Computers and the internet have become essential in areas such as professional life, interpersonal communication, finances, and leisure. Most scholars agree that the Internet has had a major impact upon criminality [1,2]. The increased use of computers and the fact that internet connects (almost) everybody to (almost) everybody else in the world has made crime considerably easier to perpetrate ...

Pollen analysis was applied to a mummified homicide victim in Nebraska, U.S.A., to determine the location of death. A control sample showed the normal ambient pollen in the garage crime scene. Ambient windborne types, common in the air of the region, dominated the control. Internal samples were analyzed from the sacrum, intestine, and diaphragm. Microfossils were recovered from the rehydrated i...

The study of narrative processes as part of the immediate factors that shape criminal action is limited by the lack of a methodology for differentiating the narrative themes that characterise specific crime events. The current study explores how the roles offenders see themselves as playing during an offence encapsulate their underlying crime narratives and thus provide the basis for a quantita...

Argumentation was studied in a courtroom context in which the prosecuting attorney’s summary is assumed to be an argument with “X is guilty” as the claim and the narrative, which contains the evidence of the case, providing support for the claim. In Experiment 1, quality of evidence, narrative coherence, and gender were studied. In Experiments 2A and 2B the role of uncertainty of narrative info...

Amnesia for the perpetration of violent offences is an important issue in medico-legal proceedings. Previous studies of amnesia have mainly relied on selected groups of unconvicted offenders, which raises the question of how reliable the findings are. The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence and phenomenological qualities of amnesia in violent offenders. In semi-structured interv...

The prevalence of computer and the internet has brought forth the increasing spate of cybercrime activities; hence the need for evidence to attribute a crime to a suspect. The research therefore, centres on evidence, the legal standards applied to digital evidence presented in court and the main sources of evidence in the Windows operating system, such as the Registry, slack space and the Windo...

The crime of virtual property theft has become a serious problem in virtual worlds in recent years. Players of these games are repeatedly falling victim to this crime, with little or no repercussion for the offender. Virtual property often has a substantial real world monetary value and the theft of such items impacts greatly on victims. The problem of virtual property theft is complex, involvi...

This study examines the news media coverage of the 1999 Columbine school shootings, as a component of a noted crime myth of the juvenile superpredator. Thematic content analysis was conducted on 683 articles selected from print and broadcast media, revealing four themes of coverage, including the identification and description of the victims, details of victims’ deaths, coverage of memorial ser...

The success of criminal acts can sometimes depend critically on the oversight or negligence of uninvolved bystanders (e.g., someone leaving a first-floor window open). Four studies examined how the contribution of a negligent bystander affects blame for the perpetrator of a crime. Although participants stated that discounting blame for the perpetrator was normatively inappropriate in this conte...

Abstract This article focuses on the situational-, victim- and area-level determinants of extortion compliance. Extortion, a quintessential organized crime, is one most common crimes in Mexico. However, compliance with demands relatively rare. Previous research suggests that depends perceived risk punishment for non-compliance. has been theoretical or experimental. The offers empirical evidence...