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In a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated. “He found a few other vicious people, got hands on some fairly conventional weapons, and sadly, it turns out that if you’re willing to die you can kill a lot of people.”

The post Word in the news: Mastermind appeared first on OUPblog.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and its Codes of Practice entrench the legal basis for police powers in England and Wales. A thorough and practicable knowledge of PACE is essential to an understanding of policing – but how well do you know it?

Many have trouble bridging the distance between the often abstract terminology from PACE, its subsequent amendments, and legislative changes — including the Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, and the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 — and common, everyday scenarios facing police officers. Stop and search, detention and interviews, and other everyday procedures and requirements of policing may be lost. So let’s test your knowledge of PACE.

Headline image credit:Police in riot gear – Parliament Square, London, by BobBob. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

The post How well do you know the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Back at the first Image Expo this year it was announced that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips were going exclusive with Image for their collections, and that means porting over CRiminal from Marvel’s creator owned Icon line. And this month’s solicitations reveal that not only is it coming back, but there will be a new one-shot, and newly designed editions, hitting in January.

The 48-page one-shot—to be colored by regular colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser—will also have an irresistible CRIMINAL: SAVAGE EDITION magazine-sized variant.

The logline:

It’s 1976, and Teeg Lawless is doing 30 days in county jail with a price on his head; his only safe company from the savagery: a beat-up old comic magazine his dead cellmate left behind. It’s CRIMINAL like you’ve never seen it before, with a comic within the comic and all those slick ‘70s thrills!

“We’ve been planning the return of CRIMINAL for the past year, and I couldn’t let the launch go by without returning to our underworld for a new story,” said Brubaker. “With FATALE and THE FADE OUT, we’ve been hearing from a lot of new readers, so it couldn’t be a better time to get the thing we’re most known for back on the shelves.”

While Criminal was not the first Brubaker/Phillips collab, it did kick off a very fruitful creator owned partnership that has seen a wealth of pretty amazing books, including Fatale and the new The Fade out.

In association with FBI and government crime fighting agencies, crimealarms.org (a public service initiative for crime fighting) is enabling citizens to report crime, scams, violent crime, and file crime reports on local criminal activity. Also deals with most wanted criminals, fraud reports and scam reports for police reports. The service acts as a complaints database for local crime and criminals being committed in the community.

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By Peter J. Henning

The criminal investigation of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards for secretly funneling money to his ex-lover Rielle Hunter is moving toward a conclusion, and there is a good chance he will be indicted if federal prosecutors can link the payments to his campaign committee or find that contributors were deceived about the purpose of the donations.

Voicemails released by North Carolina television station WTVD show Edwards’ connection to keeping his affair with Ms. Hunter secret.  An NBC New report in February disclosed that federal prosecutors were planning to take the deposition of one of the sources of nearly $1 million used to keep Ms. Hunter out of sight while she was pregnant with their child.

The investigation into payments made to Ms. Hunter while Mr. Edwards was running for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President has been going on for almost two years.  According to campaign records, she was purportedly paid for producing campaign videos.  A former top aide to Mr. Edwards, Andrew Young, originally claimed to be the father of the child, but has now turned on his former boss and described in detail how large sums were provided to support Ms. Hunter, who is not a target of the investigation.

Sex scandals involving politicians normally just end the person’s political career, at least in this country.  And paying off a secret lover to buy silence is not normally a crime, at least when the politician uses his own money.   According to Mr. Young, however, the money came from wealthy donors, including $700,000 from Rachel “Bunny” Melloon, an aged wealthy patron of Mr. Edwards, who gave personal checks hidden in candy boxes.

The funds provided for Ms. Hunter pose a problem for Mr. Edwards if the money was collected for his presidential campaign committee and instead was tapped to make payments on her behalf, or even given directly to her.  Politicians once viewed their campaign accounts as something akin to a personal piggy bank, and the money can still be used for a number of things that have little to do with actually running for office, like paying for an attorney to defend against an ethics investigation or even a criminal investigation.

Mr. Edwards would not be the target of a grand jury investigation were it not for a provision added to the federal campaign finance laws in 2002 as part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.  That law, codified at 2 U.S.C. § 439a, states that a campaign contribution or donation “shall not be converted by any person to personal use.”  The statute contains a list of uses that would be considered “personal,” such as buying clothes or paying for a vacation.  While it does not specifically list payments to an ex-lover to keep the person quiet while running for President, that would certainly seem to come within the term “personal use.”

The issue for prosecutors is whether the money passed through Mr. Edwards’ campaign committee, or whether it was simply presented to donors as a way to “support” the candidate but never intended to be a campaign contribution.  Federal law imposes strict reporting requirements on campaign contributions, and limits donations to an individual candidate to $2,500. The amount of money collected on behalf of Ms. Hunter clearly exceeded statutory limitations, which may show that the payments were never meant to be related directly to Mr. Edwards’ short-lived campaign for the presidency.  Apart from the campaign finance issue is the question of whether financial support provided to Ms. Hunter was properly reported a

By Anatoly Liberman

As follows from the title, my first unpleasant character is CULPRIT; naturally, I am interested in the origin of the word rather than in the culprit’s behavior. What the OED says on the subject may be final, but the story will allow me to make a point not directly connected with guilt and crime. At first glance, culprit, with its root culpa (Latin for “fault”), is the most transparent word one can imagine. But what about -prit? English abounds in so-called disguised compounds. For example, marshal goes back to mara- (or some similar form) “mare” and skalk “slave.” The original marshal looked after horses. Then the word passed into Old French and returned to English with its lofty Romance meaning. Another horsy noun is henchman: hench- continues heng(e)st- “stallion.” Taking care of a lord’s horses gave status to medieval attendants. Marshal is disguised so well that we no longer recognize its old structure. In henchman, the presence of -man reminds us of the word’s initial composition, but hench- makes no sense to a modern speaker. In culprit, -prit baffles languages historians. However, no one ever doubted that we are dealing with a (thinly) disguised compound or word group.

In some early dictionaries, culprit was spelled culprit (1715), cul prit (1718), and cul-prit (1719). The word was relatively new at that time. It first occurred in a legal formula (see it below), but later acquired the sense “the accused” and still later “felon.” In texts, no occurrence of culprit “felon” predates 1700. I often refer to Nathaniel Bailey’s 1721 dictionary. Here is a passage from it: “Culprit, a formal word, used by the Clerk of the Arraignments, in Tryals [sic], to a Person indicted for a Criminal Matter, when he has register’d the Prisoner’s Plea, Not Guilty, and proceeds to demand of him, (Culprit) How wilt thou be Tried? Culprit seems to be compounded of two Words, i.e., Cul and Prit, viz., Cul of Culpabilis, and is a Reply of a proper Officer, on behalf of the King, affirming the Party to be Guilty after he hath pleaded Not Guilty; the other word Prit is derived of the French Word Prest, i.e., Ready, and is as much as to say, that he is ready to prove the Party Guilty. Others again derive it from Culpa, a fault, and Prehensus, taken, L. i.e., a Criminal or Malefactor.” (Note the prepositions: derived of, derive it from.) Bailey borrowed his etymology from Thomas Blount’s Law Dictionary and expanded it, but his dictionary had a much broader readership than Blount’s. Except that the OED found actual examples of cul. prit. in legal documents, Blount and Bailey’s explanation still stands.

Strangely, Samuel Johnson derived culprit from French qu’il paroit “let it appear” and took no notice of Blount’s or Bailey’s comments. In the early decades of the 19th century, correspondents to The Gentleman’s Magazine debated the origin of culprit anew, again without reference to Blount or Bailey, and vacillated between qu’il paroit, culp-prist “taken (supposed, suspected) to be guilty,” and Latin culpaereus (or culpae reus) “arraigned for a crime.” Some of them misunderstood the combination culpabilis prest as allegedly meaning “already guilty,” though it meant “guilty and (we are) ready to prove the defendant’s guilt” (“What! are our laws so severe and their procedure so preposterous as to declare a pers

I absolutely HATE text language. Nothing in the world annoys me more than seeing someone type in text language. Okay, I do use the occasional text language phrase like ‘you’ becomes ‘u’ and ‘are’ becomes ‘r’. I do use the occasional acronym like ‘to be honest’ becomes ‘tbh’, ‘laughing out loud’ becomes ‘lol’ and ‘by the way’ becomes ‘btw’. I think a text language vocabulary of up to 20 words should be tolerated. (Mine only reaches like 5 which is better but…! ) But when situations worsen to a point where you see someone write ‘I am busy right now’ in text language and it looks like ‘i m bc ryt nw’, at that point, you really want to bang your head on the nearest wall until your eyes pop out and even Homer Simpson seems as attractive as Brad Pitt.

Here is my list of why text language spelling should officially be allowed to get a criminal record (or better still - imprisonment) if exceeded by 20 words in its vocabulary list:

1. It makes you sound like a 2 year old. 2 year olds can’t type and when you type text spelling, it looks like you can’t type, thus making you look like a 2 year old.
2. It makes you sound illiterate. It feels like your mum and dad denied you the basic education you should have deserved.
3. It makes you look like you are so poverty stricken that your keyboard has been bashed by a cow but you still won’t replace it.
4. Text spelling seems to worm its way to exam papers and other official pieces of papers and THAT is despicable.
5. It looks like jumbled letters. It really looks like you are trying to teach little Molly how to read and write.
6. Using text language is denying other people the right to read. When they look at random letters, no punctuation and no use of the teensiest bit of decent grammar, then their mind goes into delirium whether what they are reading is proper or not, thus corrupting their minds.
7. Children will become weird because of text language and will take over the world with signs and posters and literally everything sounding that way.
8. Teachers won’t be able to correct exam papers because if the students use text spelling and the teachers can’t (I’m pretty sure half the teachers think ‘lol’ means lolling about because we find something funny, which really, makes no sense at all) that’s illiteracy stepped up a notch and a waste of doing exams anyway. As it is, the British government education folk are worried exams are getting easier by the second.
9. On a much more realistic note, text spelling is going out of fashion. More and more people shun it and funnily enough shun those who still use it, so if you use it, stop. Or you’ll find yourself tied to a pole near the bus stop getting thrashed by a bunch of geekily cool teenagers.

I know that was a pretty angry rant but, let’s face the facts, text language spelling isn’t great! If anything at all, it is wasteful. People say it reduces the effort to type but it increases the effort to read. Let’s all type decently and read decently and not become slaves to ‘txt lngage splng’ (or for normal people, text language spelling).

I absolutely HATE text language. Nothing in the world annoys me more than seeing someone type in text language. Okay, I do use the occasional text language phrase like ‘you’ becomes ‘u’ and ‘are’ becomes ‘r’. I do use the occasional acronym like ‘to be honest’ becomes ‘tbh’, ‘laughing out loud’ becomes ‘lol’ and ‘by the way’ becomes ‘btw’. I think a text language vocabulary of up to 20 words should be tolerated. (Mine only reaches like 5 which is better but…! ) But when situations worsen to a point where you see someone write ‘I am busy right now’ in text language and it looks like ‘i m bc ryt nw’, at that point, you really want to bang your head on the nearest wall until your eyes pop out and even Homer Simpson seems as attractive as Brad Pitt.

Here is my list of why text language spelling should officially be allowed to get a criminal record (or better still - imprisonment) if exceeded by 20 words in its vocabulary list:

1. It makes you sound like a 2 year old. 2 year olds can’t type and when you type text spelling, it looks like you can’t type, thus making you look like a 2 year old.
2. It makes you sound illiterate. It feels like your mum and dad denied you the basic education you should have deserved.
3. It makes you look like you are so poverty stricken that your keyboard has been bashed by a cow but you still won’t replace it.
4. Text spelling seems to worm its way to exam papers and other official pieces of papers and THAT is despicable.
5. It looks like jumbled letters. It really looks like you are trying to teach little Molly how to read and write.
6. Using text language is denying other people the right to read. When they look at random letters, no punctuation and no use of the teensiest bit of decent grammar, then their mind goes into delirium whether what they are reading is proper or not, thus corrupting their minds.
7. Children will become weird because of text language and will take over the world with signs and posters and literally everything sounding that way.
8. Teachers won’t be able to correct exam papers because if the students use text spelling and the teachers can’t (I’m pretty sure half the teachers think ‘lol’ means lolling about because we find something funny, which really, makes no sense at all) that’s illiteracy stepped up a notch and a waste of doing exams anyway. As it is, the British government education folk are worried exams are getting easier by the second.
9. On a much more realistic note, text spelling is going out of fashion. More and more people shun it and funnily enough shun those who still use it, so if you use it, stop. Or you’ll find yourself tied to a pole near the bus stop getting thrashed by a bunch of geekily cool teenagers.

I know that was a pretty angry rant but, let’s face the facts, text language spelling isn’t great! If anything at all, it is wasteful. People say it reduces the effort to type but it increases the effort to read. Let’s all type decently and read decently and not become slaves to ‘txt lngage splng’ (or for normal people, text language spelling).

It has been argued that television shows that deal with crime and forensic science; shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, or CSI: Miami etc. give food for thought to criminals or wannabe criminals. There is of course a degree of truth in this. But television programmes and movies about crimes, detectives and police investigations have been around for ever. Let alone the books, magazines and articles about the subject. Classic figures like Sherlock Holmes and Hercules Poirot may seem out of date, but they would give an insight to police investigations at their time.

But another affect of these programmes, was the exponential increase of forensic science degrees offered by universities around the world. Recently it was stated by a Scottish university academic, that before CSI, they could hardly have enough students in chemistry or biology to keep the course running. Add the word forensics in the title of the degree, and the next day your course is overbooked.

British universities (that is where my experience derives from, although I assume that the same goes for USA and other countries) now offer Bachelors and Masters in any possible discipline that can have the word “forensics” fit in its title. Biology and forensics, Chemistry and forensics, forensic accounting, forensic engineering, computer forensics, forensic informatics, forensic linguistics, forensic archaeology … you name it. There is a forensic title for ..everything.

The question occured to me during my studies, when during a career orientation class, I suggested that if not all of us find a job with law enforcement or the government upon our graduation, we might as well become the “perfect criminals”. The answer of one of the participating professors surprised me. He said that they do not joke about it, as they believed it was a matter of time to see one of their graduates arrested by Interpol at the 8 o’clock news. Another added that if the student was a good one, he would not get arrested in the first place. And then I realised that studying forensics, the first thing you must do is to start thinking like criminal.

In our course we had a lot of theory and labs in identifying fingerprints, blood, other bodily fluids, examine papers and tool-marks, footwear prints and blood stains. We learned what the police protocols are in a crime scene. We even had a large scale crime scene exercise to practice our new skills. During our theory and practical labs, we also learned what you need to clean a crime scene from blood, how not to leave DNA evidence and how to break a window without having any glass traces on our clothes.

In the rest of the course, in computer forensics, we learned how we can avoid leaving digital evidence, destroy traces of our activities and make sure we are not identified.

In a sense, we were trained to become the perfect “crime mind”. We know the police protocols, and we even know how to plant evidence or even how to make things “look like an accident”!!!

Sounds funny when we discuss it with friends, but it is not a funny story at all. This means that people with the right skills can pull off more careful plans and execute them with scientific precision, leaving the law enforcement trying to put the pieces together with a very little probability of success.

On the other hand of course, a forensic scientist can understand the risks of certain illegal activities, and this understanding can keep him/her away from trouble.

What can be done, is a rather philosophical question. You can not stop offering forensics courses in the universities, and you can not make it a secretive in-house thing for the police. The industry will collapse and the research will simply cease to exist.

A few years ago, in Athens, the terrorist group “17 November” was dismantled, after one of its members was injured trying to place a bomb. The group were the “untouchables” of European terrorism for more than 25 years. The Greek police was helped by the FBI, Scotland Yard and even the MI5 (according to some sources), but they managed to do absolutely nothing for a quarter of a century. It turned out that the group consisted of very few individuals, highly trained and very well educated; one of the head figures being an academic.  It is this kind of hi-tech crime that forensic scientists can be involved in.

The issue needs to be addressed, but only at an academic level at this stage.

Education can not be controlled and barred to certain people, in our society. There may be safety measures as to who gets access to crime related education, but then again a lot of other disciplines will have to start imposing restrictions. It is also almost senseless to check criminal records, as an 18 year olds student is not likely to have any criminal record, or in some cases some cautions for being drunk or breaking the peace.

There is no proof that forensic scientists become “Godfathers”, but the truth remains that they can, if they wish. A new breed of hi-tech criminals that would be faster, smarter and more up-to-date then their police counterparts, can be a scary prospect for the future.

But this is just the theory. There are black sheep in every family … so there are bound to be some bad ones in forensics. But truth be told, most of us have a good sense of justice, and are getting satisfaction by contributing to the fight against crime.

As for the law enforcement agencies, it is their responsibility to train their people, update their procedures, hire “new blood” with new ideas and modern training, and keep one step ahead from the criminals.

The butler did it, didn't he? He has a tray of poison and a suspicious looking drink in one hand and a bloody dagger in the other ...  is he just cleaning up?

Another in the Murder Mystery series of characters. More will be appearing eventually ...

Check out The Butler card and range of products at zazzle.com

I really hadn't planned on turning her into such a flapper-type character but she insisted on it, and who am I to argue with a sweet innocent ingenue holding a bloody dagger in one hand? So here she is, the second in the Murder Mystery series. I'd watch your step if I were you ... :)

Murder Mystery: The Ingenue cards and matching products are here at zazzle.com!

I've needed to practice drawing characters and faces as they're a huge weakness where my overall drawing is concerned, so when I received a special request to draw some for a Mystery Murder project (more on that later!), I jumped at the chance. I'm a huge fan of detective, criminal investigation and murder mystery stories anyway, whether on paper or on the screen, so this was tons of fun to do!

So here's the first one, the Mob Boss. Once I'd scanned it in I felt it was a bit too light and perhaps had too delicate a touch for the subject matter, so I played with levels and contrast on photoshop and this was my final result:

Better, I think ... off to work on the next character now :)

Mob Boss cards and products at zazzle.com

I've needed to practice drawing characters and faces as they're a huge weakness where my overall drawing is concerned, so when I received a special request to draw some for a Mystery Murder project (more on that later!), I jumped at the chance. I'm a huge fan of detective, criminal investigation and murder mystery stories anyway, whether on paper or on the screen, so this was tons of fun to do!

So here's the first one, the Mob Boss. Once I'd scanned it in I felt it was a bit too light and perhaps had too delicate a touch for the subject matter, so I played with levels and contrast on photoshop and this was my final result:

Better, I think ... off to work on the next character now :)

Mob Boss cards and products at zazzle.com

This was a special request by my niece Marisa for a good friend of hers, Sara, who is a huge fan of a certain Crime Scene programme on TV :) Blood red icing, a dagger plunged into it, a bullet in its side and a hangman's noose draped over the cupcake ... as well as the DO NOT CROSS police tape -- I hope I added enough murderous implements to satisfy her!

And here's the magnet that just won the Today's Best Award over at zazzle.com :)