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The present study aims to examine the scope and contribution of behavioural investigative advice (BIA) reports from the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The 77 BIA reports reviewed were written between 2016 and 2021. They were evaluated using Toulmin’s (1958) strategy for structuring pertinent arguments, current compliance with professional standards, the grounds and backing provided for the claims made and the potential utility of the recommendations provided.

Consistent with previous research, most of the reports involved murder and sexual offences. The BIA reports met professional standards with extremely high frequency. The 77 reports contained a total of 1,308 claims of which 99% were based on stated grounds. A warrant and/or backing was provided for 73% of the claims. Most of the claims in the BIA reports involved a behavioural evaluation of the crime scene and offender characteristics. The potential utility of the reports was judged to be 95% for informative behavioural crime scene analysis and 40% for potential new lines of enquiry.

The reports should serve as a model for the work of behavioural investigative advisers internationally.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically evaluate BIA reports commissioned by the NCA; it adds to previous similar studies by evaluating the largest number of BIA reports ever reviewed, and uniquely provides judgement of overall utility.

The police often respond to persons who are not in direct violation of the law, but are rather undergoing behavioral crises due to mental illness or substance abuse disorders. The purpose of this study is to examine how police behavior influences civilian bystanders' emotional responses and perceptions of procedural justice (PPJ) when officers interact with these populations, which traditionally have been stigmatized in American culture.

Using a factorial vignette approach, the authors investigate whether perceived public stigma moderates the relationship between police behaviors (i.e. CIT tactics, use of force) and PPJ. The authors also investigate whether emotional reactions mediate the relationship between police behaviors and PPJ.

Regardless of suspect population (mental illness, substance use), use of force decreased participants' PPJ, and use of CIT tactics increased PPJ. These effects were consistently mediated by anger, but not by fear. Interactive effects of police behavior and perceived public stigma on PPJ were mixed.

Fear and anger may operate differently as antecedents to PPJ. Officers should note using force on persons in behavioral crisis, even if legally justifiable, seems to decrease PPJ. They should weigh this cost pragmatically, alongside other circumstances, when making discretionary decisions about physically engaging with a person in crisis.

As the subject of female criminology in South Africa has only recently been dealt with in a qualitative manner, this paper aims to explore if there is a potential link between rehabilitation, reintegration support and recidivism as females are often placed back into the environment which prompted their criminal behaviour, further excluding them from rehabilitative reform, which might lead them to recidivate.

The research adopted a qualitative approach using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six participants that were chosen purposively.

The paper notes a potential link between rehabilitation, reintegration support and recidivism as the female prisoners are imprinted with criminal dispositions since rehabilitation within the correctional facility has no implementation process to ensure that restoration can continue after they have been released.

Due to the limited number of the incarcerated female population and the scope of the preliminary study, the sample comprised of only six female offenders. As such, it contributes to the larger discourse of female criminality, but does not offer any recommendations.

Provides an understanding of the conditions in which the females are released. Allows for the inclusion of the female’s voice on, and reflection of, rehabilitation and recidivism. Notes a link between rehabilitation, reintegration and recidivism. Creates a pathway for further research in the exploration of a gendered reform approach.

While the subject of female criminology in South Africa has only recently been dealt with in a qualitative manner, this study offers an insight into how females who offend are often placed back into the environment which prompted their criminal behaviour.

This study aims to describe and analyze the differences in the linguistic styles of honest and dishonest stories.

This paper uses a descriptive study with a multivariate analysis of linguistic categories according to the story. The research analyzed 37 honest stories and 15 dishonest stories produced during actual legal proceedings through software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC).

The authors find that individuals who engage in deception use a different number of words when they narrate facts. The results suggest a need for additional investigation of the linguistic style approach because of its high applicability and detection accuracy. This approach should be complemented by other types of verbal, nonverbal and psychophysiological deception detection techniques.

Among the limitations, the authors consider length of the stories should be considered and scarce scientific literature in Spanish to compare with outcomes in English.

This research highlights the relevance to include linguistic style in real contexts to differentiate honest and dishonest stories due to objectivity and agility to implement.

Understanding deception as a social behaviour and its psychological processes associated are elements that contribute to people and justice to comprehend it.

Analyzing real statements and discriminate differences in linguistic style, contribute to understand deeply this important behaviour to propose new methodologies and theories to explain it.

We explore the relationship between urbanicity and police officers’ perceptions of changes in their reactive and proactive work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using the 2021 survey of 1,262 Croatian police offices (436 police officers from a large urban community, 471 police officers from small towns and 155 from rural communities), we examine the perceived changes in their reactive activities (e.g. responses to the calls for service, arrests for minor crimes) and proactive activities (e.g. community policing activities, directed patrols) during the peak month of the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.

The majority of police officers in the study, regardless of the size of the community where they lived, reported no changes before and during the pandemic in reactive and proactive activities. Police officers from urban communities and small towns were more likely to note an increase in domestic violence calls for service. Police officers from urban communities were also more likely than the respondents from small towns and rural communities to report an increase in the responses to the disturbances of public order. Finally, police officers from small communities were most likely to observe a change in the frequency of traffic stops during the pandemic.

This study is the first one to explore the differences in perceptions of COVID-19-related changes in reactive and proactive police activities in a centralized police system.

Racial stigma and racial criminalization have been centralizing pillars of the construction of Blackness in the United States. Taking such systemic injustice and racism as a given, then question then becomes how these macro-level arrangements are reflected in micro-level processes. This work uses radical interactionism and stigma theory to explore the potential implications for racialized identity construction and the development of “criminalized subjectivity” among Black undergraduate students at a predominately white university in the Midwest. I use semistructured interviews to explore the implications of racial stigma and criminalization on micro-level identity construction and how understandings of these issues can change across space and over the course of one's life. Findings demonstrate that Black university students are keenly aware of this particular stigma and its consequences in increasingly complex ways from the time they are school-aged children. They were aware of this stigma as a social fact but did not internalize it as a true reflection of themselves; said internalization was thwarted through strong self-concept and racial socialization. This increasingly complex awareness is also informed by an intersectional lens for some interviewees. I argue not only that the concept of stigma must be explicitly placed within these larger systems but also that understanding and identity-building are both rooted in ever-evolving processes of interaction and meaning-making. This research contributes to scholarship that applies a critical lens to Goffmanian stigma rooted in Black sociology and criminology and from the perspectives of the stigmatized themselves.

The importance of multi-agency information sharing is recognised as central to tackling crime and disorder in an intelligence-driven environment. However, whilst technology can facilitate and enhance this process, barriers to effective agency information exchange are consistently reported. This paper aims to categorise how information sharing takes place in a law enforcement operational setting and whether there is scope to improve the process.

There were two stages to the method; firstly, a select group of practitioners with intelligence-related experience (n = 28) were interviewed to identify the most common approaches to operational information sharing. This generated a categorisation model, which was tested with a larger group of practitioners (n = 73). A mixed-methods approach was adopted.

The research found consensus surrounding four different approaches to information sharing, labelled as: (1) inform and request, (2) meet and share, (3) customised database and (4) integrated systems. These are used at various levels of frequency, dependent on the operational context.

This research provides original evidence-based research to show law enforcement practitioners vary in the way they share information. By demystifying and categorising the process, it provides understanding for practitioners, policymakers and researchers, allowing barriers to be more readily tackled in a much more cost-effective manner.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the creation of safe academic (education and research) environments that offer proper protections to adult academics and staff, so that academia and society at large may benefit from the fruits of safe workplaces. Not all academic environments are entirely safe, and there are recorded cases of victims of harassment and sexual abuse.

Given that co-workers in a laboratory, or research subjects in a research project, may be victims of harassment or sexual abuse, and that the same individuals may then become co-authors or anonymized research subjects, respectively, in academic papers, there is a need to appreciate what structural protection exists for such victims at the post-publication level. What should academia do with the literature of legally recognized sex offenders who have published in peer-reviewed and indexed academic journals?

Currently, there is no specific guidance by ethics organizations (e.g., Committee on Publication Ethics and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) to deal with this issue, so protective mechanisms for adult victims, as well as punitive measures against perpetrators at the post-publication stage, are needed.

There may be career-altering repercussions – personal, professional and reputational – for co-authors of legally recognized sex offenders in papers published in peer-reviewed and indexed journals. There may also be life-altering outcomes to victims of sexual abuse who are the study subjects of such papers. Thus, a robust form of post-publication protection (and justice) based on unbiased and independent ethical and legal investigations, coordinated by editors, publishers and research institutes, needs to be established.

The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of those volunteering within a restorative justice service thus enabling an insight into their perceptions of the different methods used, their beliefs about restorative justice effectiveness, and its place within the criminal justice system. The study also sought to identify any challenges and positive experiences the participants encountered during their role as volunteers, with volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic explored specifically.

Data was collected from the participants (n = 5) via semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis, thus enabling patterns within the experience of the volunteers to be identified.

A prior understanding and interest in restorative justice was evident within the data, with participants demonstrating a preference for direct, face-to-face mediation. The perceived lack of support from external agencies was discussed along with the role of education in their volunteering experience. Finally, it was acknowledged that although face-to-face practice was deemed the most effective overall, certain practices adopted during COVID-19 enabled aspects of the role to be carried out more efficiently and equally as effectively.

The findings from this study draw out real-world implications, producing tangible action points for restorative justice services. Some tentative suggestions for future practice are outlined.

The volunteers’ role within restorative justice is often overlooked within the literature (Paul and Borton, 2013) and time constraints can add additional barriers to a hard-to-reach population. However, volunteers play a vital role in restorative justice. By exploring and listening to the volunteers’ experience, this study expands an additional strand within the literature in terms of what makes restorative justice effective and the challenges that are faced from a volunteer perspective.