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The purpose of this paper is to address the complexity of missing persons cases and highlight the linguistic differences that arise in this type of crime. Missing persons cases are typically very complex investigations. Without a body, crime scene forensics is not possible, and police are often left only with witness and suspect statements. Forensic linguistics methods may help investigators to prioritise or remove suspects. There are many competing approaches in forensic linguistic analysis; however, there is limited empirical research available on emerging methods.

This research investigates Statement Analysis, a recent development in linguistic analysis that has practical applications in criminal investigations. Real-world statements of individuals convicted of or found to be not guilty of their involvement in missing persons cases were used in the analyses. In addition, Behaviour Sequence Analysis was used to map the progressions of language in the suspects' statements.

Results indicated differences between the guilty and innocent individuals based on their language choices, for example, guilty suspects in missing [alive] cases were found more likely to use passive language and vague words because of high levels of cognitive load associated with the several types of guilty knowledge suspects in missing persons cases possess. Of particular interest is the use of untruthful words in the innocent suspects’ statements in missing [murdered] cases. While typically seen in deceptive statements, untruthful words in innocent statements may result because of false acquittals.

This research provides some support for Statement Analysis as a suitable approach to analysing linguistic statements in missing persons cases.

When investigating missing persons cases, witness and suspect statements are often the only available evidence to investigators. As such, forensic linguistics can be useful to police when seeking information from individuals during investigative interviews. The presumption of innocence must be maintained in an investigation, and therefore this study aims to use a method focused on veracity detection, rather than the majority of studies using deception detection approaches.

The current research uses criteria-based content analysis (CBCA), a method that has been applied to a variety of criminal cases. Real-world statements of individuals convicted or found innocent of their involvement in missing persons cases were used in the analyses. Additionally, behaviour sequence analysis (BSA) was used to map language patterns within individuals’ statements.

Results indicated that two individual markers occurred at a high frequency across all four groups (the guilty and innocent statements of both case types); however, differences were noted in the sequences based on an individual’s ability to provide experiential details.

The current research contributes to the growing literature that aims to test CBCA in adult samples across crimes that do not pertain to sexual abuse, in addition to aiding researchers and practitioners to understand better the linguistic differences that occur in missing persons cases.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this type of research, using CBCA to assist with missing person's cases with a temporal method (BSA), has never before been tested. BSA has previously been used in forensic linguistics, and shown support for the method. The current research builds on this in terms of missing persons cases.

This article considers how digital technologies are informed by, and implicated in, the systematic and interlocking oppressions of colonialism, misogyny, and racism, all of which have been identified as root causes of the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis in Canada. The authors consider how technology can facilitate multiple forms of violence against women including stalking and intimate partner violence, human trafficking, pornography and child abuse images, and online hate and harassment and note instances where Indigenous women and girls may be particularly vulnerable. The authors also explore some of the complexities related to police use of technology for investigatory purposes, touching on police use of social media and DNA technology. Without simplistically blaming technology, the authors argue that technology interacts with multiple factors in the complex historical, socio-cultural environment that incubates the national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The article concludes with related questions that may be considered at the impending national inquiry.

Purpose – Having concluded that the long-term and ongoing murders and disappearances of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA (MMIWG2S+) people is genocide, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG) (2019) made 231 Calls for Justice in relation to culture, health, security, and criminal justice to broadly address the ongoing colonial dispossession and systemic, racialized, and gendered violence against MMIWG2S+ people. In response to these Calls for Justice, this article traces Indigenous grassroots initiatives to show the many ways that justice can be broadly conceived and mobilized to address the murders and disappearances.

Methodology/Approach – Drawing on the Unearthing Justices Resource Collection of 500+ Indigenous grassroots initiatives for the MMIWG2S+ people, this work theorizes a spatial approach to justice using mapping methodologies.

Findings – Not only have Indigenous families and communities been calling for justice, but they have also been cultivating justice across the land by building constellations of resource and support. The author traces the land-based activities specific to community patrols, land-based commemorations, search support, and walks and journeys to show the vast resources, skills, and strengths that already exist in Indigenous communities and how justice can be conceptualized within its local and spatial arrangements, and beyond the imaginaries of a criminal justice system.

Originality/Value – Where the ongoing colonial dispossession and systemic, racialized, and gendered violence against MMIWG2S+ people is well documented, there has been less consideration of how Indigenous families and communities have navigated a terrain where justice continues to be absent,elusive, or invasive.

In this chapter, the author explores the conditions of sexualised, gendered violence against Indigenous women and girls. The author asks how various responses to this violence have shaped the present-day legal personhood of Indigenous women and girls from two perspectives: an Indigenous legal perspective and a Canadian legal perspective. To avoid the troublesome pan-Indigenous generalisations of legal personhood, the author focusses on one Indigenous society, the Gitxsan people from northwest British Columbia and their legal order and laws.² The author examines several specific questions about how the Gitxsan legal tradition historically defined the legal personhood of Gitxsan women and girls, and how this has changed with colonisation. The author takes up specific aspects of the operation and structure of Gitxsan law and legal institutions and analyse the ways that they are gendered.

The contemporary practice of ‘craftivism’ – which uses crafts such as knitting, sewing, and embroidery to draw attention to ‘issues of social, political and environmental justice’ (Fitzpatrick, 2018, p. 3) – has its origins in centuries of radical craft work, where women and marginalised peoples in particular, employed crafts to protest, take a stand, or raise awareness on issues that concern them. This chapter explores how crafts are being used to highlight key social and criminal justice issues that are of concern to criminologists, including the missing and murdered, state and institutional violence, and sexual abuse and violence. In canvassing the ways in which craft is being used to draw attention to, document, memorialise, demand change, and heal, this chapter considers why criminologists would benefit from being attentive to the strategies craftivists are using to challenge the status quo and make visible the invisible.

We aimed to assess, in socio-cultural context, the level of hatred and revenge in war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The sampling frame consisted of 215 Kosova War veterans, randomly selected. The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess the prevalence of PTSD and Manchester Short Assessment of Life was used to assess social satisfactions. The participants were asked to declare the strength of feelings of hatred and revenge in the four preceding weeks by using four items scale: not at all, a little bit/sometimes, a lot and extremely. Willingness for action of veterans was assessed using three item scale: yes, no or maybe. A probability level of 0.05 was adopted to be considered as statistically significant for differences among groups. DSM-IV-TR criteria for PTSD (very similar to DSM-V) were met by 52.6% of veterans; the data have confirmed existence of thoughts and fantasies of revenge against opposing forces by 42.8% veterans; at the same level 42.8% manifested feelings of hatred. Fantasies of taking revenge a lot was recorded by 19.5% and extremely by 1.4% of veterans, while hateful thoughts at level a lot were likely expressed by 22.3% and extreme by 2.8% of veterans. It is important to note that 84.7% were confident to act based on their beliefs. Social-economic and cultural factors have played major role in the understanding of psychological problems of traumatized individuals with a direct impact on their ability to function socially. This study has confirmed the urgent need for the establishment of psychological rehabilitation programs as well as programs for the social and economic rehabilitation of War Veterans.

The purpose of this article is to improve the use of evidence-based practice and research utilization in the offender profiling process. The use of offender profiling has been met with increasing resistance given its exaggerated accuracy. The “Investigative Journalist/Expert Field Micro Task Force” model, a collaborative method that incorporates offender profiling and is designed to address unresolved serial homicides, is introduced and evaluated alongside recommendations on attaining adherence.

The model was field tested in 17 instances. The measures used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to gauge the usefulness of their case consultations, whether their input helped catch the offender, offer new leads, move the case forward, provide new avenues or give new ideas, were used to evaluate the model.

The model established likely patterns of serial murder activity among strangulations of women in Chicago, Cleveland, and Panama and resulted in convictions of suspects in Louisiana and Kansas City. This model is valuable when used to parse modern-day offenders from those who committed unresolved homicides as the latter display different behaviors that can make investigations difficult endeavors. Results from the field tests mirror those from the literature in that profiling alone did not result in the capture of serial killers. Instead, profiling was used in conjunction with other efforts and mainly as a means to keep the investigation moving forward.

Unresolved homicides are at a point of crisis and represent a significant but largely unaddressed societal problem. The success of this model may compel law enforcement to restore faith in offender profiling.