Justice Department
Essays

The controversy swirling about Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a respected Cambridge professor who happens to be an African-American, and Sgt. James M. Crowley, a police officer who arrested him at his home after…

The use of Tasers, dart-firing weapons designed to cause instant immobility by delivering a high voltage shock, has gained widespread use in recent times among the law enforcement agencies, particularly in the U.S.A.

The work of Byron Eugene Price entitled: "Merchandizing Prisoners" relates that the Justice Department in 1992 "under the watch of the Bush administration, released a position paper entitled 'The Case for More…

Santos Reyes is sentenced to 26 to life in prison for cheating on a driver's license test. This petty, victimless crime is Reyes' third strike, coming 10 after his second strike, a robbery in which no one was harmed.

Is television alone responsible for 10% of youth violence? (Statistics, 2005) Does society need to "shoot" or annihilate the messengers who bring literal and "real-life" acts of violence and bad news?

Cyber Crime is a serious issue that has become more severe in recent years. There are many ways in which people and organizations can be victimized by cyber criminals. The purpose of this discussion is to investigate…

As the world's economic and information infrastructure becomes globalized, a new organized elite criminal group is being shaped. Organized crime groups are not disappearing but instead are adapting and shifting in order…

On April 20, 2010, catastrophe struck the Gulf of Mexico with the explosion and eventual sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig which resulted in the death of 11 crew members and left many others injured.

Although the literature on rural crime and justice is comparatively sparse, it is evident that rural environments are distinct from urban environments in ways that affect policing, crime, and public policy.

Crimes are breach of the law. Criminal law as in the common law differentiates between crimes that mala per se' that is crimes that are repugnant to humankind for example, murder, robbery and so on which forms the basis of the penal code. There are crimes that are caused by activities that the state prohibits or by social customs called ‘mala prohibitia'. While the activity may not be repugnant to human kind, it becomes a crime on account of statute. Some examples include the bar on persons below a stipulated age to drive motor vehicles. Although a teenager at the wheel of a car is dangerous, it is not a crime that is repugnant to the whole of mankind. The crime is thus a crime that is caused by violating a statute. A better example will be the smoking regulations. Smoking has been banned in some public places but is not a crime for a person to smoke in his home. Now the same act becomes a violation where it is indulged in a place where it is prohibited. Earlier the definition of crime centred on physical harm caused to individuals and property and both the parties were identifiable.