Finland in general operates under a different type of socioeconomic system than what we see in the United States. The basic tenets of the welfare model include “universalism, equality and public responsibility.” Finland aims to avoid any type of structured material inequality by maintaining a high level of income redistribution through taxation and decommoditization of goods (Harrikari, 2008, p. 30). That said, a stronger emphasis on less punitive treatment of juvenile delinquents fits in with the Finnish model of helping rather than punishing. Indeed juveniles who commit crimes receive less harsh treatment than adults, which cannot be said for all types of juvenile offenses in the United States. Finnish youthful offenders receive lighter sentences, and more significantly, unlike the U.S., sentences have not become more severe over the last fifteen years (Harrikari, p. 34). Compared with the early 1990s, the number of offences handled by juvenile courts has decreased, meaning fewer crimes are remanded to court proceedings. A greater sense of child welfare in Finland could be adopted here, which I truly believe would help the quality of the juvenile justice system. The method of looking at child offenders as pure cases of rehabilitation or aid rather than as criminal punishment would shift the focus of the program.
China takes a participatory model of juvenile justice, where the intervention of the courts is rarely used. Citizens and special agencies work to curb juvenile delinquency and only in the most extreme cases will the legal system become involved. In 1991, China adopted new legislation which defines how parents and legal guardians are responsible for the welfare, education and other legal rights of a juvenile. The Juvenile Protection Law of 1991 sets out the standard of criminal juvenile law, which states that education is the primary means of handling delinquency and punishment is the secondary means of handling juveniles who commit crimes (Wong, 2004, p. 54). I think this is an excellent model for the U.S. to incorporate; it puts the onus back on the parents to keep their kids in line and doesn’t resort to bogging down the legal system with petty childhood crime. Fixing or correcting the problem before it is broken, rather than sending away our “hopeless cases” of juvenile offenders, lessens the impact of adult crime and gives young people the chance to turn it around before it gets worse.
Harrikari, T. (2008). Exploring Risk Governance in the Nordic Context: Finnish Juvenile Crime and
Child Welfare. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 20(1), 29-42.
Wong, D. W. (2004). Juvenile Protection and Delinquency Prevention Policies in China.
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 3752-66.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Religion and the Responsibility of Prison Administration
My philosophy for punishment is that it needs to be exactly that - punishment. Locking a person in a prison and then leaving them there to languish the days away not only does a disservice to the individual, but also to society. Prison service should include no less than mandatory participation in education, employment, and counseling programs. While many people argue whether the point of prison is to punish or rehabilitate, most would agree that watching television and weight-lifting should not be the main focus of incarceration. Funding is always going to be a problem, and that is not going to be my intention to touch upon that issue, as limiting as it is. Prison work programs, counseling, and education have all been shown to reduce recidivism rates, which should be the general goal of the criminal justice system. Work release or furlough programs, where applicable, are cheaper than full-time incarceration (Jeffery & Woolpert, 1974, p. 406). Inmates who participate in education programs have better conduct records in and out of prison (Lahm, 2009, p.49).
The standards of civility for an international corrections model would be comprised of the basic principles of human respect and decency included in the The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that was adopted in 1966 which proscribes that any person imprisoned be treated with humanity and “with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person” (Coyle, 2008, p. 222). Food should be provided that is substantial and varied enough to maintain the nutritional well-being of prisoners. Health care should be provided to maintain the physical well-being of prisoners, and mental health services should be provided to maintain the mental well-being of prisoners. Inmates should not be subjected to corporal punishment, physical, sexual, or mental abuse, intimidation, or any other act with would diminish their dignity as a human.
As far as allowing or not allowing punishment, the act of incarceration is the punishment; there should be no other physical or mental punishment allowed. While we should not aim to create a oasis retreat for prisoners, the basics can still be provided for in a minimalistic manner, that does not permanently effect the future of an inmate. Punishment should be total and final that creates no lingering effects after the sentence has been served.
While religious freedom is vital even within the prison system, I don’t believe that the administration has a responsibility to provide any type of religious teaching or literature to inmates. If inmates wish to have clergy members visit them during regular visiting hours, they are more than welcome to do so. If they wish to have religious materials sent to them, provided they fall within normal guidelines for reading materials, that is also perfectly fine. I don’t believe special considerations or concessions should be made to provide for an inmate’s spiritual needs. Beyond extremist teachings infiltrating prisons, religion is no more a duty of the state than astrology, crafting, or any other hobby that inmates choose to participate in.
Also, I don’t believe that ensuring that religious teaching is not creating terrorists is a job for the prison administration. Radicalism can come from any source; since in my prison model, religious teachings are not a part of provided services, the prison assumes no responsibility for the type of materials or teaching an inmate would assume on their own time. Extremist religious literature sent through the prison mail system would be identified and filtered on an as-needed basis, as would inmate discussion groups or meetings, and visitor contacts.
Counseling and therapy sessions should be implemented absolutely in every prison, everywhere. Group and individual discussions should be mandatory. Rather than being preached to, I believe participatory interfacing with trained therapists is much more beneficial than being told how to act, as often occurs with religious teaching. Education and skills development builds confidence, as well, and contributes not only to rehabilitation but also to a more stable prison environment. Social contact and stress-relief is a big part of religious services, currently, as defined by Dammer. Many inmates utilize religious services and meetings with clergy as a way to relax and mingle with other prisoners, outside visitors, even female volunteers (Dammer, 2002, pp. 47-48). Providing more effective psychotherapy and counseling would be a better use of resources while still providing a conversational outlet for prisoners.
Coyle, A. (2008). The treatment of prisoners: International standards and case law. Legal &
Criminological Psychology, 13(2), 219-230.
Dammer, H. R. (2002). The Reasons for Religious Involvement in the Correctional Environment.
Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 35(3/4), 35.
Jeffery, R., & Woolpert, S. (1974). Work Furlough as an Alternative to Incarceration: An Assessment
of Its Effects on Recidivism and Social Cost. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 65(3),
405-415.
Lahm, K. F. (2009). Educational Participation and Inmate Misconduct. Journal of Offender
Rehabilitation, 48(1), 37-52.
The standards of civility for an international corrections model would be comprised of the basic principles of human respect and decency included in the The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that was adopted in 1966 which proscribes that any person imprisoned be treated with humanity and “with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person” (Coyle, 2008, p. 222). Food should be provided that is substantial and varied enough to maintain the nutritional well-being of prisoners. Health care should be provided to maintain the physical well-being of prisoners, and mental health services should be provided to maintain the mental well-being of prisoners. Inmates should not be subjected to corporal punishment, physical, sexual, or mental abuse, intimidation, or any other act with would diminish their dignity as a human.
As far as allowing or not allowing punishment, the act of incarceration is the punishment; there should be no other physical or mental punishment allowed. While we should not aim to create a oasis retreat for prisoners, the basics can still be provided for in a minimalistic manner, that does not permanently effect the future of an inmate. Punishment should be total and final that creates no lingering effects after the sentence has been served.
While religious freedom is vital even within the prison system, I don’t believe that the administration has a responsibility to provide any type of religious teaching or literature to inmates. If inmates wish to have clergy members visit them during regular visiting hours, they are more than welcome to do so. If they wish to have religious materials sent to them, provided they fall within normal guidelines for reading materials, that is also perfectly fine. I don’t believe special considerations or concessions should be made to provide for an inmate’s spiritual needs. Beyond extremist teachings infiltrating prisons, religion is no more a duty of the state than astrology, crafting, or any other hobby that inmates choose to participate in.
Also, I don’t believe that ensuring that religious teaching is not creating terrorists is a job for the prison administration. Radicalism can come from any source; since in my prison model, religious teachings are not a part of provided services, the prison assumes no responsibility for the type of materials or teaching an inmate would assume on their own time. Extremist religious literature sent through the prison mail system would be identified and filtered on an as-needed basis, as would inmate discussion groups or meetings, and visitor contacts.
Counseling and therapy sessions should be implemented absolutely in every prison, everywhere. Group and individual discussions should be mandatory. Rather than being preached to, I believe participatory interfacing with trained therapists is much more beneficial than being told how to act, as often occurs with religious teaching. Education and skills development builds confidence, as well, and contributes not only to rehabilitation but also to a more stable prison environment. Social contact and stress-relief is a big part of religious services, currently, as defined by Dammer. Many inmates utilize religious services and meetings with clergy as a way to relax and mingle with other prisoners, outside visitors, even female volunteers (Dammer, 2002, pp. 47-48). Providing more effective psychotherapy and counseling would be a better use of resources while still providing a conversational outlet for prisoners.
Coyle, A. (2008). The treatment of prisoners: International standards and case law. Legal &
Criminological Psychology, 13(2), 219-230.
Dammer, H. R. (2002). The Reasons for Religious Involvement in the Correctional Environment.
Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 35(3/4), 35.
Jeffery, R., & Woolpert, S. (1974). Work Furlough as an Alternative to Incarceration: An Assessment
of Its Effects on Recidivism and Social Cost. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 65(3),
405-415.
Lahm, K. F. (2009). Educational Participation and Inmate Misconduct. Journal of Offender
Rehabilitation, 48(1), 37-52.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
New Initiatives against Terrorism Funding
While the crime of international money laundering has been a problem for as long as the human record exists, the current implications of terror funding bring new challenges and a greater imperative to track down and disable money laundering schemes. The renewed focus by the international community to stop this transfer of funds reached critical levels in a race to stay ahead of the money after the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Besides the danger to personal safety and security, both money laundering and terrorism are considered vitally important problems within the international community. Money laundering jeopardizes the economic and financial stability of every nation and terrorism funding threatens international peace relations and security measures while promoting intolerance and extremism (Chatain, 2004, p. 190). The War on Terror spawned the birth of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, also known as the USA PATRIOT act, or simply the Patriot Act, and other far-reaching anti-money-laundering measures. Before 9/11, many international governments had tried to put into action client-profiles and ‘know your customer’ directives at banks, but such efforts were often blocked by the banks themselves and privacy lobbyists. The Patriot Act, however, overrode the objections and introduced the opportunity for information exchange between banks, while also allowing access to bank information by police and judicial services (Verhage, 2009, p. 13). These intrusive measures would not have been accepted by the American public were it not for the devastation the country experienced on that day. Arguably, the administration under President George W. Bush took liberties with enacting invasive and over-arching legislation that many people are now regretting. The United States is still trying to make reforms and tie up the loose ends in the regulations and laws that came out of the immediate aftermath of September 11th. It should be noted that in the aftermath, many banks took it among themselves individually to tighten up their client checks and procedures to limit any association with terrorism financing (Verhage, p. 14). Another area of concern besides the banking arena is widespread international crimes. Since most terrorism funding itself is generated from other criminal activity, efforts focused on identifying international organized crime aim to stop the terrorists where it will have the most impact (Aldridge, 2008, p. 451). Without the large-scale funding gained through criminal operations such as drug running, operations and training for would-be terrorist events are much more difficult to carry out. Criminal activities in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina alone generate as much as 261 million dollars annually to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad operations (Shelley & Picarelli, 2005, p. 65). Organized crime as a primary funding source for terrorism exists across the globe, from Russia, to Indonesia, South Africa, and beyond.
This post will begin by defining money laundering, as well as explain terrorism funding before briefly exploring the origins of terror funding and the early efforts by the international community to stem the flow of terrorism money after 9/11. It will explore the way several nations, including the United States and Great Britain, are fighting money laundering to prevent the flow of cash to terrorist organizations and to stop the flow of money from illegal criminal operations into the coffers of terrorist organizations worldwide. The research will also include an exploration of the new and developing efforts in anti-money-laundering efforts.
Money laundering is a process of disguising profits from some sort of criminal activity, such as drug smuggling, human trafficking, or illegal commodity exporting, by concealing their origins and funneling them into legitimate accounts or products. When done effectively, the true source of the money – some type of criminal activity- is hidden (Chatain, 2004, p. 190). Accomplished in three stages, money laundering is first begun by placement. This refers to the dumping of illegal funds, either within the local economy or in the foreign market through placing the funds in a domestic or off-shore financial institution. It can also be used to purchase luxury goods such as paintings, real estate or precious metals or, in simpler times, carried on flight to a foreign destination. If goods are purchased, they are resold to gain payment through legitimate checks or wire transfers. Proceeds from illegal activities can also be converted to negotiable instruments, such as cashier's checks, money orders, or traveler's checks. Obvious obstacles stand in the way of simply depositing money, however, primarily when it concerns the United States. Provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 require that financial institutions file a Currency Transaction Report when a person carries out one or more cash transactions in a single day which involve, in total, over $10,000. The Act also requires reporting when transactions valuing $10,000 or more are transported into or out of the United States (Lyden, 2003, pp. 205-207). The placement stage of money laundering is the most risky for criminals, because it involves the greatest likelihood of detection.
The second step is called layering, the purpose of which is to convolute the source of monetary funds through an intricate web of transactions that will further disguise any audit trails. This is often done through a series of wire transfers into different accounts, through trading in financial markets, or by transferring funds to offshore "shell" corporations that have been carefully established so as to conceal the identity of the owner. The Bahamas, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong, are frequently chosen for such schemes because they have lenient bank reporting laws (Lyden, 2003, p. 207).
The final stage of money laundering combines all of the illegal funds and allows the criminals free access to these funds. This step, called integration, is frequently established through obtaining loans from shell corporations or by exploiting bank privacy laws of some countries to use the deposits as collateral to obtain more loans (Russel, 2004, p. 260). This final phase returns the laundered money into expendable funds for the criminals typically to use in further criminal activities or to invest in legitimate businesses that continue to support organized crime. At this point, the money is usually safe from detection by authorities, because it has traveled through a sufficient number channels as to make it virtually untraceable. According to Malkin & Elizur, money that has been laundered is quite easy to find, but the trail to connect it to terrorist money is a long and difficult process. They state “[m]oney-laundering authorities follow the trail to a legal account from dirty money earned by drugs, prostitution, extortion, payoffs, or corruption on a grand scale” and then the resulting paper trail is followed to the account holder who is prosecuted for the crimes (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 64). The push towards globalization has increased the flow of capital across borders and created a greater need to monitor possible money laundering schemes, particularly those that put money into the hands of terrorist organizations.
Terrorist funding or terrorism financing refers to any type of monetary support of terrorism or terrorist activities (Chatain, 2004, p. 190). This funding was destined to be connected to money laundering. In the early 1990s, some experts predicted the convergence of international terrorism and transnational organized crime. This indeed took place when terrorists simply imitated the criminal behavior, borrowed techniques from money launderers, such as credit card fraud, that is referred to as” activity appropriation” which can lead to more close connections between terrorists and professional criminals within a short time (Shelley & Picarelli, 2005, pp. 52-54). Without the large-scale funding gained through criminal operations such as drug running, operations and training for would-be terrorist events are much more difficult to carry out. Criminal activities in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina alone generate as much as 261 million dollars annually to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad operations (Shelley & Picarelli, 2005, p. 65). Organized crime as a primary funding source for terrorism exists across the globe, from Russia, to Indonesia, South Africa, and beyond. Money laundering has become a highly sophisticated operation in itself to cover-up these criminal sources of terror funding.
Although laundering money through banks and other financial institutions, as well as through the sale and transfer of goods, was previously mentioned in detail this multi-layered, complex system is not the only way that terrorist cells are being funded. Money often moves through money transfer businesses such as Western Union and local storefronts called hawalas (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 65). Money is transferred in small amounts so as not to be detected. Funds sent by usual, law-abiding customers, namely workers from India, Europe, and North America who send money home to their families, are indistinguishable from criminals sending money to terrorist organizations. At the hawalas, customers bring the cash that they want to send and they receive a receipt in return. The store manager faxes a code word to a trusted associate overseas, and the office there pays when the receiver shows up with the code word. This type of money transfer system has been around for centuries. In nineteenth century England, the Rothschild family banks worked much the same way. Any faxed evidence of these transfers is quickly destroyed, although papers found in Al Qaeda’s Kabul offices after the Taliban were chased from the Afghan capital implicated that cell in funding the October 12, 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Yemen. Still the cost of this entire operation was only $10,000 – an insignificant amount that easily flew under the radar of any federal regulations on the reporting on money transfers (Malkin & Elizur, pp. 64-65).
One of the most notorious organizations that operate these types of money transfer services is Al Barakaat, a telecommunications and financial company in Somalia. Suspicion surrounds its owner and founder Shaykh Ahme Nur Jimale, whom the United States believes was connected to Osama bin Laden and used Al Barakaat offices to transmit money, intelligence, and instructions to terrorist cells. In November of 2001, international efforts put in place long before the attacks on September 11th helped suspend operations by Al Barakaat (Zagaris, 2002, pp. 69, 71). This was a significant show of cooperation among several countries including many European countries, U.A.E., Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas.
Even before the attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda operatives on the morning of September 11, 2001, the international community saw a need to collectively suppress terrorist funding. International money laundering has been a problem for generations and the current implications of these operations on terror funding has brought new challenges to disabling these operations and a greater imperative to track down money laundering schemes. In November of 2000, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNCTOC) adopted a definition of to money laundering as the “intentional conduct of the conversion or transfer of property, knowing that such property is the proceeds of crime” for the purpose of concealing the origin of the property; or the concealment of the “true nature, source, location, disposition, movement or ownership of or the rights with respect to property, knowing that such property is the proceeds of crime” (Sham, 2006, p. 380).
The renewed focus by the international community to stop this transfer of funds reached critical levels in a race to stay ahead of the money after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on 9/11. Besides the danger to personal safety and security, both money laundering and terrorism are considered vitally important problems within the international community. Many countries have since enacted their own laws to prevent the funding of terrorist activities. China, for example, enacted legislation in December of 2001 that amended the criminal law of China. It extended the crime of money laundering to include a fourth category covering terrorist activities. It has also increased the penalty of serious cases of money laundering which involved the units or persons directly in charge or responsible to a sentence of at least five years imprisonment to a maximum of ten years imprisonment (Sham, 2006, p. 393). Money laundering basically did not exist before China opened up its economy in 1978, but the country has found many ways to curb the activities by increasing penalties and setting up departments to detect and stop operations at the earliest stages.
In the United States, even before 9/11, banks and other financial institutions have been required to report large monetary transactions. The primary method of doing this is the Suspicious Activity Report. The SAR is a tool that banks use to report any transaction that “has no business or apparent lawful purpose or is not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage.” Unfortunately, since this is basically a judgment call, authorities are inundated with so much paperwork that there is just no way to monitor all of it effectively (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 62). Efforts have been made to open up the flow of information among agencies, allowing more regulated and required sharing of intelligence across multiple industries and government organizations. A newer Patriot Act law also prohibits anonymous account holders and prevents American banks and finical firms from accepting money for so-called shell banks. These are banks established at offshore island locations expressly for covering up the identity of account holders and to escape the watchful eye of federal overseers. The law also blocks U.S. banks from accepted bundled deposits from numerous different sources because this makes it impossible to distinguish legally obtained funds from criminal funds. Another important but little noted policy now requires that high-end businesses ranging from Mercedes dealers to Tiffany’s are also subject to federal reporting of transactions in excess of $10,000 (Malkin & Elizur, p. 62). This information must be shared upon request with other agencies fighting money laundering and terrorism and can no longer be held by the Internal Revenue Service. All anti-money laundering efforts currently fall under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Enforcement Division.
The success of anti-money laundering operations, laws, and activities depends not only on individual countries regulating their own financial activities, but also on an international level of oversight on global trade and banking. On a larger international level, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Financial Action Task Force (OECD/FATF), the World Bank, the International Money Fund (IMF), and Interpol are all working to create and enforce legislation by member nations to cut off terrorism where it has the most impact, financially (Shehu, 2005, p. 221). By strengthening international cooperation, the goal is to prevent the flow of money to terrorist organizations. This combined multi-national partnership works in conjunction with implementing the universal criminalization of money-laundering, increased efforts to trace, freeze, and confiscate proceeds of illegal activity, and the application of regulatory tools to thwart the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering (Arnone & Borlini, 2010, p. 240).
In July of 2010, President Barak Obama signed into law the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd-Frank Act). This legislation covers many financial policies, but most relevant to federal oversight of anti-money laundering procedures is the Private Fund Investment Advisors Registration Act of 2010 (Private Fund Act) which brings investment advisors who manage private funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, and real estate funds under the same type of reporting and record-keeping requirements as companies currently registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). (Reider-Gordon , 2011, p. 365).
Put into action in July of 2011, the Private Fund Act requires that SEC-governed registrants will now have to provide evidence that they are complying with current legislation to write and implement anti-money laundering policies and monitoring programs. The new regulations add an extra layer of coverage on top of existing compliance programs already in place.
While these new laws affect the way banks and financial institutions in the United States do business, other countries are also enacting their own policies, procedures, and legislation to combat money laundering within their own borders and also to regulate how they do business with the United States and other nations. The United Kingdom recently began implementing the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010 (the Bribery Act), which went into effect in April of 2011. The Bribery Act impacts not only U.K. companies, but also financial institutions and companies in the U.S. The Act demands that financial institutions have a duty to disclose funds deposited and being held in their institutions that may have resulted from bribes. Although it is not mandatory for an institution or company to disclose the actual act of bribery itself, if bribery money flowed through a company and the bank failed to report it, the company would in all likelihood prompt the money laundering act and the Bribery Act to go into effect (Reider-Gordon, 2011, p. 370). This is significant to anti-money laundering measures because under United Kingdom financial law, money laundering offenses are inclusive with any type of property derived from criminal conduct such as drug trafficking or dealing in stolen goods. Therefore, if an act of bribery has occurred, there is a great likelihood that some form of money laundering of the profits from the bribery has taken place as well and companies will be held responsible. This responsibility will be extended to include bankers, accountants, and financial investment advisors who will now have the additional risk of being prosecuted for failure to report instances to the authorities where they suspect or should have suspected money laundering by their clients (Reider-Gordon, p. 370).
Australia has also made several amendments anti-money laundering legislation concerning customer identification. Specifically, three new chapters were added to the anti-money laundering (AML) / counter-terrorism funding (CTF) laws. One of them addresses the possibility that other sections of the AML/CTF Rules may not be possible under certain special circumstances, such as with stockbrokers, where “the transaction may have to occur before customer identification procedures can be accomplished due to the speed of market conditions and demands” (Reider-Gordon , 2011, p. 368). Financial institutions may now have up to five days after the transaction to identify the customer and report it through the proper channels. Another new law, Chapter 48, simplifies reporting regulations that state that the "reporting entities that provide salary packaging administrative services for an employer client," do not need to be included if the transaction does not consist of "physical currency" (Reider-Gordon , 2011, p. 368).
There are many who argue that the international efforts that are currently in use are too slow and insufficient to actually prevent terrorism (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 64). The benefit of the legislation is in catching the perpetrators of money laundering only after the fact. While it is critical to the fight against terrorism to cutoff the terrorists’ financial lifelines, the most critical of which is monetary funding, it is very difficult to track money that will be used for future attacks or training. This would require a fair amount of guess work and the increasingly difficult art of staying ahead of the money as it comes through countless different channels and from multiple individual sources. Creating the proper infrastructure to undertake any counter-terrorism financing enforcement requires that law enforcement officials be prepared to deal with enforcing financial law, to be experienced in financial enforcement, and to be very knowledgeable about terrorism and money-laundering activities (Zagaris, 2002, p. 55). Cooperation with worldwide law enforcement officials is also key, as well as intelligence sharing among jurisdictions and across international borders.
This post has touched only briefly on a very complex issue that will not likely be solved anytime soon, but has highlighted efforts to combat the money laundering schemes that have been funding terrorist organization and propagating deadly attacks on foreign and domestic ground. Defining the process of money laundering is simple. It is the untangling of the multi-layered financial processes that the United States, European countries, and the rest of the world must struggle to do to track down these criminal operatives before they get a chance to build wealth. The United States has been deeply affected by deadly terrorist attacks on our own soil and on our citizens abroad; but we must not forget that many other countries face similar attacks and threats not only from Islamic extremist organizations such as Al Qaeda, but from other smaller terrorist groups. Money laundering to fund these terrorist activities is something that can be targeted by every nation to prevent a mass build-up of terrorist forces. Excellent relations with federal and state officials in our counterpart foreign law enforcement agencies, including the Financial Investigative Unit (FIU) found in most countries that are responsible for conducting anti-money laundering investigations and prosecutions, are useful to combat the funding of terrorist organizations (Zagaris, 2002, p. 55). International cooperation has always been important to ensure we manage criminal activity even within our own borders and will continue to be critical in the war on terror.
35(4), 437-463.
Arnone, M., & Borlini, L. (2010). International Anti-Money Laundering Programs:
Empirical Assessment and Issues in Criminal Regulation. Journal of Money
Laundering Control, 13(3), 226-271.
Chatain, P. (2004). The World Bank's Role in the Fight against Money Laundering and
Terrorist Financing. International Law FORUM du Droit International, 6(3/4), 190-
193.
Lyden, G. A. (2003). The International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist
Financing Act of 2001: Congress Wears a Blindfold While Giving Money
Laundering Legislation a Facelift. Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law,
8(1), 201-243.
Malkin, L., & Elizur, Y. (2002). Terrorism's Money Trail. World Policy Journal, 19(1), 60-
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Reider-Gordon, M. (2011). U.S. and International Anti-money Laundering
Developments. The International Lawyer, 45(1), 365-379.
Russel, P. S. (2004). Money Laundering: A Global Challenge. Journal of American
Academy of Business, Cambridge, 5(1/2), 259-265.
Sham, A. (2006). Money Laundering Laws and Regulations: China and Hong Kong.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 9(4), 379-400.
Shehu, A. Y. (2005). International Initiatives against Corruption and Money Laundering:
An Overview. Journal of Financial Crime, 12(3), 221-245.
Shelley, L. I., & Picarelli, J. T. (2005). Methods and Motives: Exploring Links between
This post will begin by defining money laundering, as well as explain terrorism funding before briefly exploring the origins of terror funding and the early efforts by the international community to stem the flow of terrorism money after 9/11. It will explore the way several nations, including the United States and Great Britain, are fighting money laundering to prevent the flow of cash to terrorist organizations and to stop the flow of money from illegal criminal operations into the coffers of terrorist organizations worldwide. The research will also include an exploration of the new and developing efforts in anti-money-laundering efforts.
Money laundering is a process of disguising profits from some sort of criminal activity, such as drug smuggling, human trafficking, or illegal commodity exporting, by concealing their origins and funneling them into legitimate accounts or products. When done effectively, the true source of the money – some type of criminal activity- is hidden (Chatain, 2004, p. 190). Accomplished in three stages, money laundering is first begun by placement. This refers to the dumping of illegal funds, either within the local economy or in the foreign market through placing the funds in a domestic or off-shore financial institution. It can also be used to purchase luxury goods such as paintings, real estate or precious metals or, in simpler times, carried on flight to a foreign destination. If goods are purchased, they are resold to gain payment through legitimate checks or wire transfers. Proceeds from illegal activities can also be converted to negotiable instruments, such as cashier's checks, money orders, or traveler's checks. Obvious obstacles stand in the way of simply depositing money, however, primarily when it concerns the United States. Provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 require that financial institutions file a Currency Transaction Report when a person carries out one or more cash transactions in a single day which involve, in total, over $10,000. The Act also requires reporting when transactions valuing $10,000 or more are transported into or out of the United States (Lyden, 2003, pp. 205-207). The placement stage of money laundering is the most risky for criminals, because it involves the greatest likelihood of detection.
The second step is called layering, the purpose of which is to convolute the source of monetary funds through an intricate web of transactions that will further disguise any audit trails. This is often done through a series of wire transfers into different accounts, through trading in financial markets, or by transferring funds to offshore "shell" corporations that have been carefully established so as to conceal the identity of the owner. The Bahamas, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong, are frequently chosen for such schemes because they have lenient bank reporting laws (Lyden, 2003, p. 207).
The final stage of money laundering combines all of the illegal funds and allows the criminals free access to these funds. This step, called integration, is frequently established through obtaining loans from shell corporations or by exploiting bank privacy laws of some countries to use the deposits as collateral to obtain more loans (Russel, 2004, p. 260). This final phase returns the laundered money into expendable funds for the criminals typically to use in further criminal activities or to invest in legitimate businesses that continue to support organized crime. At this point, the money is usually safe from detection by authorities, because it has traveled through a sufficient number channels as to make it virtually untraceable. According to Malkin & Elizur, money that has been laundered is quite easy to find, but the trail to connect it to terrorist money is a long and difficult process. They state “[m]oney-laundering authorities follow the trail to a legal account from dirty money earned by drugs, prostitution, extortion, payoffs, or corruption on a grand scale” and then the resulting paper trail is followed to the account holder who is prosecuted for the crimes (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 64). The push towards globalization has increased the flow of capital across borders and created a greater need to monitor possible money laundering schemes, particularly those that put money into the hands of terrorist organizations.
Terrorist funding or terrorism financing refers to any type of monetary support of terrorism or terrorist activities (Chatain, 2004, p. 190). This funding was destined to be connected to money laundering. In the early 1990s, some experts predicted the convergence of international terrorism and transnational organized crime. This indeed took place when terrorists simply imitated the criminal behavior, borrowed techniques from money launderers, such as credit card fraud, that is referred to as” activity appropriation” which can lead to more close connections between terrorists and professional criminals within a short time (Shelley & Picarelli, 2005, pp. 52-54). Without the large-scale funding gained through criminal operations such as drug running, operations and training for would-be terrorist events are much more difficult to carry out. Criminal activities in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina alone generate as much as 261 million dollars annually to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad operations (Shelley & Picarelli, 2005, p. 65). Organized crime as a primary funding source for terrorism exists across the globe, from Russia, to Indonesia, South Africa, and beyond. Money laundering has become a highly sophisticated operation in itself to cover-up these criminal sources of terror funding.
Although laundering money through banks and other financial institutions, as well as through the sale and transfer of goods, was previously mentioned in detail this multi-layered, complex system is not the only way that terrorist cells are being funded. Money often moves through money transfer businesses such as Western Union and local storefronts called hawalas (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 65). Money is transferred in small amounts so as not to be detected. Funds sent by usual, law-abiding customers, namely workers from India, Europe, and North America who send money home to their families, are indistinguishable from criminals sending money to terrorist organizations. At the hawalas, customers bring the cash that they want to send and they receive a receipt in return. The store manager faxes a code word to a trusted associate overseas, and the office there pays when the receiver shows up with the code word. This type of money transfer system has been around for centuries. In nineteenth century England, the Rothschild family banks worked much the same way. Any faxed evidence of these transfers is quickly destroyed, although papers found in Al Qaeda’s Kabul offices after the Taliban were chased from the Afghan capital implicated that cell in funding the October 12, 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Yemen. Still the cost of this entire operation was only $10,000 – an insignificant amount that easily flew under the radar of any federal regulations on the reporting on money transfers (Malkin & Elizur, pp. 64-65).
One of the most notorious organizations that operate these types of money transfer services is Al Barakaat, a telecommunications and financial company in Somalia. Suspicion surrounds its owner and founder Shaykh Ahme Nur Jimale, whom the United States believes was connected to Osama bin Laden and used Al Barakaat offices to transmit money, intelligence, and instructions to terrorist cells. In November of 2001, international efforts put in place long before the attacks on September 11th helped suspend operations by Al Barakaat (Zagaris, 2002, pp. 69, 71). This was a significant show of cooperation among several countries including many European countries, U.A.E., Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas.
Even before the attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda operatives on the morning of September 11, 2001, the international community saw a need to collectively suppress terrorist funding. International money laundering has been a problem for generations and the current implications of these operations on terror funding has brought new challenges to disabling these operations and a greater imperative to track down money laundering schemes. In November of 2000, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNCTOC) adopted a definition of to money laundering as the “intentional conduct of the conversion or transfer of property, knowing that such property is the proceeds of crime” for the purpose of concealing the origin of the property; or the concealment of the “true nature, source, location, disposition, movement or ownership of or the rights with respect to property, knowing that such property is the proceeds of crime” (Sham, 2006, p. 380).
The renewed focus by the international community to stop this transfer of funds reached critical levels in a race to stay ahead of the money after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on 9/11. Besides the danger to personal safety and security, both money laundering and terrorism are considered vitally important problems within the international community. Many countries have since enacted their own laws to prevent the funding of terrorist activities. China, for example, enacted legislation in December of 2001 that amended the criminal law of China. It extended the crime of money laundering to include a fourth category covering terrorist activities. It has also increased the penalty of serious cases of money laundering which involved the units or persons directly in charge or responsible to a sentence of at least five years imprisonment to a maximum of ten years imprisonment (Sham, 2006, p. 393). Money laundering basically did not exist before China opened up its economy in 1978, but the country has found many ways to curb the activities by increasing penalties and setting up departments to detect and stop operations at the earliest stages.
In the United States, even before 9/11, banks and other financial institutions have been required to report large monetary transactions. The primary method of doing this is the Suspicious Activity Report. The SAR is a tool that banks use to report any transaction that “has no business or apparent lawful purpose or is not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage.” Unfortunately, since this is basically a judgment call, authorities are inundated with so much paperwork that there is just no way to monitor all of it effectively (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 62). Efforts have been made to open up the flow of information among agencies, allowing more regulated and required sharing of intelligence across multiple industries and government organizations. A newer Patriot Act law also prohibits anonymous account holders and prevents American banks and finical firms from accepting money for so-called shell banks. These are banks established at offshore island locations expressly for covering up the identity of account holders and to escape the watchful eye of federal overseers. The law also blocks U.S. banks from accepted bundled deposits from numerous different sources because this makes it impossible to distinguish legally obtained funds from criminal funds. Another important but little noted policy now requires that high-end businesses ranging from Mercedes dealers to Tiffany’s are also subject to federal reporting of transactions in excess of $10,000 (Malkin & Elizur, p. 62). This information must be shared upon request with other agencies fighting money laundering and terrorism and can no longer be held by the Internal Revenue Service. All anti-money laundering efforts currently fall under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Enforcement Division.
The success of anti-money laundering operations, laws, and activities depends not only on individual countries regulating their own financial activities, but also on an international level of oversight on global trade and banking. On a larger international level, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Financial Action Task Force (OECD/FATF), the World Bank, the International Money Fund (IMF), and Interpol are all working to create and enforce legislation by member nations to cut off terrorism where it has the most impact, financially (Shehu, 2005, p. 221). By strengthening international cooperation, the goal is to prevent the flow of money to terrorist organizations. This combined multi-national partnership works in conjunction with implementing the universal criminalization of money-laundering, increased efforts to trace, freeze, and confiscate proceeds of illegal activity, and the application of regulatory tools to thwart the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering (Arnone & Borlini, 2010, p. 240).
In July of 2010, President Barak Obama signed into law the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd-Frank Act). This legislation covers many financial policies, but most relevant to federal oversight of anti-money laundering procedures is the Private Fund Investment Advisors Registration Act of 2010 (Private Fund Act) which brings investment advisors who manage private funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, and real estate funds under the same type of reporting and record-keeping requirements as companies currently registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). (Reider-Gordon , 2011, p. 365).
Put into action in July of 2011, the Private Fund Act requires that SEC-governed registrants will now have to provide evidence that they are complying with current legislation to write and implement anti-money laundering policies and monitoring programs. The new regulations add an extra layer of coverage on top of existing compliance programs already in place.
While these new laws affect the way banks and financial institutions in the United States do business, other countries are also enacting their own policies, procedures, and legislation to combat money laundering within their own borders and also to regulate how they do business with the United States and other nations. The United Kingdom recently began implementing the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010 (the Bribery Act), which went into effect in April of 2011. The Bribery Act impacts not only U.K. companies, but also financial institutions and companies in the U.S. The Act demands that financial institutions have a duty to disclose funds deposited and being held in their institutions that may have resulted from bribes. Although it is not mandatory for an institution or company to disclose the actual act of bribery itself, if bribery money flowed through a company and the bank failed to report it, the company would in all likelihood prompt the money laundering act and the Bribery Act to go into effect (Reider-Gordon, 2011, p. 370). This is significant to anti-money laundering measures because under United Kingdom financial law, money laundering offenses are inclusive with any type of property derived from criminal conduct such as drug trafficking or dealing in stolen goods. Therefore, if an act of bribery has occurred, there is a great likelihood that some form of money laundering of the profits from the bribery has taken place as well and companies will be held responsible. This responsibility will be extended to include bankers, accountants, and financial investment advisors who will now have the additional risk of being prosecuted for failure to report instances to the authorities where they suspect or should have suspected money laundering by their clients (Reider-Gordon, p. 370).
Australia has also made several amendments anti-money laundering legislation concerning customer identification. Specifically, three new chapters were added to the anti-money laundering (AML) / counter-terrorism funding (CTF) laws. One of them addresses the possibility that other sections of the AML/CTF Rules may not be possible under certain special circumstances, such as with stockbrokers, where “the transaction may have to occur before customer identification procedures can be accomplished due to the speed of market conditions and demands” (Reider-Gordon , 2011, p. 368). Financial institutions may now have up to five days after the transaction to identify the customer and report it through the proper channels. Another new law, Chapter 48, simplifies reporting regulations that state that the "reporting entities that provide salary packaging administrative services for an employer client," do not need to be included if the transaction does not consist of "physical currency" (Reider-Gordon , 2011, p. 368).
There are many who argue that the international efforts that are currently in use are too slow and insufficient to actually prevent terrorism (Malkin & Elizur, 2002, p. 64). The benefit of the legislation is in catching the perpetrators of money laundering only after the fact. While it is critical to the fight against terrorism to cutoff the terrorists’ financial lifelines, the most critical of which is monetary funding, it is very difficult to track money that will be used for future attacks or training. This would require a fair amount of guess work and the increasingly difficult art of staying ahead of the money as it comes through countless different channels and from multiple individual sources. Creating the proper infrastructure to undertake any counter-terrorism financing enforcement requires that law enforcement officials be prepared to deal with enforcing financial law, to be experienced in financial enforcement, and to be very knowledgeable about terrorism and money-laundering activities (Zagaris, 2002, p. 55). Cooperation with worldwide law enforcement officials is also key, as well as intelligence sharing among jurisdictions and across international borders.
This post has touched only briefly on a very complex issue that will not likely be solved anytime soon, but has highlighted efforts to combat the money laundering schemes that have been funding terrorist organization and propagating deadly attacks on foreign and domestic ground. Defining the process of money laundering is simple. It is the untangling of the multi-layered financial processes that the United States, European countries, and the rest of the world must struggle to do to track down these criminal operatives before they get a chance to build wealth. The United States has been deeply affected by deadly terrorist attacks on our own soil and on our citizens abroad; but we must not forget that many other countries face similar attacks and threats not only from Islamic extremist organizations such as Al Qaeda, but from other smaller terrorist groups. Money laundering to fund these terrorist activities is something that can be targeted by every nation to prevent a mass build-up of terrorist forces. Excellent relations with federal and state officials in our counterpart foreign law enforcement agencies, including the Financial Investigative Unit (FIU) found in most countries that are responsible for conducting anti-money laundering investigations and prosecutions, are useful to combat the funding of terrorist organizations (Zagaris, 2002, p. 55). International cooperation has always been important to ensure we manage criminal activity even within our own borders and will continue to be critical in the war on terror.
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Friday, May 25, 2012
Modus Operandi versus Signature in Criminal Profiling
The emerging field of criminal profiling is often portrayed as exciting, fast-paced, and glamorous in the sensationalized stories we see on television and in Hollywood movies. From the brilliant and almost clairvoyant FBI profiler Will Graham in Thomas Harris’ novel, Red Dragon, who catches the infamous Hannibal Lecter, to the always fashionable team from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit portrayed on CBS’s Criminal Minds, profilers seem to intuitively know every move that a serial killer makes, up to and including what they had for breakfast the day of the murder. Of course, real-life investigations are hardly ever that simple. During the course of police investigations, many aspects of forensic psychology, criminology, and crime theory are used to identify suspects of violent crime. Criminal profilers use the behavioral details found at the crime scene to develop a picture of what type of person could have committed the offence to narrow down the pool of possible suspects. Rather than identifying any particular person as the perpetrator, profilers look at the physical evidence not for DNA or fingerprints, but to read the clues left behind to understand the motivations of the offender and develop an outline of the particular personality type who could have carried out the crime (Torres, Boccaccini, & Miller, 2006, p. 51). Two of the most basic characteristics of quantifiable behavioral actions in the field of criminal profiling are the method of operation, or modus operandi (MO), and offender signature. Although these two things are often used interchangeably in the media, effective investigations of violent, serial crime should be conducted with a thorough understanding of the differences between these concepts, as well as how they complement each other. This paper will focus on defining modus operandi and offender signature and exploring the differences between them, followed by an analysis of the use of both of these concepts during violent crime investigations, as well as their application to fulfilling the goals of criminal profiling.
Over the last decade or so, there has been a notable rise in public interest of criminal investigations. Due in part to the growing popularity of police dramas on television and the creation cable channels such as Investigation Discovery, which focuses on violent crime investigation, people are now more aware then ever of the processes involved in police work. Unfortunately, many misconceptions arise out of the need to sensationalize television. Terms like “psychological criminal profiling,” “MO,” and “signature analysis” often get thrown around inaccurately, leaving the general public, and often police officers themselves, with the wrong impression of what these terms mean in relation to a criminal investigation. Modus operandi (MO), Latin for “method of operation,” is the manner in which a crime is carried out. It is the description of all of the behaviors and actions that are necessary for a particular offender to successfully commit his or her crime (Turvey, 2012, p.334). As such, it is also all of things that someone does during the commission of their crime to ensure that they will not be identified or caught. In sum, according to Turvey, a person’s MO serves three general purposes: protection of offender identity, successful completion of the crime, and facilitation of offender escape (p. 336). It doesn’t tell criminal investigators about someone’s motivations, but rather simply about their actions. In this way it is the concrete evidence at a crime scene.
When attempting to link several similar cases together, MO has great significance to investigators. Identifying the similarities among methods of operation is a critical step in crime scene analysis that provides the “resulting correlation that connects cases” (Douglas & Munn, 1992, p. 3). An offender’s MO can be simple or highly complex depending on the degree of sophistication indicating the experience, motivation, and mental aptitude of the offender. Law enforcement analyzes the criminal behavior of an offender through his or her MO (Hazelwood & Warren, 2003, p.588). Because it can be an indicator of a criminal’s level of sophistication, the method of operation can change over time, and even vary from crime to crime depending on circumstance. A burglar may learn better ways to pick locks, may become savvier about what items have the most value, and may gain confidence committing his crime, perhaps causing him to be more thorough and spend more time at the crime scene. In the case of a sexual assault, one perpetrator for example, an 18-year-old rapist, did not use a condom during a rape and was subsequently convicted based on DNA evidence recovered from the victim. He was released after serving a seven-year sentence. He was back to his old ways within a matter of months. However, this time he wore a condom (Hazelwood & Warren, p.588). Offender MOs are dynamic and subject to change throughout the course of an offender’s criminal career. The danger of getting caught may become more or less present, causing an evolution of methodology and technique in order to evade capture. This is a result of gaining experience and knowledge, natural maturation, and perhaps education. If a perpetrator gets caught, he will learn from the mistakes he made and refine his methods so as not to have the same actions give him away a second time, such as in the case of the rapist described previously (Douglas & Munn, p. 2). Many offenders who serve time in prison also learn a lot of valuable information about how to improve their criminal conduct from their fellow prisoners. Offenders may emerge from prison as a wiser, more dangerous criminal due to the refinement of their MO during the course of their incarceration. Each stint in prison many create more sophisticated violent serial offenders. Victim response and availability plays a part in refining an offender’s MO, as well. A sexual predator may initially have trouble controlling or subduing his victims, so he may modify his methods to minimize the struggle. Pre-planning may become more involved with greater thought going into the types of weapons or ligatures he may use on the victim. Another situation which may change a perpetrator’s MO is an escalation of violence. A rapist may not initially set out to kill, but through the course of the crime, he may accidentally or purposely kill his victim to protect himself from harm or being caught. Offenders continually redesign their MO to adapt to the conditions of the crime (Douglas & Munn, p. 2). While an offender’s MO is subject to change and evolution, it does not mean that all aspects of how they operate will change. Certain actions may have served them very well in the past. Having successfully committed a crime and gotten away with it, a violent serial offender will continue to use those same actions in future crimes. Behaviors will become familiar and comfortable to a criminal; therefore they will become better at anticipating the outcomes of them (Hazelwood & Warren, p. 589).
Modus operandi is significant to a criminal profiler’s work because it provides several key pieces of information about an offender. In addition to the choices, procedures, and techniques used by violent criminal offenders, MO can also point toward a person’s particular skills or profession, both in a criminal and in a non-criminal sense. Details that indicate a deeper level of foreknowledge can also reveal if the perpetrator conducted prior surveillance of the victim or crime scene before the crime was carried out (Turvey, 2012, p. 335). Despite the obvious value in identifying an MO, criminal profilers and investigators must always be careful not to place too much weight solely on a criminal’s MO because, as previously mentioned, there is significant opportunity for an offender’s methods to change over time. Much more specific to an individual violent offender is the signature that they leave at the crime scene.
Criminal signature is the actions that have nothing to do with carrying out the crime or getting away with it. Signatures are important to the offender in a personal way. Torture, humiliation, repeated stabbing, postmortem mutilation, and the takings of souvenirs are some examples of criminal signatures. These actions are often described as the “calling card” of an offender and cover the unique combination of behaviors that emerge across two or more offenses (Hazelwood & Warren, 2003, p. 591). These actions are unique to each perpetrator and provide psychological insight into the person’s underlying motivational behavior for committing their crime. The signature aspects go beyond what is necessary to commit a violent criminal act, playing into the fantasies of the offender. Turvey (2012) describes four marks of a true criminal signature: it takes extra time to carry out then just the completion of the crime, it is unnecessary for the completion of the crime, it involves an conveyance of emotion, and it may involve the expression of fantasy (p. 344). The drive to commit violent acts is not enough to satisfy the psychological needs of the perpetrator, so they must go one step further and perform some sort of ritual with their victim and/or crime scene. The crime scene is the stage on which the violent rapist or serial killer acts out his psychological and physical fantasies. An example of signature behavior a rapist may display are acts of domination, manipulation, or control during the assault of his victim and using exceptionally vulgar or abusive language, or preparing a script for the victim to repeat. The use of excessive physical forces and the order of activities a rapist may engage in with all of his victims is also an example of signature behavior (Douglas & Munn, 1992, p.3). While a criminal’s signature may evolve over time, it will never change. Violence and degree of mutilation or degradation of the victim may escalate with each progressive crime, but the essential elements of the perpetrator’s ritual will stay consistent, as his psychological motivation for committing crimes remains unchanged. Signatures may not show up in every crime scene. Offenders may get interrupted, or decomposition of a homicide victim can erase the traces of the ritual performed during the crime. When the signature is present, though, it can provide the most valuable clues to linking several similar cases to one offender.
A specific example of the importance of an offender’s signature is the case of Nathaniel Code, Jr., who was convicted of murder in Louisiana for crimes he committed between 1984 and 1987. His MO was very different in all of his crimes, so at first it may have seemed like the crime were not committed by a single offender. In the first crime, the offender gagged his victim with a piece of material obtained at the crime scene, but brought duct tape to use on the seven other victims in the incidents. In addition, Code stabbed and slashed the first victim, whereas the victims of the other crimes were also shot and strangled. The victims ranged in age from 8 years to 74 years and included both sexes; however, all were black. He also offender took money from one crime scene, but not the other two. In this case, MO would have failed to link the crimes together. But Nathaniel Code, Jr. left his "calling card" or signature at every crime scene – the binding and killing of each victim - and thus investigators were able to link Code to all of the offenses (Douglas, & Munn, 1992, pp.2-3). This evidence was enough to convince a jury that he was the sole perpetrator at each crime scene. Testimony regarding the signature of a series of crimes is often presented in the courtroom to connect multiple crimes to the same offender (Hazelwood & Warren, 2003, p. 592). This is one of the key legal differences between MO and signature, as a criminal’s MO alone is not admissible as evidence in court.
A particular criminal’s MO is comprised of the choices and actions that help them commit their crime. It is a reflection of how the crime was committed. In contrast, a criminal’s signature indicates the offender’s motives and indicates why the person committed the crime (Turvey,2012, p. 334).The two criminal indicators are very useful when used in combination during an investigation to profile a suspect, but MOs are not usually as unique and individual as a signature. An offender’s method of operation can be thought of to be class characteristics of physical evidence at a crime scene, while the signature can be thought of to be an individual characteristic. For example, in the case of a series of rapes, MO narrows down the pool of possible suspects to sexual offenders, eliminating robbers, car thieves, and drug dealers. Signatures aspects, when present, home in a specific psyche of one individual who has expressed his individual needs and desires, his fantasies. The recurring patterns that conform to the particular style of a serial sexual offender found at multiple crime scenes point to the crucial role of fantasy in these crimes. The MO of serial crimes may adapt and change as the perpetrator becomes more experienced, but the fantasy that drives these behaviors is static and unchanging from crime to crime. It is this fantasy that represents the serial offender’s signature. Psychologically speaking, it serves the function to replay childhood trauma into a scenario where the perpetrator has control over the situation in order to bring conquer to their mental distress (Kocsis, 2006, p. 78). The subtle elements of a signature behavior may change over time, but the underlying core features will never change.
One of the most well-know and studied cases of serial murders is that of Jack the Ripper. Between 1888 and 1891, 11 female victims were murdered in the Whitechapel area of London, England. One of reasons for the fascination with his crimes is that no suspect was ever been tried or convicted. Although there is much debate about which and how many of the murders can be linked to one individual, many experts agree that at least five of the victims can definitively be tied to one killer. Because of the interest in the Whitechaple murders, there is a great deal of evidence and information available about Jack the Ripper’s crimes and it provides an excellent case study on MO versus signature. The MO of the Whitechaple killer changed from one murder to the next as the perpetrator learned more effective techniques. The actions that went above and beyond what were necessary to kill the victims were the unique criminal signature of Jack the Ripper. It is the combination of those signature behaviors that several of the victims can be linked to one offender (Keppel, Weis, Brown, & Welch, 2005, pp. 19-20).
Since a serial offender’s modus operandi can and often does change, it is not the most useful method of linking cases together. Looking instead at the criminal’s repeated ritualistic behaviors at the crime scene is often more important in connecting several crimes to the same person than considering only his criminal techniques (Schlesinger, 2009, p. 82). More consideration should be given to a crime scene’s signature aspect than victim similarities, as well, although victim characteristics should never be discounted completely when attempting to link cases to a single serial criminal. A perpetrator of violent serial crime expresses emotions and anger through rituals, not by attacking a particular type of victim who possesses specific characteristics or traits (Douglas & Munn, 1992, p. 5). Douglas and Munn provide an example of the differences between modus operandi and signature in the cases of two bank robberies. A robber in Michigan made the bank tellers undress during the robbery. Another bank robber in Texas also forced tellers to undress, but he also made them pose in sexually provocative positions while he took pictures. The robber in the Michigan case used an efficient technique to offer him more time to escape - the tellers needed to dress before they called the police. The tellers offered vague descriptions of the perpetrator because their embarrassment prevented them from making eye contact with the robber. The Michigan robber used a smart MO. However, in the Texas case, the robber went a step beyond the necessary steps to effectively commit his crime. He made the tellers act out his fantasy by posing for photographs; that was his signature. The bank robbery along did not satisfy his psychological sexual needs (p. 5). Using MO and signature behavior to connect several cases to the same perpetrator is called case linkage. Case linkage is a critical part of the investigative process. Criminal profilers engage in both inductive and deductive criminal analysis to compile the most accurate picture of the perpetrator of violent crimes.
One goal of criminal profiling is to “provide the criminal justice system with a social and psychological assessment of the offender” (Holmes & Holmes, 2009, p. 9). This initial goal narrows the scope of the investigation by identifying basic traits of the perpetrator such as race, age, education, etc. This will provide law enforcement with a profile of the suspect they should be looking for. The second goal is to give investigators a “psychological evaluation of belongings found in the possession of the offender” (Holmes & Holmes, p. 10). What this can provide is a list of particular items that law enforcement officials should look for when they have found the person who they believe is the perpetrator of the crime. Souvenirs, photos, and fetish items can serve to confirm that the personality or behavior type of the suspect matches that of the proposed profile. The third and final goal of criminal profiling provided by Holmes and Holmes is to “provide interview suggestions and strategies” (p. 11). To conduct a successful criminal profile, one must look at all of the information available regarding the crime scene, the victim, the forensic evidence, and the details of the commission of the crime. This where case linkage is most valuable and the use of MO and signature aspects come into play. An inductive criminal assessment compares the similarities that exist between crimes to make the basic assumption that people who commit certain crimes in certain ways share characteristics with criminal who have committed similar crimes in similar ways. This is an example of an offender’s MO. As previously mentioned, an individual gains more experience and confidence with his crimes so his techniques will change to increase his efficiency and therefore an individual’s MO often changes over time (Schlesinger, 2009, p. 78). Because of this, using a criminal’s MO is not useful on its own to linking a series of crimes to the same offender. In this way, the inductive criminal assessment may not be adequate to follow the work of a single offender over the course of their crimes. Alternately, a deductive criminal investigative assessment will take into account a variety of factors that lie behind an offender’s motivation to commit a crime. This is marked by his signature, that unique manner in which he commits his crimes (Holmes & Holmes, p. 48). A deductive criminal assessment will factor in the physical and emotional characteristics of the crime to develop a more accurate offender profile of a single killer. In one example of an early case of a deductive analysis, was the case of the “Mad Bomber” who struck New York City in the mid 1950s and went undetected for almost 16 years. The New York Police Department finally sought out the services of psychiatrist James Brussel to examine all of the evidence including letters the offender had sent to the police, crime scene photographs, and descriptions of the home-made bombs. Brussel concluded that the individual they were looking for was “… a heavy man. Middle age. Foreign born. Roman Catholic. Single. Lives with a brother or sister. When you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned.” (Schlesinger, pp. 74-75). His assessment led to the capture of George Metesky, who fit Brussel’s profile down to last detail of the buttoned suit. Brussel had used a series of deductive reasoning to develop his profile. Instead of evaluating the mental health of a given person, he simply worked backwards from the information he was given (Schlesinger, pp. 74-75) Here, instead of looking at just the methods with which Metesky carried out the bombings, Brussel delved deeper into the signature aspects of the crimes that allowed for an evaluation of the psychological motivational factors behind the crimes. This type of deductive criminal analysis work is typically done by mental health professionals who are better trained to make assumptions about possible offenders based on their behaviors and motivations. On the other hand, inductive criminal assessments are often done by police investigators who examine the actions carried out during a crime to compare them to other known criminal acts.
While both MO and signature offer valuable insight to the personality of a criminal, the signature is a much more unique personal identifier. A well-trained criminal profiler will consider both the methods used to carry out the crime and underlying motivations that show up in the perpetrator’s signature behaviors. By using both inductive and deductive criminal assessment techniques, crime investigators can bring all of the pieces of the crime scene puzzle to achieve a successful criminal personality profile and hopefully provide an accurate suspect for serial crimes.
and Staging. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, February, 1-10.
Hazelwood, R. R., & Warren, J. I. (2003). Linkage Analysis: Modus Operandi, Ritual, and
Signature in Serial Sexual Crime. Aggression & Violent Behavior, 8(6), 587.
Holmes, R. M., & Holmes, S. T. (2009). Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool (4th
Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Keppel, R. D., Weis, J. G., Brown, K. M., & Welch, K. (2005). The Jack the Ripper Murders: A
Modus Operandi and Signature Analysis of the 1888–1891 Whitechapel Murders.
Journal Of Investigative Psychology & Offender Profiling, 2(1), 1-21.
Kocsis, R.N. (2006) Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
Schlesinger, L. B. (2009). Psychological Profiling: Investigative Implications from Crime
Scene Analysis. Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 37(1), 73-84.
Torres, A. N., Boccaccini, M. T., & Miller, H. A. (2006). Perceptions of the Validity and Utility of
Criminal Profiling among Forensic Psychologists and Psychiatrists. Professional
Psychology: Research and Practice, 37(1), 51-58.
Turvey, Brent E. (2012). Criminal Profiling : An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis.
Burlington, MA: Academic Press.
Over the last decade or so, there has been a notable rise in public interest of criminal investigations. Due in part to the growing popularity of police dramas on television and the creation cable channels such as Investigation Discovery, which focuses on violent crime investigation, people are now more aware then ever of the processes involved in police work. Unfortunately, many misconceptions arise out of the need to sensationalize television. Terms like “psychological criminal profiling,” “MO,” and “signature analysis” often get thrown around inaccurately, leaving the general public, and often police officers themselves, with the wrong impression of what these terms mean in relation to a criminal investigation. Modus operandi (MO), Latin for “method of operation,” is the manner in which a crime is carried out. It is the description of all of the behaviors and actions that are necessary for a particular offender to successfully commit his or her crime (Turvey, 2012, p.334). As such, it is also all of things that someone does during the commission of their crime to ensure that they will not be identified or caught. In sum, according to Turvey, a person’s MO serves three general purposes: protection of offender identity, successful completion of the crime, and facilitation of offender escape (p. 336). It doesn’t tell criminal investigators about someone’s motivations, but rather simply about their actions. In this way it is the concrete evidence at a crime scene.
When attempting to link several similar cases together, MO has great significance to investigators. Identifying the similarities among methods of operation is a critical step in crime scene analysis that provides the “resulting correlation that connects cases” (Douglas & Munn, 1992, p. 3). An offender’s MO can be simple or highly complex depending on the degree of sophistication indicating the experience, motivation, and mental aptitude of the offender. Law enforcement analyzes the criminal behavior of an offender through his or her MO (Hazelwood & Warren, 2003, p.588). Because it can be an indicator of a criminal’s level of sophistication, the method of operation can change over time, and even vary from crime to crime depending on circumstance. A burglar may learn better ways to pick locks, may become savvier about what items have the most value, and may gain confidence committing his crime, perhaps causing him to be more thorough and spend more time at the crime scene. In the case of a sexual assault, one perpetrator for example, an 18-year-old rapist, did not use a condom during a rape and was subsequently convicted based on DNA evidence recovered from the victim. He was released after serving a seven-year sentence. He was back to his old ways within a matter of months. However, this time he wore a condom (Hazelwood & Warren, p.588). Offender MOs are dynamic and subject to change throughout the course of an offender’s criminal career. The danger of getting caught may become more or less present, causing an evolution of methodology and technique in order to evade capture. This is a result of gaining experience and knowledge, natural maturation, and perhaps education. If a perpetrator gets caught, he will learn from the mistakes he made and refine his methods so as not to have the same actions give him away a second time, such as in the case of the rapist described previously (Douglas & Munn, p. 2). Many offenders who serve time in prison also learn a lot of valuable information about how to improve their criminal conduct from their fellow prisoners. Offenders may emerge from prison as a wiser, more dangerous criminal due to the refinement of their MO during the course of their incarceration. Each stint in prison many create more sophisticated violent serial offenders. Victim response and availability plays a part in refining an offender’s MO, as well. A sexual predator may initially have trouble controlling or subduing his victims, so he may modify his methods to minimize the struggle. Pre-planning may become more involved with greater thought going into the types of weapons or ligatures he may use on the victim. Another situation which may change a perpetrator’s MO is an escalation of violence. A rapist may not initially set out to kill, but through the course of the crime, he may accidentally or purposely kill his victim to protect himself from harm or being caught. Offenders continually redesign their MO to adapt to the conditions of the crime (Douglas & Munn, p. 2). While an offender’s MO is subject to change and evolution, it does not mean that all aspects of how they operate will change. Certain actions may have served them very well in the past. Having successfully committed a crime and gotten away with it, a violent serial offender will continue to use those same actions in future crimes. Behaviors will become familiar and comfortable to a criminal; therefore they will become better at anticipating the outcomes of them (Hazelwood & Warren, p. 589).
Modus operandi is significant to a criminal profiler’s work because it provides several key pieces of information about an offender. In addition to the choices, procedures, and techniques used by violent criminal offenders, MO can also point toward a person’s particular skills or profession, both in a criminal and in a non-criminal sense. Details that indicate a deeper level of foreknowledge can also reveal if the perpetrator conducted prior surveillance of the victim or crime scene before the crime was carried out (Turvey, 2012, p. 335). Despite the obvious value in identifying an MO, criminal profilers and investigators must always be careful not to place too much weight solely on a criminal’s MO because, as previously mentioned, there is significant opportunity for an offender’s methods to change over time. Much more specific to an individual violent offender is the signature that they leave at the crime scene.
Criminal signature is the actions that have nothing to do with carrying out the crime or getting away with it. Signatures are important to the offender in a personal way. Torture, humiliation, repeated stabbing, postmortem mutilation, and the takings of souvenirs are some examples of criminal signatures. These actions are often described as the “calling card” of an offender and cover the unique combination of behaviors that emerge across two or more offenses (Hazelwood & Warren, 2003, p. 591). These actions are unique to each perpetrator and provide psychological insight into the person’s underlying motivational behavior for committing their crime. The signature aspects go beyond what is necessary to commit a violent criminal act, playing into the fantasies of the offender. Turvey (2012) describes four marks of a true criminal signature: it takes extra time to carry out then just the completion of the crime, it is unnecessary for the completion of the crime, it involves an conveyance of emotion, and it may involve the expression of fantasy (p. 344). The drive to commit violent acts is not enough to satisfy the psychological needs of the perpetrator, so they must go one step further and perform some sort of ritual with their victim and/or crime scene. The crime scene is the stage on which the violent rapist or serial killer acts out his psychological and physical fantasies. An example of signature behavior a rapist may display are acts of domination, manipulation, or control during the assault of his victim and using exceptionally vulgar or abusive language, or preparing a script for the victim to repeat. The use of excessive physical forces and the order of activities a rapist may engage in with all of his victims is also an example of signature behavior (Douglas & Munn, 1992, p.3). While a criminal’s signature may evolve over time, it will never change. Violence and degree of mutilation or degradation of the victim may escalate with each progressive crime, but the essential elements of the perpetrator’s ritual will stay consistent, as his psychological motivation for committing crimes remains unchanged. Signatures may not show up in every crime scene. Offenders may get interrupted, or decomposition of a homicide victim can erase the traces of the ritual performed during the crime. When the signature is present, though, it can provide the most valuable clues to linking several similar cases to one offender.
A specific example of the importance of an offender’s signature is the case of Nathaniel Code, Jr., who was convicted of murder in Louisiana for crimes he committed between 1984 and 1987. His MO was very different in all of his crimes, so at first it may have seemed like the crime were not committed by a single offender. In the first crime, the offender gagged his victim with a piece of material obtained at the crime scene, but brought duct tape to use on the seven other victims in the incidents. In addition, Code stabbed and slashed the first victim, whereas the victims of the other crimes were also shot and strangled. The victims ranged in age from 8 years to 74 years and included both sexes; however, all were black. He also offender took money from one crime scene, but not the other two. In this case, MO would have failed to link the crimes together. But Nathaniel Code, Jr. left his "calling card" or signature at every crime scene – the binding and killing of each victim - and thus investigators were able to link Code to all of the offenses (Douglas, & Munn, 1992, pp.2-3). This evidence was enough to convince a jury that he was the sole perpetrator at each crime scene. Testimony regarding the signature of a series of crimes is often presented in the courtroom to connect multiple crimes to the same offender (Hazelwood & Warren, 2003, p. 592). This is one of the key legal differences between MO and signature, as a criminal’s MO alone is not admissible as evidence in court.
A particular criminal’s MO is comprised of the choices and actions that help them commit their crime. It is a reflection of how the crime was committed. In contrast, a criminal’s signature indicates the offender’s motives and indicates why the person committed the crime (Turvey,2012, p. 334).The two criminal indicators are very useful when used in combination during an investigation to profile a suspect, but MOs are not usually as unique and individual as a signature. An offender’s method of operation can be thought of to be class characteristics of physical evidence at a crime scene, while the signature can be thought of to be an individual characteristic. For example, in the case of a series of rapes, MO narrows down the pool of possible suspects to sexual offenders, eliminating robbers, car thieves, and drug dealers. Signatures aspects, when present, home in a specific psyche of one individual who has expressed his individual needs and desires, his fantasies. The recurring patterns that conform to the particular style of a serial sexual offender found at multiple crime scenes point to the crucial role of fantasy in these crimes. The MO of serial crimes may adapt and change as the perpetrator becomes more experienced, but the fantasy that drives these behaviors is static and unchanging from crime to crime. It is this fantasy that represents the serial offender’s signature. Psychologically speaking, it serves the function to replay childhood trauma into a scenario where the perpetrator has control over the situation in order to bring conquer to their mental distress (Kocsis, 2006, p. 78). The subtle elements of a signature behavior may change over time, but the underlying core features will never change.
One of the most well-know and studied cases of serial murders is that of Jack the Ripper. Between 1888 and 1891, 11 female victims were murdered in the Whitechapel area of London, England. One of reasons for the fascination with his crimes is that no suspect was ever been tried or convicted. Although there is much debate about which and how many of the murders can be linked to one individual, many experts agree that at least five of the victims can definitively be tied to one killer. Because of the interest in the Whitechaple murders, there is a great deal of evidence and information available about Jack the Ripper’s crimes and it provides an excellent case study on MO versus signature. The MO of the Whitechaple killer changed from one murder to the next as the perpetrator learned more effective techniques. The actions that went above and beyond what were necessary to kill the victims were the unique criminal signature of Jack the Ripper. It is the combination of those signature behaviors that several of the victims can be linked to one offender (Keppel, Weis, Brown, & Welch, 2005, pp. 19-20).
Since a serial offender’s modus operandi can and often does change, it is not the most useful method of linking cases together. Looking instead at the criminal’s repeated ritualistic behaviors at the crime scene is often more important in connecting several crimes to the same person than considering only his criminal techniques (Schlesinger, 2009, p. 82). More consideration should be given to a crime scene’s signature aspect than victim similarities, as well, although victim characteristics should never be discounted completely when attempting to link cases to a single serial criminal. A perpetrator of violent serial crime expresses emotions and anger through rituals, not by attacking a particular type of victim who possesses specific characteristics or traits (Douglas & Munn, 1992, p. 5). Douglas and Munn provide an example of the differences between modus operandi and signature in the cases of two bank robberies. A robber in Michigan made the bank tellers undress during the robbery. Another bank robber in Texas also forced tellers to undress, but he also made them pose in sexually provocative positions while he took pictures. The robber in the Michigan case used an efficient technique to offer him more time to escape - the tellers needed to dress before they called the police. The tellers offered vague descriptions of the perpetrator because their embarrassment prevented them from making eye contact with the robber. The Michigan robber used a smart MO. However, in the Texas case, the robber went a step beyond the necessary steps to effectively commit his crime. He made the tellers act out his fantasy by posing for photographs; that was his signature. The bank robbery along did not satisfy his psychological sexual needs (p. 5). Using MO and signature behavior to connect several cases to the same perpetrator is called case linkage. Case linkage is a critical part of the investigative process. Criminal profilers engage in both inductive and deductive criminal analysis to compile the most accurate picture of the perpetrator of violent crimes.
One goal of criminal profiling is to “provide the criminal justice system with a social and psychological assessment of the offender” (Holmes & Holmes, 2009, p. 9). This initial goal narrows the scope of the investigation by identifying basic traits of the perpetrator such as race, age, education, etc. This will provide law enforcement with a profile of the suspect they should be looking for. The second goal is to give investigators a “psychological evaluation of belongings found in the possession of the offender” (Holmes & Holmes, p. 10). What this can provide is a list of particular items that law enforcement officials should look for when they have found the person who they believe is the perpetrator of the crime. Souvenirs, photos, and fetish items can serve to confirm that the personality or behavior type of the suspect matches that of the proposed profile. The third and final goal of criminal profiling provided by Holmes and Holmes is to “provide interview suggestions and strategies” (p. 11). To conduct a successful criminal profile, one must look at all of the information available regarding the crime scene, the victim, the forensic evidence, and the details of the commission of the crime. This where case linkage is most valuable and the use of MO and signature aspects come into play. An inductive criminal assessment compares the similarities that exist between crimes to make the basic assumption that people who commit certain crimes in certain ways share characteristics with criminal who have committed similar crimes in similar ways. This is an example of an offender’s MO. As previously mentioned, an individual gains more experience and confidence with his crimes so his techniques will change to increase his efficiency and therefore an individual’s MO often changes over time (Schlesinger, 2009, p. 78). Because of this, using a criminal’s MO is not useful on its own to linking a series of crimes to the same offender. In this way, the inductive criminal assessment may not be adequate to follow the work of a single offender over the course of their crimes. Alternately, a deductive criminal investigative assessment will take into account a variety of factors that lie behind an offender’s motivation to commit a crime. This is marked by his signature, that unique manner in which he commits his crimes (Holmes & Holmes, p. 48). A deductive criminal assessment will factor in the physical and emotional characteristics of the crime to develop a more accurate offender profile of a single killer. In one example of an early case of a deductive analysis, was the case of the “Mad Bomber” who struck New York City in the mid 1950s and went undetected for almost 16 years. The New York Police Department finally sought out the services of psychiatrist James Brussel to examine all of the evidence including letters the offender had sent to the police, crime scene photographs, and descriptions of the home-made bombs. Brussel concluded that the individual they were looking for was “… a heavy man. Middle age. Foreign born. Roman Catholic. Single. Lives with a brother or sister. When you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned.” (Schlesinger, pp. 74-75). His assessment led to the capture of George Metesky, who fit Brussel’s profile down to last detail of the buttoned suit. Brussel had used a series of deductive reasoning to develop his profile. Instead of evaluating the mental health of a given person, he simply worked backwards from the information he was given (Schlesinger, pp. 74-75) Here, instead of looking at just the methods with which Metesky carried out the bombings, Brussel delved deeper into the signature aspects of the crimes that allowed for an evaluation of the psychological motivational factors behind the crimes. This type of deductive criminal analysis work is typically done by mental health professionals who are better trained to make assumptions about possible offenders based on their behaviors and motivations. On the other hand, inductive criminal assessments are often done by police investigators who examine the actions carried out during a crime to compare them to other known criminal acts.
While both MO and signature offer valuable insight to the personality of a criminal, the signature is a much more unique personal identifier. A well-trained criminal profiler will consider both the methods used to carry out the crime and underlying motivations that show up in the perpetrator’s signature behaviors. By using both inductive and deductive criminal assessment techniques, crime investigators can bring all of the pieces of the crime scene puzzle to achieve a successful criminal personality profile and hopefully provide an accurate suspect for serial crimes.
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Douglas, J. & Munn, C. (1992). Violent Crime Scene Analysis: Modus Operandi, Signatureand Staging. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, February, 1-10.
Hazelwood, R. R., & Warren, J. I. (2003). Linkage Analysis: Modus Operandi, Ritual, and
Signature in Serial Sexual Crime. Aggression & Violent Behavior, 8(6), 587.
Holmes, R. M., & Holmes, S. T. (2009). Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool (4th
Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Keppel, R. D., Weis, J. G., Brown, K. M., & Welch, K. (2005). The Jack the Ripper Murders: A
Modus Operandi and Signature Analysis of the 1888–1891 Whitechapel Murders.
Journal Of Investigative Psychology & Offender Profiling, 2(1), 1-21.
Kocsis, R.N. (2006) Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
Schlesinger, L. B. (2009). Psychological Profiling: Investigative Implications from Crime
Scene Analysis. Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 37(1), 73-84.
Torres, A. N., Boccaccini, M. T., & Miller, H. A. (2006). Perceptions of the Validity and Utility of
Criminal Profiling among Forensic Psychologists and Psychiatrists. Professional
Psychology: Research and Practice, 37(1), 51-58.
Turvey, Brent E. (2012). Criminal Profiling : An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis.
Burlington, MA: Academic Press.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Miranda Rights and Custodial Interrogation
Fifth Amendment rights are only afforded in the case of custodial interrogation. That means if a person is in any way being held by police for the purposes of an investigation, they must be informed of their right to protection against self-incrimination. If a person is not in police custody, the so-called Miranda warnings do not have to be given. See John L. Worrall, Criminal Procedure: From First Contact to Appeal (3rd ed. 2010). There is a fine line between what constitutes police custody, and this does pose some problems in the courts. However, the precedent of Miranda is clear about the custodial interrogation issue. The ruling in Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436 ([1966]) defines the right to protection from self incrimination under the Fifth Amendment by dismissing from court record any evidence or confession obtained from“…custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination.” When the police conduct a search and an individual consents to that search, there is no act of police custody taking place. The difference is that consent searches are minimally covered by protections under the Forth Amendment rights of privacy in that once a person gives up that right to protect their personal space, no justification is needed for a search to take place. This voluntary action is what separates Fifth Amendment Miranda rights during a custodial situation, and a consent search.
In my opinion, even though the Supreme Court stated in United States v. Drayton (536 U.S. 194 [2002]) that it is “unrealistic” to expect police officers to inform people that they may deny a request for a search if they are not being detained, there is little difference expect in the semantics of the Constitutional wording. In practice, I do not think it would so an undue burden on an officer to say “you are under no obligation to consent, but may we search your vehicle?” It does seem dishonest and I believe many people may consent to searches that do incriminate themselves and there I don’t see too much of a deviance from the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment. Miranda warnings are only applicable when there is a formal action taken to detain a person. They do not have to be “under arrest,” but if at any point police hold an individual for questioning, they must give them the opportunity to protect themselves during interrogation.
In my opinion, even though the Supreme Court stated in United States v. Drayton (536 U.S. 194 [2002]) that it is “unrealistic” to expect police officers to inform people that they may deny a request for a search if they are not being detained, there is little difference expect in the semantics of the Constitutional wording. In practice, I do not think it would so an undue burden on an officer to say “you are under no obligation to consent, but may we search your vehicle?” It does seem dishonest and I believe many people may consent to searches that do incriminate themselves and there I don’t see too much of a deviance from the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment. Miranda warnings are only applicable when there is a formal action taken to detain a person. They do not have to be “under arrest,” but if at any point police hold an individual for questioning, they must give them the opportunity to protect themselves during interrogation.
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