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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.

Researchers show that it's hard for young men who have been in prison to give up crime The younger an offender is when released from prison, the greater the likelihood that he or she will return to prison, according to a recent study. The criminal justice system treats everyone equally from the age of 18, yet "age matters" in the process of social reintegration, show researchers from Laval University and the International Centre for Comparative Criminology.

The potential causes of racial and ethnic disparities in the use of Taser by police officers in England and Wales have been analysed by researchers from UCL, Keele University, the University of Exeter and Staffordshire University. The independent report , published today, suggests that a complex interplay of factors increases the likelihood of Taser being deployed against people from Black and other ethnic minority communities.

Today, 28 September 2023, TU Delft and the police have strengthened their partnership by signing a framework agreement. The police and TU Delft are already successfully working together in domains such as smarter detection, cyber security, robotics and forensic research. This step enables more and easier collaboration on innovation and new technologies.

People who have short-term mindsets (i.e., impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and low future orientation) are more likely to commit crime. In our research, we consider how adverse environments and experiences affect short-term mindsets. A research team at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law found that harsh and unpredictable environments, victimization, and first-time and early police contact are each associated with more short-term thinking.

A new study assessed off-duty police-perpetrated violence, finding it often affected officers- own social networks and Black men were the most frequent victims. Black men are the most common victims of killings committed by off-duty police officers in the U.S., according to a new Yale-led study. In an analysis of 242 incidences in which people were killed by police officers when they were off duty between 2013 and 2021, a research team found that nearly 40% of the victims were Black men.

First empirical validation of a new diagnostic framework for laboratory identification of super-recognizers and their value to law enforcement . Professor Meike Ramon and Dr. Maren Mayer, researchers at the University of Lausanne and the Leibniz Institute for Media Research, respectively, have published their findings in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

A pair of recently published papers suggest that an overreliance on a defendant's criminal history has inflated the number of people sitting behind bars while their cases grind through the courts. The disparity is especially prominent for Black defendants.

Participatory mapping project reveals that one in three citizens believe their appearance or identity contributed to their stop by the police The first research report from STOPMTL.ca , a participatory mapping project of police stop experiences, presents preliminary data contributed by citizens of Montreal.

Study led by Professor Patrick Lussier shows significant decline in recidivism of sex crimes in Canada over 80 years Encouraging news: between 1940 and 2019, the recidivism rate of sex offenders in this country has dropped by nearly 70%, according to a study published in the journal Criminology and Public Policy .

In recent years, additional financial resources haven allowed launching various local, regional and national projects to tackle and frustrate drug related organised crime. As a result, more awareness has arisen in the Netherlands about the seriousness of this problem and the need to tackle it together.

Parks in West Yorkshire should be better designed and managed so that women and girls feel safe throughout the day and after dark, according to a new study. A team of researchers at the University of Leeds interviewed more than a hundred women and girls from across the county and found that most of them believed their local parks were unsafe.

University of Queensland research suggests that graphic media coverage of domestic violence cases could contribute to 'copycat' behaviour. Dr Joseph Lelliot t Dr Rebecca Wallis from the UQ Law School interviewed domestic and family violence (DFV) support workers and found explicit reporting appears to be linked with a surge in cases of similar violence.

A new study from The Australian National University (ANU) shows how Twitter helped shape the Black Lives Matter movement. Lead researcher Professor Colin Klein said the immediacy of the social media platform allowed it to play a crucial role in spreading information and organising protests. It also become an important platform for right-wing reactions.