of wrongful convictions have sadly but inevitably demonstrated, the screening methods of police and prosecutors are fallible. Moreover, the prevalence of “tunnel vision” once the decision to charge has been made means that few cases experience the kind of post-indictment investigation and reevaluation seen in the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Stage by stage, the Strauss-Kahn case illustrates how to counterbalance the presumption of guilt and give expression to the presumption of innocence in the pretrial period through vigilantly-invoked and enforced due process protections. Drawing from this examination, the paper will then explore how to approach this model process in the more standard cases, which typically see a fraction of the judicial, law enforcement, and defense resources afforded Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Strauss-Kahn prosecution offers several insights, three of which will be sketched at the paper’s conclusion: a requirement that prosecutorial decision-making be subject to a reasonable doubt standard; vigilant and early enforcement of the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose information that is favorable to the accused; and finally, a requirement that a prosecutor explain in writing any decision to dismiss the felony charges in indicted felony cases, so that the factual, legal and policy bases of these decisions (numbering almost one quarter of New York’s superior court felony cases annually) can be analyzed and publicized. (shrink)

The exchange of forensic DNA data is seen as an increasingly important tool in criminal investigations into organised crime, control strategies and counter-terrorism measures. On the basis of a set of interviews with police professionals involved in the transnational exchange of DNA data between EU countries, this paper examines how forensic DNA evidence is given meaning within the various different ways of constructing a police epistemic culture, it is, a set of shared values concerning valid knowledge and practices (...) normatively considered adequate and legitimate. The police epistemic culture is fuelled by multiple dynamics of boundary work, revealing how police professionals involved in international cooperation (i) define their specific core activities and competencies; (ii) construct particular understandings of valid knowledge and how it should be produced; (iii) enact the police epistemic culture in contrast to the epistemic cultures of the judicial authorities and forensic scientists. (shrink)

Recent years have seen mounting challenge to the model of the criminal trial on the grounds it is not cost-effective, not preventive, not necessary, not appropriate, or not effective. These challenges have led to changes in the scope of the criminal law, in criminal procedure, and in the nature and use of criminal trials. These changes include greater use of diversion, of fixed penalties, of summary trials, of hybrid civil–criminal processes, of strict liability, of incentives to plead guilty, and (...) of preventive orders. The paper will assess the implications of these changes for the function of the criminal law, assessing the reasons behind them, and examining whether or not they are to be welcomed. Identifying the larger import of these changes draws attention to the changing relationship between state and citizen as well as changes in the nature of the state itself. These can in turn be attributed to a jostling among the different manifestations of the authoritarian state, the preventive state, and the regulatory state. These changes have profound normative implications for a liberal theory of the criminal law that require its re-articulation and its defence. A modest start may be to insist that where the conduct is criminal and the consequences are punitive the protections of criminal procedure and trial must be upheld. (shrink)

Lying is the deliberate act of conveying false information to deceive others using language. Examining the linguistic and content features of this act has been a point of interest for forensic linguists due to its potential significance in examining various legal contexts such as criminal investigations, accusations, eyewitness testimonies, allegations, and police interrogations. This article aimed to examine the content features of lying in Jordanian Colloquial Arabic and their social constraints. The study draws on the Reality Monitoring (RM) approach, (...) a forensic tool that has proven its effectiveness in lying detection. To achieve this aim, a corpus of 288 narratives, 144 lying and 144 truthful, was collected through face-to-face interviews with 48 speakers stratified by gender, age, and educational attainment. The findings of this study did not conform to the RM criteria. The study revealed that truthful accounts contain more cognitive details while lying accounts contain more spatial, temporal, affective, and perceptual details. (shrink)

In 2008 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act amendments made deliberately choosing to bring disability into the world, using assisted reproduction, a criminal offence. This paper considers whether the legal prohibition above, should influence other policy areas concerning the welfare of future children such as new possibilities presented by foetal surgery and in utero gene therapy. If we have legal duties to avoid disability in one context should this influence our avoidance of disability in this other context? This paper investigates (...) whether the State might have a stake in wider promotion of practices to reduce the degree of disability in foetuses that will come to exist. Not selecting for disability does not affect the welfare of any future individual, whereas treating in utero abnormalities can optimize the eventual child’s welfare; antenatal interventions stand to improve clinical outcomes and welfare should that specific child be born. I explore why the State may want to intervene in the antenatal setting and to what extent, if at all; the State should implement these technologies. I argue that if the State is justified in intervening to outlaw the choosing to create disabled lives using assisted reproductive techniques, it is also justified in putting pressure on prospective parents to accept therapies in utero to help their child be born less disabled. However, I qualify this with the argument that the State is not justified in using force or the criminal law in this situation during pregnancy. (shrink)

Since its origins in the mid-1980s, DNA profiling has become the most powerful tool for identification in contemporary society. Practitioners have deployed it to determine parentage, verify claims to identity in various civil contexts, identify bodies in wars and mass disasters, and infer the identity of individuals who have left biological traces at crime scenes. Thus DNA profiling can be used to implicate or exonerate individuals from participation in particular social relations and activities; this affords it a growing importance in (...) major social institutions such as the family, the criminal justice system, immigration services, and health services. There are key state, security, civil liberty, personal, and commercial considerations surrounding the reliability and social implications of DNA profiling in establishing the identities of “family members,” “claimants,” “customers,” “suspects,” and “citizens.”Given that DNA profiling is increasingly influential in forensic inquiries, the recently-developed practice in the UK of “familial searching” of DNA databases has the potential to become a significant aspect of investigations. (shrink)

Recent events have highlighted large-scale systemic racial disparities in U.S. criminal justice based on race and other demographic characteristics. Although criminological datasets are used to study and document the extent of such disparities, they often lack key information, including arrestees’ racial identification. As AI technologies are increasingly used by criminal justice agencies to make predictions about outcomes in bail, policing, and other decision-making, a growing literature suggests that the current implementation of these systems may perpetuate racial inequalities. In this paper, (...) we argue that AI technologies should be investigated to understand how they recognize racial categories and whether they can be harnessed to fill missing race data. By bridging this gap, we can work towards better understanding racial inequalities in a wide range of contexts, most notably criminal justice. Using a multidisciplinary perspective, we rethink the design and methodology used in facial processing technology (FPT) based on supervised deep learning model (DLM) image classification. By modifying standard FPT pipelines to tackle multiple sources of DLM bias, we propose an experimental methodology based on ethical AI principles to generate binary (Black and White) racial categories using mugshots. We go beyond simply reporting DLM accuracies and address fundamental issues such as generalizability and interpretability by using a “self-auditing” approach. First, we evaluate the inference performances of 42 fine-tuned DLMs using unseen test images from the same dataset but subject to varying data augmentations. Next, to interpret and validate our methodological approach, we apply gradient-based saliency maps to assess the consistency of facial region relevance and attribution. Finally, drawing upon insights from three areas (computer science, sociology, and law), we investigate the efficacy of our DLM-based method as a tool for detecting racial inequalities in criminal justice. (shrink)

On 27 March 2014, Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old Navajo woman was shot and killed by Austin Shipley, a white male police officer, also 27 years old, who said he was trying to apprehend her for a suspected shoplifting. Shipley was never charged, and the Department of Justice declined to investigate the Winslow police on the matter. This article explores Shipley’s killing of Loreal Tsingine and the police investigation of the shooting as quotidian events in settler colonial (...) states. Police shootings of Indigenous people and the legal response to police use of force (along with everyday settler violence) are a part of the racial terror that is a central part of settler colonialism. Both the shooting and the official narratives of it as a justifiable use of force reveal the psychic and material underpinnings of a settler state, a state that continually imagines and consolidates itself as a community of whites imperiled by Indians among others. White settler violence directed at those imagined as threats lives just beneath the surface of everyday settler life, and importantly, flows through institutions such as policing, embedding itself in everyday professional routines. The extractive relations that are the basis of settler colonialism require and produce white subjects for whom Indigenous lands and bodies are the resource for white identity; policing is one site where white men and women (as well as those aspiring to whiteness), can enact racial hierarchy on behalf of the colonial state with impunity. (shrink)

This paper conceptualizes the administrative punishment of police misconduct as a republican retributivist endeavor. Blameworthiness for police misconduct stems from its collective and civic harms to liberty — as conceived of as equal protection, rather than non-interference. Police have a special obligation to uphold liberty. Failing to uphold these conditions of liberty is what makes misconduct blameworthy. Police misconduct, insofar as it represents the arbitrary domination of some people over others, threatens republican freedom. I trace this (...) conception of police misconduct across various categories of police misconduct, including criminal and non-criminal violations and violations that do and do not use police powers. While administrative punishment for police misconduct may be justified by its consequences, there also exists a retributive element to this punishment. Republicanism explains why officers are blameworthy for police misconduct, and retributivism explains why they ought to be punished for that blameworthiness. I conclude with an argument for why this republican retributivist paradigm is more coherent than traditional consequentialist or retributivist ones. (shrink)

Contemporary research in social science often turns to the problem of the hybridization of politics: analyzing the “gray zone” between authoritarianism and democracy; defining the role of new media, and understanding informal practices in restoring peace in post-conflict societies. The contribution of the present article is based on an investigation of the concept of risk hybridization to explore the reflection on risk in the public sphere for the state, social movements, and citizens. The sociology of U. Beck with the (...) theory of reflexive modernization — as well as the concept of cosmopolitics — are used to explore different effects of risk hybridization models (diffusion, dominance, breakdown of hierarchy and causation) for the public sphere and politics. The author used materials on the COVID-19 epidemic — practices of the Russian state and the change of mass consciousness — to analyze interrelations between the process of risk hybridization and decrease in the coherence of state institutions and the transformation of political alienation in Russian society. The relationship between risk hybridization models and the formation of collective cognitive maps is considered through the practice of framing social movements and protest campaigns. Said nexus is illustrated by the Russian cases of social movements and specific public claims of mass protests actions in 2019-2020. The state governance perspective is used as an framework for a discussion of the effects of risk hybridization on limitations of deliberative and authoritarian models for managing of risk, as well as its perception by social groups. In the conclusion, the author highlights the high cost of maintaining the consistency of reflection on risk in the model of managing (authoritarian) knowledge. Moreover, the author discusses the rising complexity of social reality and the spread of digital media that multiplies reflection on risk. (shrink)