• Supreme Court deals near-fatal blow to Arizona SB 1070; states’ immigration efforts now in question

    In a major victory for the Obama administration, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday struck down three of the four main provisions in Arizona’s tough SB 1070 immigration law, saying these provisions were pre-empted by federal law; the Court left in place the fourth provision – the one requiring Arizona local law enforcement during routine stops to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally – but in reading the provision very narrowly, the Court left its implementation open to legal challenges on grounds that it violates racial profiling prohibition and other laws; in any event, the administration moved quickly to make that remaining provision meaningless by pulling back on a program known as 287(g), which allows the federal government to deputize local officials to make immigration-based arrests; the move means that even if local police step up immigration checks, they will have to rely on federal officials to make the arrests

  • Turf wars: math model shows crimes cluster on borders between rival gangs

    A mathematical model that has been used for more than eighty years to determine the hunting range of animals in the wild holds promise for mapping the territories of street gangs; among other things, the research demonstrates that the most dangerous place to be in a neighborhood packed with gangs is not deep within the territory of a specific gang, as one might suppose, but on the border between two rival gangs

  • Immigration growth in Spain has not caused more crime

    Society tends to perceive an increase in the immigrant population with an increase in crime; according to a new study, however, it is not possible to infer this cause-effect relationship in the case of Spain

  • Gun shop which sold gun to Virginia Tech killer closes its doors

    Madison, Wisconsin-based online weapon dealer TGSCO, which gained notoriety after it was disclosed that it had sold guns to three individuals – including the Virginia Tech killer — who then went on to commit mass killings, closed its doors last month

  • News: Man bites dog

    A 22-year old man name Keith Glaspie, running away from police officers in Wilmington, North Carolina was chased and caught by well-trained, 2-year old police dog named Maxx; when Maxx would not let go of the Glaspie’s pants, preventing him from moving, Glaspie tore into Maxx’s ear with his teeth, severing the dog’s ear in two

  • Belief in hell associated with reduced crime

    A broad study, study following143,197 people in sixty-seven countries over twenty-six years, found that criminal activity is higher in societies in which people’s religious beliefs contain a strong punitive component than in places where religious beliefs are more benevolent; a country where many more people believe in heaven than in hell is likely to have a much higher crime rate than one where these beliefs are about equal

  • Robbing banks doesn’t pay: econometrics study

    The average takings per person per successful bank raid are a modest £12,706.60, equivalent to less than six months’ average wage in the United Kingdom; in the United States the average raid yields considerably less – just $4,330 per person per successful raid; if a robber carries out multiple raids to boost his sub-average income, probability says that after four raids he will be inside for some time and unable to earn at all

  • Why the perception persists that undocumented immigrants cause more crime

    Undocumented immigrants in the United States do not commit more crimes than native-born Americans, yet the perception persists that they do; researchers found that the belief that undocumented immigrants cause crime was due in part to the perceived population size of the immigrant community overall: if individuals perceive undocumented immigrants to be a larger proportion in the population, they are going to perceive undocumented immigrants as posing a higher level of criminal threat

  • New eyewitness identification procedure flawed: psychologist

    University of California-Riverside psychologist finds that new eyewitness identification procedures may result in fewer correct IDs; the new procedures may, under some circumstances, lead to identification evidence that is less accurate than the identification evidence from the procedures they are designed to replace

  • K-9 units from across the U.S. helped secure NATO Summit in Chicago

    ATF K-9 teams from Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Texas helped secure the NATO Summit in Chicago this past weekend; on explosives-sniffing dog named Ithaca was also on duty; the dog is famous for his keen sense of smell that enables him to detect approximately 19,000 explosive odor combinations

  • U.K. faces problem of security service members with links to terrorism

    Abdul Rahman, a 33-year old Scotland Yard constable of Bangladeshi descent, had his security clearance revoked in 2006 — he chose to resign rather than be dismissed — following an MI5 investigation which concluded that, in 2001, he spent time in a terrorist training camp in Pakistan; he is one of three members of the U.K. security forces dismissed because of links to terrorism; this case made the headline because he is suing the service for compensation, and the secret legal proceedings are about to begin

  • FBI sting operations become more common

    The FBI is using more and more informants in sting operations aiming to spot, and thwart, terrorist attacks in the United States; this use of informants and undercover agent by the FBI is being questioned by defense attorneys and civil liberties advocates, who ask whether such operations are preventing crimes that could have resulted in scores of deaths, or creating a crime that would not have occurred without the FBI’s help

  • Report: Some terrorist plots hatched by FBI

    In recent years a number of terrorist attacks against the United States have been foiled by federal, state, and local authorities; a number of these plots may have been initiated by the FBI, and though they fall short of entrapment, they may well never have been developed without the FBI’s direct encouragement

  • German official: Lone-wolf terrorists are the greatest threat

    Germany’s interior minister said that the greatest terrorist threat Germany faces is no longer the large-scale organization of the al Qaeda stripe, but the independent “lone-wolf” attacker

  • Critics slam administration’s “minor offenses” deportation stance

    Critics if the administration’s immigration policies slam the administration’s last week announcement that it will no longer initiate enforcement actions against deportable aliens identified by the Secure Communities program who have committed minor criminal offenses