news 2024

Can virtual actors strengthen the trust of people with a migration background in the police? A research team from the University of Würzburg has investigated this. The results surprised even those responsible. Intelligent virtual agents can help to strengthen the trust of people with a migration background in institutions such as the police.

Police encounters do deter young offenders. The more often the police detect them, the more risk-aware they become, and the more likely they are to abstain from criminal activities. However, this is not equally true for all'adolescents, but particularly for young people with low morals. These are the results of a recently published study led by Florian Kaiser, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg im Breisgau, which will play an important role in shaping police work.

Researchers find large language models make inconsistent decisions about whether to call the police when analyzing surveillance videos. A new study from researchers at MIT and Penn State University reveals that if large language models were to be used in home surveillance, they could recommend calling the police even when surveillance videos show no criminal activity.

Why do civilians take the law into their own hands? Using Mexico as an example, ETH researcher Enzo Nussio shows how it's a combination of a weak state and strong local communities. In late March 2024, an eight-year-old girl went missing in Taxco, a small Mexican town two-and-a-half hours' drive south of Mexico City.

The University of Glasgow has contributed to research that finds only 40% of people in England trust their police force. The study, commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council (ERSC), spotlights London's Metropolitan Police as the area where women trust the least - and Conservative voters have higher levels of trust in the force.

New research substantiates the mind-bending astrophysics behind the famous sci-fi novel turned Netflix saga, The Three-Body Problem, and solves an interstellar murder mystery billions of years in the making. It's the coldest of cold cases. An interstellar murder mystery that originated so long ago and so far away that the crime scene lurks beyond the reaches of forensic science.

Researchers at the University of Bern have investigated the process of decomposition on pig carcasses left in nature. The researchers discovered that the previous standard method for assessing decomposition in Switzerland needs to be adapted - with an impact on forensic analysis. The method presented by the researchers aims to better determine the post-mortem interval.

Bath researchers have helped produce a safer, more sustainable fingerprint detection spray that could be used on multiple types of surface. Published on Monday 26 February 2024 Last updated on Monday 26 February 2024 Scientists have developed a water soluble, non-toxic fluorescent spray that makes fingerprints visible in just a few seconds, making forensic investigations safer, easier and quicker.

People react differently to becoming a victim of crime when they live in disadvantaged neighborhoods: Their fear of crime increases more strongly compared to victims from privileged neighborhoods. This is the finding of a study involving over 3,000 participants from the German cities of Cologne and Essen, conducted by Florian Kaiser and Dietrich Oberwittler from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany.

Criminologists use Virtual Reality to assess the impact of street lighting and watching-eyes interventions In a virtual reality study, a team of researchers - including criminologists from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law - find environmental crime reduction interventions may not be effective or may even be counterproductive when it comes to reducing fear of crime.