Documents for "Crime and Law Enforcement":

• accessory in criminal law, a person who, though not present at the commission of a crime, becomes a participator in the crime either before or after the fact of commission. An accessory before the fact is...

• accomplice see accessory.

• arrest in law, seizure and detention of a person, either to bring him before a court body or official, or to otherwise secure the administration of the law. A person may be arrested for an alleged...

• arson at common law , the malicious and willful burning of the house of another. Originally, it was an offense against the security of habitation rather than against property rights. Thus, a tenant could not be...

• assault in law, an attempt or threat, going beyond mere words, to use violence, with the intent and the apparent ability to do harm to another. If violent contact actually occurs, the offense of battery has been committed; modern criminal statutes often combine assault and battery. An assault may be both a crime and a tort , for which the party assaulted may sue for damages; the victim's freedom, as to move or remain at peace, must have been impinged on. Modern criminal statutes recognize certain degrees of assault...

• assembly, unlawful see riot, rout, and unlawful assembly.

• bandit see brigandage.

• battery in criminal and tort law, the unpermitted touching of any part of the person of another, or of anything worn, carried by, or intimately associated at that moment (as a chair being sat on) with...

• Bertillon system first scientific method of criminal identification, developed by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914). The system, based on the classification of skeletal and other body...

• bigamy crime of marrying during the continuance of a lawful marriage. Bigamy is not committed if a prior marriage has been terminated by a divorce or a decree of nullity of marriage. In the United States if a husband or wife is absent and unheard of for seven (or in some states five) years and not known to be alive, he or she is presumed dead, and remarriage by the other...

• Black Hand symbol and name for a criminal and terroristic secret society, and especially associated with the Mafia and the Camorra. The Black Hand flourished in Sicily in the late 19th cent., and in the United States it was especially active in New York City at the beginning of the 20th cent. It is estimated that at one time...

• black market the selling or buying of commodities at prices above the legal ceiling or beyond the amount allotted to a customer in countries that have placed restrictions on sales and prices. Such trading was...

• blackmail in law, exaction of money from another by threat of exposure of criminal action or of disreputable conduct. The term was originally used for the tribute levied until the 18th cent. upon the inhabitants of the Scottish border to provide immunity...

• blood feud see vendetta.

• body snatching the stealing of corpses from graves and morgues. Before cadavers were legally available for dissection and study by medical students, traffic in stolen bodies was profitable. Those who engaged in...

• bootlegging in the United States, the illegal distribution or production of liquor and other highly taxed goods. First practiced when liquor taxes were high, bootlegging was instrumental in defeating early...

• borstal system rehabilitation method formerly used in Great Britain for delinquent boys aged 16 to 21. The idea originated (1895) with the Gladstone Committee as an attempt to reform young offenders. The first...

• brigandage [Ital. brigare =to fight], robbery and plundering committed by armed bands, often associated with forests or mountain regions. Social and political demoralization, economic or political oppression, and racial or...

• burglary at common law , the breaking and entering of a dwelling house of another at night with the intent to commit a felony , whether the intent is carried out or not. This definition has been generally adopted with some modifications in the criminal law of the various states of the United States. At common law burglary...

• capital punishment imposition of a penalty of death by the state.

• chain gang see convict labor.

• children, delinquent see juvenile delinquency.

• cipher see cryptography.

• coercion in law, the unlawful act of compelling a person to do, or to abstain from doing, something by depriving him of the exercise of his free will, particularly by use or threat of physical or moral...

• concentration camp a detention site outside the normal prison system created for military or political purposes to confine, terrorize, and, in some cases, kill civilians. The term was first used to describe prison...

• confession in law, the formal admission of criminal guilt, usually obtained in the course of examination by the police or prosecutor or at trial. For a confession to be admissible as evidence against an accused individual, it generally must have been procured voluntarily after the person was informed of his or her right to remain silent and right to consult an attorney (see Miranda v. Arizona ). If a confession is obtained through torture, threats, prolonged interrogation, or false promises of immunity from prosecution, it is inadmissible, but law enforcement officials may and do use...

• conspiracy in law, agreement of two or more persons to commit a criminal or otherwise unlawful act. At common law , the crime of conspiracy was committed with the making of the agreement, but present-day statutes require an overt step by a conspirator to further the conspiracy. It is not necessary for guilt...

• convict labor work of prison inmates. Until the 19th cent., labor was introduced in prisons chiefly as punishment. Such work is now considered a necessary part of the rehabilitation of the criminal; it is also...

• corporal punishment physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment ), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, mutilation, and branding. Until c.1800, in many parts of the world, most crimes were punished thus, or by such practices as confinement...

• crime see criminal law ; criminology ; gang ; juvenile delinquency ; organized crime.

• criminology the study of crime, society's response to it, and its prevention, including examination of the environmental, hereditary, or psychological causes of crime, modes of criminal investigation and...

• cryptography [Gr.,=hidden writing], science of secret writing. There are many devices by which a message can be concealed from the casual reader, e.g., invisible writing, but the term cryptography strictly...

• Dartmoor Prison English prison, at Princetown, Devonshire, built (1806-9) to house French captives during the Napoleonic Wars. During the War of 1812 many American prisoners were confined there, and their brutal...

• death penalty see capital punishment.

• delinquency, juvenile see juvenile delinquency.

• desertion in law, the forsaking of a station involving public or social duties without justification and with the intention of not returning. In military law, it is the abandonment of (or failure to arrive...

• duel prearranged armed fight with deadly weapons, usually swords or pistols, between two persons concerned with a point of honor. The duel may have originated in the wager of battle, an early mode of...

• embezzlement wrongful use, for one's own selfish ends, of the property of another when that property has been legally entrusted to one. Such an act was not larceny at common law because larceny was committed only when property was acquired by a "felonious taking," i.e., when the act was committed with respect to property that was at the time in the legal possession of the owner. Consequently, unfaithful servants, employees, agents, trustees, or guardians who...

• engrossing in English law, practice of acquiring a monopoly of goods in order to sell them at an inflated price. The offense was ordinarily limited to monopolies of foods. Related practices were forestalling,...

• entrapment in law, the instigation of a crime in the attempt to obtain cause for a criminal prosecution. Situations in which a government operative merely provides the occasion for the commission of a...

• espionage the act of obtaining information clandestinely. The term applies particularly to the act of collecting military, industrial, and political data about one nation for the benefit of another...

• extortion in law, unlawful demanding or receiving by an officer, in his official capacity, of any property or money not legally due to him. Examples include requesting and accepting fees in excess of those...

• false imprisonment complete restraint upon a person's liberty of movement without legal justification. Actual physical contact is not necessary; a show of authority or a threat of force is sufficient. The person...

• felony any grave crime, in contrast to a misdemeanor , that is so declared in statute or was so considered in common law. In early English law a felony was a heinous act that canceled the perpetrator's feudal rights and forfeited his lands and goods to the king, thus depriving his prospective heirs of their...

• feud formalized private warfare, especially between family groups. The blood feud (see vendetta ) is characteristic of those societies in which central government either has not arisen or has decayed. In modern times the feud, outlawed in most countries, has persisted where public justice...

• fingerprint an impression of the underside of the end of a finger or thumb, used for identification because the arrangement of ridges in any fingerprint is thought to be unique and permanent with each person...

• foreign agent see espionage.

• forestalling see engrossing.

• forgery in criminal law, willful fabrication or alteration of a written document with the intent to injure the interests of another in a fraudulent manner. The crime may be committed even though the...

• fraud in law, willful misrepresentation intended to deprive another of some right. The offense, generally only a tort , may also constitute the crime of false pretenses. Frauds are either actual or constructive. An actual fraud requires that the act be motivated by the desire to deceive another to his harm, while a...

• gang group of people organized for a common purpose, often criminal. Gangs of criminals were long known on the American frontier and also flourished in urban settings. Notorious were the outlaws led by Jesse James and his brother, the Sydney Ducks of San Francisco (active in the 1850s), and the Hudson Dusters of turn-of-the-century New York City. Modern criminal gangs are largely urban and highly organized...

• Gulag system of forced-labor prison camps in the USSR, from the Russian acronym [GULag] for the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps, a department of the Soviet secret police (originally the Cheka; subsequently the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MVD, and finally the KGB). The Gulag was first established under Vladimir Lenin during the early Bolshevik years (c.1920). The vast penal network, which ultimately included 476 camp complexes, functioned throughout Russia, many in the wastes of Siberia and the Soviet Far East...

• homicide in law, the taking of human life. Homicides that are neither justifiable nor excusable are considered crimes. A criminal homicide committed with malice is known as murder , otherwise it is called manslaughter. A homicide is excusable if it is the result of an accident that occurred during a lawful act and that did not amount to criminal negligence. Justifiable homicides are intentional killings done in accordance with legal obligation, or in circumstances where the law recognizes no wrong. They include the execution of criminals in some...

• hue and cry formerly, in English law, pursuit of a criminal immediately after he had committed a felony. Whoever witnessed or discovered the crime was required to raise the hue and cry against the perpetrator (e.g., call out "Stop, thief !" ) and to begin pursuit; all persons within hearing were under the same obligation, and it was a punishable offense not to join in the chase and capture. The perpetrator was promptly brought into...

• hunger strike refusal to eat as a protest against existing conditions. Although most often used by prisoners, others have also employed it. For example, Mohandas Gandhi in India and Cesar Chavez in California fasted as religious penance during otherwise political or economic disputes. An ancient device, the hunger strike was revived in England in the early 20th cent. by militant woman...

• identity theft the use of one person's personal information by another to commit fraud or other crimes. The most common forms of identity theft occur when someone obtains another person's social security number,...

• International Criminal Police Organization see Interpol.

• Interpol acronym for the International Criminal Police Organization, a worldwide clearinghouse for police information. Conceived in 1914, Interpol was formally established in 1923 with headquarters at...

• jail see prison.

• juvenile delinquency legal term for behavior of children and adolescents that in adults would be judged criminal under law. In the United States, definitions and age limits of juveniles vary, the maximum age being set...

• kidnapping in law, the taking away of a person by force, threat, or deceit, with intent to cause him to be detained against his will. Kidnapping may be done for ransom or for political or other purposes. A parent whose legal rights to custody of a child have been revoked can be guilty of the crime for taking the child. Consent of a kidnapped person is a defense,...

• larceny in law, the unlawful taking and carrying away of the property of another, with intent to deprive the owner of its use or to appropriate it to the use of the perpetrator or of someone else. It is...

• lie detector instrument designed to record bodily changes resulting from the telling of a lie. Cesare Lombroso, in 1895, was the first to utilize such an instrument, but it was not until 1914 and 1915 that...

• lynching unlawfully hanging or otherwise killing a person by mob action. The term is derived from the older term lynch law, which is most likely named after either Capt. William Lynch (1742-1820), of...

• Mafia name given to a number of organized groups of Sicilian brigands in the 19th and 20th cent. Unlike the Camorra in Naples, the Mafia had no hierarchic organization; each group operated on its own. The Mafia originated in feudal times, when lords hired brigands to guard their estates in exchange for...

• malice in law, an intentional violation of the law of crimes or torts that injures another person. Malice need not involve a malignant spirit or the definite intent to do harm. To prove malice, it is sufficient to show the willful doing of an injurious act without...

• manslaughter homicide committed without justification or excuse but distinguished from murder by the absence of the element of malice aforethought. Modern criminal statutes usually divide it into degrees, the most common distinction being between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Voluntary manslaughter is a killing done in...

• mayhem in common law , the crime of willfully injuring a person so as to diminish his or her capacity for self-defense. Cutting off an arm or leg would thus be mayhem, while such a battery as cutting off an ear would not. Under modern statutes, however, mayhem (or maiming) is a form of aggravated battery that leads to mutilation (such as loss of an ear), disfigurement, or serious...

• misdemeanor in law, a minor crime, in contrast to a felony. At common law a misdemeanor was a crime other than treason or a felony. Although it might be a grave offense, it did not affect the feudal bond or take away the offender's property. By the 19th cent. serious...

• murder criminal homicide , usually distinguished from manslaughter by the element of malice aforethought. The most direct case of malicious intent occurs when the killer is known to have adopted the deliberate intent to commit the homicidal act at some time before it is actually...

• Murder, Inc. name given to the band of professional killers who operated (1930-40) throughout the United States as the enforcement arm of the Syndicate, composed of the national heads of organized crime. Originally a gang of neighborhood thugs in Brooklyn, N.Y., they soon came to the attention of Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, a member of the Syndicate, who extended their activities to the national...

• organized crime criminal activities organized and coordinated on a national scale, often with international connections. The American tradition of daring desperadoes like Jesse James and John Dillinger, has been...

• penitentiary see prison.

• piracy robbery committed or attempted on the high seas. It is distinguished from privateering in that the pirate holds no commission from and receives the protection of no nation but usually attacks vessels...

• poaching see cooking.

• police public and private agents concerned with the enforcement of law, order, and public protection. In modern cities their duties cover a wide range of activities, from criminal investigation and...

• prison place of confinement for the punishment and rehabilitation of criminals. By the end of the 18th cent. imprisonment was the chief mode of punishment for all but capital crimes. At that time, largely...

• prostitution act of granting sexual access for payment. Although most commonly conducted by females for males, it may be performed by females or males for either females or males.

• punishment see capital punishment ; corporal punishment ; criminal law ; prison.

• rape in law, the crime of sexual intercourse without the consent of the victim, often through force or threat of violence. The victim is deemed legally incapable of consenting if she or he is known to...

• recidivism see criminology.

• regrating see engrossing.

• riot, rout, and unlawful assembly in law, varying degrees of concerted disturbance of the peace. At common law, an unlawful assembly is a gathering of at least three persons whose conduct causes observers to reasonably fear that a...

• robbery in law, felonious taking of property from a person against his will by threatening or committing force or violence. The injury or threat may be directed against the person robbed, his property, or...

• rout see riot, rout, and unlawful assembly.

• search warrant in law, written order by an official of a court authorizing an officer to search in a specified place for specified objects and to seize them if found. The objects sought may be stolen goods or...

• secret police policing organization operating in secrecy for the political purposes of its government, often with terroristic procedures.

• sedition in law, acts or words tending to upset the authority of a government. The scope of the offense was broad in early common law, which even permitted prosecution for a remark insulting to the king...

• spying see espionage.

• threat in law, declaration of intent to injure another by doing an unlawful act, with a view to restraining his freedom of action. A threat is distinguishable from an assault , for an assault requires some physical act that appears likely to eventuate in violence, whereas a threat may consist of words only or an act that is not violent, e.g., unlawful prosecution...

• torture the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering in order to intimidate, coerce, obtain information or a confession, or punish. In international law, the term is usually...

• treason legal term for various acts of disloyalty. The English law, first clearly stated in the Statute of Treasons (1350), originally distinguished high treason from petit (or petty) treason. Petit...

• trespass in law, any physical injury to the person or to property. In English common law the action of trespass first developed (13th cent.) to afford a remedy for injuries to property. The two early forms were trespass quare clausum fregit, used in instances of breaking into real property, and trespass de bonis asportatis, used when personal property was removed without consent. To sue for trespass the plaintiff must have had possession of the property. Although the offense of trespass required the use of force, the...

• unlawful assembly see riot, rout, and unlawful assembly.

• vagrancy in law, term applied to the offense of persons who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work. State laws and municipal ordinances punishing vagrancy often also cover loitering, associating with reputed criminals, prostitution, and drunkenness. The punishment is usually a...

• vendetta [Ital.,=vengeance], feud between members of two kinship groups to avenge a wrong done to a relative. Although the term originated in Corsica, the custom has also been practiced in other parts of...

• vigilantes members of a vigilance committee. Such committees were formed in U.S. frontier communities to enforce law and order before a regularly constituted government could be established or have real...

• warrant in law, written order by an official of a court directed to an officer. The search warrant and the warrant of arrest are the most frequently used types. Warrants of attachment order the seizure of a defendant's goods pending trial or judicial determination of ownership and in certain other cases. Warrants are...

• white-collar crime term coined by Edward Sutherland for nonviolent crimes committed by corporations or individuals such as office workers or sales personnel (see white-collar workers ) in the course of their business...

• white-slave traffic see prostitution.