Media report that Dongyuan Li, the mastermind (or at least the public face) of a massive birth tourism operation that served hundreds of women and garnered millions of dollars in profit, is being released after having served less than a year 10 months to be precise in jail. (See, e.g., here and here.) The time in jail was served waiting for trial; having pleaded guilty and been given credit for time served, she's walking out the door of the U.S. criminal justice system, presumably to be removed from the United States.

The scheme involved advising and counseling women on how to deceive U.S. consular officers in China as to their purpose and length of stay in the United States and whenever possible to conceal any indications of pregnancy so that those officers would not suspect that the sole purpose of the visit was to bear a child who would garner the benefits of U.S. citizenship at birth, despite virtually no familial or any other ties to this country.

The U.S. Attorney's Office pressed for a sentence of at least 33 months and the judge's sentence came as a surprise to one and all. His comments have been limited, but he suggested that if the government had been able to present more evidence of visa fraud, he might have ordered a longer sentence. This is pure sophistry. As multiple accounts make clear, she was living the lifestyle of the elite rich, in a mansion attended by servants, with multiple luxury cars, multiple bank accounts, and a huge stockpile of dough. The government is seizing most, if not all, of thatas fruits of the crime. What's more, there was ample electronic evidence gathered in thousands of text messages, e-mails, attachments, and documents that clearly reflected the extensive reach of the scheme.

One suspects that the presiding judge, James Selna, is one of those who either thinks that it was a victimless crime, or alternately that deportation in lieu of time in jail is adequate. I vigorously disagree.

As to the the "victimless crime" reasoning, society is a victim when the integrity of a system of governance in this case, our immigration and visa-issuance processes is so badly compromised. Do a quick thought experiment here: Imagine that tomorrow Congress passes a massive amnesty. If, a year after that, there is evidence that thousands of aliens defrauded the government to obtain their green cards, will your moral compass and sense of outrage be awakened? Probably. Now transpose that moral outrage to this matter it is, after all, considerably more important because the theft here was so much better than a green card it was of U.S. citizenship, the ultimate prize.

That the immediate beneficiary happens to be an infant is immaterial. Indeed, it is, or should be, of more concern because he or she will grow up in the shadow of the Chinese Communist Party and its organs. Will he or she grow up to be turned against us and used as a weapon or tool of espionage? After all, there will be no intrinsic attachment to a country neither known nor remembered. This isn't far-fetched. Because the Chinese government is monolithic and authoritarian, its reach into everyday society is extensive and, like the North Koreans, Chinese official are not above establishing illicit schemes in other countries when it suits their national interest. That is why I spoke speculatively about whether or not Dongyuan Li orchestrated the fraud scheme, or was simply its public face.

As to whether deportation is an adequate substitute for jail time, it seems to me a fundamental unfairness that aliens can break the criminal laws and simply escape by being repatriated to where they came from. U.S. citizens have no such escape valve, and so become disadvantaged in this regard. Can you imagine a citizen going before a judge and saying, "If you let me, I'll be glad to cross into Mexico and get out of your hair instead of sending me to jail"? It would be a source of endless amusement and outrage. I don't suggest aliens should not be removed for their crimes, but only after serving a sentence commensurate to what any citizen would be obliged to served. To take any other position is to endorse a disparate system of justice.

Finally, it's important to recognize that there aren't just two decision-makers where removal of this woman is concerned (assuming that she acquiesces to being deported because she doesn't want to risk being found out in any other fraud schemes she may have engaged in, or for whatever other reason). There are three players. The ponderous and overburdened immigration court system, which is groaning under the weight of a million-plus removal cases, kicks in when the federal authorities file deportation charges against her. So the U.S. government is player number one. She can, as mentioned, acquiesce or fight the charges tooth and nail in an attempt to remain. Either way, she is player number two. But the third player is China itself. The People's Republic of China must agree to take Dongyuan Li back and issue the necessary repatriation documents, and it's worth noting that the PRC is listed as a "recalcitrant nation" that deliberately slow-walks its issuance of those documents, sometimes for years, thus impeding our government's ability to actually execute a warrant of removal once issued.

Consider this irony: If China chooses to throw a wrench into the machinery of her removal, even if the woman is detained she must be released within six months once it becomes clear that deportation isn't imminent. (You can thank the Supreme Court for that landmark 2001 decision.) In such a scenario, she might very well end up walking the streets of America for years to come despite all of her criminal machinations; at this point there's just no way to know.

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When the Justice System Tilts Toward Aliens - Immigration Blog

"He did not appear to embroider, the judge said. He didn't come across as some kind of bought-and-paid-for puppet.

Just a week after Attorney General Bill Barr declared the Mueller investigation was based on a completely bogus narrative, Jackson used her perch on Tuesday to deliver what sounded like a pointed, public rebuttal, saying there was an ample basis for an aggressive inquiry into the Trump campaign aides connections and actions.

Gates information alone warranted, indeed demanded, further investigation from the standpoint of our national security, the integrity of our elections and the enforcement of our criminal laws, Jackson declared. An appointee of President Barack Obama, she has presided over more of the criminal prosecutions stemming from the Mueller probe than any other judge.

Before handing down Gates sentence, which also included a $20,000 fine and 300 hours of community service, Jackson detailed the crimes hed been charged with alongside Manafort. It included the longtime business partners use and access to $75 million that flowed through unreported offshore bank accounts, as well as extensive tax fraud and years of unregistered lobbying in the U.S. for Ukrainian politicians.

As Jackson recounted the long list of crimes, she paused to take a swipe at rhetoric the White House has used when tangling with Trumps critics.

Those are facts, Jackson Those are not alleged facts. Those are not alternative facts.

The judge also dismissed claims that such behavior is typical on the Washington political scene.

Politics dont corrupt people. People corrupt politics, Jackson said.

As she did at Manaforts sentencing, Jackson also bluntly rejected claims that the pairs unregistered lobbying for Ukrainian interests amounted to a victimless crime.

What Gates and Manafort did was lying to the members of Congress and the American public, the judge said. When people dont have the facts, democracy doesnt work.

Jackson praised Gates for not making arguments aimed at minimizing his culpability or contending that he was somehow duped by Manafort.

Gates is not sitting here telling me Manafort forced him or coerced him across the line, the judge said, although she said the lobbying protg was obviously taken with Mr. Manafort.

However, even while praising Gates for his decision to accept responsibility for his actions, Jackson said she fretted over the public perception and potential lack of deterrence to others if she gave him a complete pass or at least didnt align his sentence in relation to other similar cases.

This is what Ive been struggling with in anticipation of this sentencing for a long time, she said. I have to ask myself, is more needed?

Speaking from the courtroom lectern before hearing his sentence, Gates delivered a very brief apology.

Your honor, I wish to express to this court that I accept complete responsibility for my actions that have led me here, he said, seeming to choke up a bit as he spoke. I greatly regret the mistakes that Ive made and Ive worked hard to honor my commitment to make amends. My family and I appreciate your consideration for leniency. And I hope and pray that you will grant that to me.

In addition to his cooperation with federal investigators, Gates responded to three congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony and plans to testify at any additional trials if prosecutors make the request.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston repeatedly stressed to Jackson that Gates had delivered extraordinary assistance to the government during the high-profile Mueller investigation. His guilty plea also came despite pressure from Manafort to maintain his innocence, as well as an offer relayed by Manafort of financial assistance through a legal defense fund.

Gaston called it a turning point for prosecutors when Gates agreed to assist the government.

He chose to cooperate and wholeheartedly held up his end of the bargain, she said.

Perhaps more important than Gates testimony at any trial was his behind-the-scenes role walking prosecutors through Manaforts complex financial arrangements, which included tens millions of dollars parked in dozens of offshore accounts with exotic names like Leviathan Advisors and Lucicle Consultants.

Gaston called Gates testimony at Manaforts Virginia trial necessary for the government to win its case against the high-flying lobbyist.

The full scope of Gates cooperation remains unclear, since the judge received some details about that under seal.

However, the judge seemed to hint at that when she said he may still testify in future and trials. She also signaled that Gates has been working with prosecutors from coast to coast.

Its not as if its just been a quick foray or dipping your toe into repentance. ... Hes been all over the country, in multiple investigations, she said, without elaborating.

Jacksons sentencing on Tuesday closes out one of the last remaining unfinished chapters of Muellers probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Only former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Stone still await sentencing. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan is set to give Flynn his punishment for lying to investigators on Jan. 28. Jackson is set to sentence Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and intimidating a witness, on Feb. 6.

Gates was a focus in one of Mueller's first official public moves. The former Trump deputy campaign chairman was indicted together with Manafort in October 2017 on charges including money laundering and making false statements.

Initially, Gates stuck by Manafort, pleading not guilty. The two men even discussed the possibility of a Trump pardon, according to the Mueller report. Ultimately, though, Gates turned on Manafort and Trump in February 2018, providing cooperation with federal prosecutors that resulted in the dismissal of some charges against Gates, including the tax and bank fraud crimes.

Gates ended up helping the government during several closely scrutinized moments.

In August 2018, Gates incriminated Manafort from the witness stand in several crimes, including multimillion-dollar tax evasion, bank fraud and hiding offshore accounts. A jury later convicted Manafort, who is now serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence.

Gates also appeared last month in the trial against Stone, who a jury convicted of lying to Congress about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks in the 2016 presidential race.

Federal prosecutors had Gates explain that the WikiLeaks plotting inside the Trump campaign occured far earlier than had previously been understood, and that the president was also involved in those conversations, despite his previous denials.

Some of the testimony came at significant cost to Gates reputation a fact Jackson alluded to Tuesday. In addition to admitting to a string of financial crimes while testifying at Manaforts trial in Virginia last year, Gates also admitted to extramarital affairs that he had while working with Manafort.

The federal judge at that trial had deemed Gates relationship off-limits, but when a defense attorney asked Gates about how he was funding his secret life, the longtime Manafort aide essentially blurted out that hed had affairs and it was wrong.

There was a period of time, almost 10 years ago, when I had a relationship, yes, Gates conceded.

Not every outing Gates made on the witness stand led inexorably to success for the government.

In August, prosecutors used Gates testimony to support a false-statement charge against former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig about his lobbying work related to Ukraine. But the testimony seemed to be of meager benefit to the governments case, especially after Craig introduced a string of character witnesses saying they considered the defendant unfailingly trustworthy.

After a three-week trial, the jury took less than five hours to acquit Craig.

Prosecutors said Craigs acquittal should not bear on Gates sentence. Gates assistance should be evaluated independent of the jurys decision he should be given no more or less credit for his cooperation in that matter than had Craig been found guilty, they wrote.

Still, Gates two turns on the witness stand in front of Jackson redounded to his benefit as he seemed to go out of his way to appear earnest and contrite while sitting in the witness box just feet from the same judge who would sentence him.

And, at times during those cases, Jackson stepped in to protect Gates when she felt defense attorneys had gone too far in tangling with the government cooperator.

Gates decision to cooperate also had major benefits for his quality of life as the Mueller investigation unfolded. Gates was able to coach a little league baseball team for one of his four children. Jackson also approved numerous out-of-town family trips as Gates sentencing was repeatedly postponed.

Letters submitted to the judge for Gates sentencing revealed that hed also been able to spend time with his family at a particularly challenging time: his wife, Sarah, was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year and has been receiving treatment.

The sentence of 45 days to be served as intermittent confinement appeared to take account of his wifes medical condition and his family obligations.

Gates had been looking at a maximum total sentence of 10 years in prison for the two charges he pleaded guilty to: conspiracy against the U.S. and making false statements to the FBI. Non-binding sentencing guidelines in Gates case called for a prison term of about four or five years, court officials calculated. But Jackson said that range was somewhat inflated because it was based on the total amount of tax losses to the U.S. governmenta sum that primarily benefited Manafort.

The sentencing proceeding drew the largest number of Mueller team veterans spotted at the D.C. federal courthouse since Manaforts sentencing in March. About 20 current and former prosecutors, FBI and IRS agents and support personnel who worked on or closely with the special counsels office sat in two rows in the courtroom gallery.

However, the area for spectators was only about half full. And in a sign of how the once mighty Mueller apparatus has dramatically scaled down, Gaston sat alone at the once-crowded prosecution table, flanked only by a couple of legal manuals and a three-ring binder.

Still, the old players made their presence known.

In a moment that seemed to highlight the importance of Gates assistance, former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann shook hands with Gates and his lawyer Tom Green before the start of Tuesdays sentencing. Later, during a break in the proceedings, another former special counsel prosecutor, Greg Andres, flashed Gates and Green a thumbs-up.

Before closing the morning hearing, Jackson offered Gates one final send off.

Mr. Gates, she said, Im 100 percent certain that this criminal justice system is not going to see you again.

Originally posted here:

Rick Gates gets 45 days of weekend jail, 3 years of probation - Politico

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

John Myatt felt like his life was in free-fall.

It was the mid-1980s and at 41, he was a working painter who never made a splashor a profitin the London gallery scene. His wife left him, and he struggled to provide for his two young children.

So, he began to forge paintings.

Partnering with art dealer John Drewe, the duo sold more than an estimated 200 fraudulent pieces of art for millions of pounds, ensnaring some of the world's most prestigious collectors, galleries, auction houses, and storied institutions, including London's Tate Gallery.

It was one of the greatest art scandals of all time. Myatt spent countless hours making incredibly detailed "new" works in the style of Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti, Matisse, and Graham Sutherland, among others. He often scoured flea markets for paints, brushes, and canvases from an artist's time period, in addition to obsessively studying their techniques.

He acknowledges his skill as a forger, but says that much of pulling off the con was "about manipulating the publicity machine or just being in the right place at the right time" in making a sale; promoting the fake story of the creation of the image and how it fit into an artist's body of work; and explaining how the piece had changed hands over the years.

Myatt, who served prison time and is now living and working as a painter in the United Kingdom, is among the handful of art forgers who say the very environment in which their past crimes flourished is, in many respects, just as fertile now. As art prices hit stratospheric highs and Trump-era momentum to regulate anything reaches record lows, the art world continues to be an under-explored haven for illicit activity, that often hangs, literally, in plain sight.

"I think it's just as easy today," Myatt said of forgery in a phone interview.

John Myatt in his studio in London | Photo by Wendy Huynh

What is often dismissed as a largely victimless crime befitting of The Thomas Crown Affair (the one starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, not Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway) may carry far higher stakes. Art forgery typically elicits images of the pearl-clasping super-rich with jaws dropped at fake Picassos, but the crime is also often linked to money laundering, tax evasion, and drug trafficking. Art crime was the third highest-grossing criminal trade in the world over the last 40 years, according to the US Department of Justice and UNESCO, just behind drugs and weapons. Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, once estimated that 40 percent of the artwork in circulation was fake.

Driving criminal interest is the amount of cash that has been injected in the art world in the years since Myatt's forgery heyday. In some respects, it mirrors the giant pools of money sloshing around in Manhattan or London real estatefunds that are relatively concentrated in a few hands spending it in a few places. Critics contend there's low incentive to catch criminals and that, in some cases, alleged victims may benefit from being in on the con. (Others are so desperate to be in the art market, they're taking on massive debt to do so.)

The global art market in 2018 totaled some $67.4 billion, according to a joint report from Art Basel and UBS, an increase from $39.5 billion in recession-era 2009. And as the super wealthy look for more places to park money while diversifying their holdings, wealth managers and art dealers have welcomed new dollars, with some going so far to pitch (fee-heavy) hedge fund-like investment vehicles that pool money to acquire art.

That's reaped fortunes for some, but not necessarily motivation to catch art criminals. Generally, artbe it real or fakeis being used to move money more than ever, former forgers, law enforcement agents, and experts suggest. And ironically, the forgers are among the most vocal.

"It was a mistake I made and it was time to come to do good things," Myatt said. "To just face up to it."

"Im trying to do something good out of something bad."

As Russian billionaire and avid art collector Dmitry Rybolovlev faced divorce from his wife, Elena, in 2008, the works that once proudly graced the walls of auction houses and made their way into his own collection were now a financial liability. So Rybolovlev set up an elaborate scheme to park his lofty art collection in an offshore entity, according to the Panama Papers.

Stowing away the works was no easy feat, as during his 23-year marriage, Rybolovlev, whom Forbes ranked as the 224th richest person in the world, had amassed a world-class collection that included works by Picasso, van Gogh, Monet, da Vinci, and Modigliani, among others. But as the marriage buckled, Rybolovlev moved the art to a shell company reportedly set up by the notorious and since-shuttered firm Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands. That took it out of Switzerland, part of an attempt to shield it from his wife's name or the divorce court there. (Rybolovlev is involved in further litigation with his art dealer.)

While there's no evidence Rybolovlev was dealing in forged works, it's just one of many recent scandals involving the secretive strategies of the art world, and its role in moving money at a time when oligarchs across the world have come under harsh scrutiny. This past May, longtime titan dealer Mary Boone, who was convicted for tax evasion at her gallery, reported for a 30-month prison sentencea rarity in an industry that often sees large amounts of money shifting hands. Art has a recurring role in the use of offshore shell companies, the Panama Papers showed, including allegations that the true buyers and sellers of major works may often be concealed.

The scene in John Myatt's studio | Photo by Wendy Huynh

The same goes for the ongoing saga of Jeffrey Epstein. As speculation mounted about Epstein's actual net worth in the days leading up to his death, so, too, did questions around his art assets and how they may have fit into his alleged crimes. Among his art collection were "Parsing Bill," a painting of Bill Clinton in a blue dress; a portrait of himself in a photorealistic prison scene; and a painting of a nude woman. It's unclear what their market worth is, but Epstein was "amused to have in his house fake art which looked like real art," longtime friend and art dealer Stuart Pivar told Mother Jones.

One reason fakes proliferate is simple: It's relatively easy to forge a painting. And if it's perceived as accurate, it can be hawked as an asset andin some casesget bought and sold with few or no questions asked.

Especially if the art is moving between hands that are trusted. Of the art authenticity frauds investigated by the FBI in the last three decades, an estimated 87 percent were perpetrated by art world "insiders," a sort of Ponzi scheme via canvas. Among the most notable was the downfall of the Knoedler Gallery, a storied enterprise that closed its doors after 165 years in 2011 amid allegations that it had sold fake works of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and others, often with little due diligence.

"It's truly shocking," said Peter R. Stern, an art attorney, of the Knoedler scandal. In his line of work, Stern represents galleries, artists and collectors in an array of matters including handling major transactions, aid with estate planning, and conflicts over art authenticity or ownership. "The behavior was awful, but I also think that buyers did little or no homework."

Photo by Wendy Huynh

Among the obvious tasks, Stern said, is tracing a work's provenance, the paper trail that shows how it has changed hands since creation. Today, the internet has made it easier than ever to find out more about a work's origins, but it has also made it easier for skilled forgers to create fake art or documents to match them.

"The internet has opened up whole new marketplaces," Tim Carpenter, FBI supervisory special agent who program manages the Bureau's Art Crime Team, said in an interview. "Day in and day out, it's not just people buying huge pieces of art. The money is at the mid-level stuff, passing off those fake pieces as real. Back before online marketplaces and social media took over, you had galleries and middlemen doing due diligence. Now, there's no middleman. You have freer access to bad art."

After decades of art crime cases being handled on an ad-hoc basis, Carpenter's group was formalized within the FBI in 2004. In addition to casework, the unit also conducts trainings to aid in handling art and cultural artifacts. Carpenter said the FBI does not publicly release data on the number of cases it pursues, but noted "we stay very busy."

High-end art can be hard to move, but criminals looking to monetize quickly may go for lower-profile deals that draw less attention. As prices increase for top-tier art, values across the board pull up, as well. "We have a lot of concerns about the explosion of value in the art market these last 10 years," Carpenter said. "Theres a lot of risk and threat there for us."

On a July afternoon in Jersey City, convicted art forger Alfredo Martinez could be found recounting his claims that he got away with faking the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat for nearly 20 years.

Sitting at his desk in a black T-shirt and matching sweatpants, his long, curly dark hair askance, Martinez, 52, looked at a large flatscreen, clicking through images of his "Basquiats." He discussed his oil stick technique and said he used tea to create an aging effect on paper. Power tools, paint brushes, and papers lay scattered about him in his high-ceiling studio at MANA Contemporary, a lofty workspace for artists.

Alfredo Martinez in his New Jersey lair | Photo by Tuhsayoh

In recent months, recovery from the amputation of five toes on his right foot after an art-related accident had kept Martinez closer to his computer screen than his easel, he said. But it had not dampened his enthusiasm for curating shows for younger artists ("I like the kids"), discussing his time in prison ("looked like Oz, but it felt like Seinfeld"), or sharing anecdotes of being a self-described "street punk" in New York's art scene during Basquiat's heyday ("I would have known him better if I was a big-chested blonde").

The FBI got a tip when Martinez tried to sell $185,000 worth of "Basquiat" art, complete with forged certificates of authenticity, to two dealers in Manhattan. If they had been real, they might be worth millions today. It landed him a 21-month stint in federal prison and a peculiar flavor of infamy in the art world upon his release in 2006. (Martinez said that he was drawn into forgery because of "money. And I was lazy.")

Martinez, for one, talks of auction houses today as "Kabuki theater" and takes a "sarcastic approach" to the art establishment, even as he continues to participate in it. Then, and now, art dealers are eager to take cash from the wealthy, many of whom may not be performing ample due diligence, he said.

"Duh," Martinez said, adding, "Youre literally printing money."

Photo by Tuhsayoh

So lax is the current state of affairs that 73 percent of wealth managers, 74 percent of art professionals and 64 percent of collectors said that the art market "needed to modernize its business practices to meet the expected standards of a transparent, trustworthy and developed marketplace," according to a 2017 Deloitte and Art Basel report. It also found that 83 percent of wealth managers "see authenticity, provenance, and attribution issues as the greatest risks in the art market" and 65 percent "felt that money laundering is a serious threat to the credibility of the art market."

This year, the House Financial Services Committee introduced money-laundering prevention legislation that proposed including "dealers in art and antiquities" among the institutions that would be monitored. In recent years, the European Union has also moved on similar regulations. Among the regulatory kerfuffles are freeports, or warehouses where art may be stashed for years. They have long existed in locales like Switzerland and enjoyed generous tax benefits, as they're technically storing art that's deemed to be in transit.

"Certain market prices are getting out of hand," said David Drake, founder and chairman of LDJ Capital, a multi-family office that includes an art advisory as part of its offerings. Drake's firm does not conduct provenance research for clients, but rather handles insurance and financing after the fact.

The upper crust of the art world appears to be trying to distance itself from the industrys criminal underbelly while also seeking to bolster buyer confidence. Many artist catalogues, including those of Basquiat and Andy Warhol, have refused to admit any new works, concerned that they could be adding their coveted stamp of approval to a work that is inauthentic (while also enjoying control of the supply and demand of the market). Auction houses have tried to fight back by bolstering their forensic efforts, notably Sotheby's with its acquisition of art forensics firm Orion in 2016. A spokesperson for Sotheby's did not respond to requests for comment.

Only a fraction of art that is sold, however, will undergo such robust due diligence. And many works that are being forged are relatively modern, rendering tasks like dating paints and canvas aging effectively moot.

Some forgers, often as part of plea deal negotiations, may turn into informants. Now retired after two decades at the Bureau, Robert Wittman, the FBI agent who investigated Martinez's case in an undercover operation, runs a private art recovery and consultancy firm based in Philadelphia. He estimated that 75 percent of the illegal art marketthat is, art that is involved in money laundering or otherwise connected to crimeis fake.

Still, people keep buying.

"Fraud has followed the art world because of the rise in value," Wittman said. "Bank robbers go there because thats where the money is. Thats the exact same situation in the art market. The growing art values since 1970, they've been through the ceiling. And with paintings selling for $200 million, criminals follow that and decide to get involved."

Ironically, some in the art world mused that Martinez's arrest brought even more attention to Basquiat's work, as his ability to forge and sell the paintings underscored the demand for the artist, who died at the age of 27 in 1988. (In 2017, "Untitled," a 1982 work by Basquiat, fetched $110.5 million, at the time making it the highest sum paid at auction for an American-produced work of art.)

That's all the more reason that Martinez is cynical about the financial froth in the art world today. He noted that in the end, it wasn't the quality of his fake artworks that landed him in prison, but a disagreement with a gallery owner he said hadn't paid him. That owner, Martinez added, tipped off law enforcement. (The FBI agent who busted Martinez has a different recollection of what led to the tip-off. According to Wittman, the buyer had spotted mistakes in the forged certificates. "Usually people who do fake certificates dont mess them up like that," Wittman said.)

Today, Wittman and Martinez are still in touch, this time as friends.

Alfredo Martinez has a complicated relationship with the works of Basquiat. Left photo courtesy of Alfredo. Right photo: Jean-Michel Basquiats Undiscovered Genius Jean-Michel Basquiat 1983

"When you work undercover, you have to create a relationship with someone, and trust. It's befriending not betraying," Wittman said. "Alfredo calls and I'm happy for him. He got down the wrong path and now it seems like he's doing well."

These days, Martinez sells his own workoriginal creations and labeled replicas of Basquaitslargely through his website and Instagram, mostly foregoing the use of agents and galleries. He said he's starting to see things differently as his own original work gains attention, including one painting of a gun that is now part of MOMA's permanent collection.

Moving carefully on his injured foot, he walked across his studio to a table where a series of drawings were laid out: figures of people, scorpions. He said they were reproductions of what he had done and had lost, either taken by prison authorities or simply because they ended up in the hands of dealers beyond.

"I guess Im forging myself," he said.

Correction 12/17/2019: A previous version of this story suggested art forgery in particular, rather than art crime in general, was the third highest-grossing criminal trade in the world, according to the US DOJ and UNESCO. We regret the error.

Follow Mary Pilon on Twitter.

Excerpt from:

Art Forgery Is Easier Than Ever, and It's a Great Way to Launder Money - VICE

Ahead of the debut of HBOs Watchmen, it wasnt clear what a story set after the events of the iconic 1980s comic book series would look like on TV in 2019. Showrunner Damon Lindelof adamantly referred to the show as a remix rather than a direct adaptation or sequel. When Episode 1 opened with a horrific retelling of the real-life Tulsa Massacre of 1921 and closed with a shot of a black man sitting at the feet of a lynched white police chief, the elusive nature of the showone that on the surface appears to be about superheroesonly intensified.

The subsequent eight episodes were a blend of impeccable writing, acting, and directing that lived up to the tall order of sharing the name of whats considered to be one of the all-time great graphic novels. The season finale, See How They Fly, left a few loose ends (the mysterious Lube Man is still out there sliding through the streets of Tulsa) and rushed a bit to tie everything together (providing more concrete answers than Lindelof typically does), but it otherwise rounded out one of the most thrilling television series of the year.

To wrap up Watchmens first (and potentially only) season, were going to break down the two plans to steal Doctor Manhattans powersone designed by Lady Trieu and the other by the Seventh Kavalryand how they panned out before revisiting the graphic novel one last time.

The finale begins by revealing Lady Trieus parentage with a flashback to the day before 11/2 in 1985 at Adrian Veidts Karnak facility in Antarctica. While the Worlds Smartest Man relishes in the genius of his master plan while recording his address to future president Robert Redford, the original BianLady Trieus mother and the elder version of the clone weve seen for the greater part of the seasonsneaks into Adrians office. Shes a member of Adrians cleaning staff, one of the many Vietnamese refugees whom Veidt has employed. Bian enters Adrians password into his computer to open a refrigerated vault hidden away behind a massive painting of Alexander the Great that contains a catalogued collection of his sperm samples (Adrian later declares that hes never given himself to a woman, but I guess that didnt stop him from finding a twisted way to pass on his legacy). Bian takes a vial to impregnate herself, revealing in the process that Adrian is Trieus father.

Thirty-three years later, in 2008, the Worlds Smartest Woman arrives at Karnak to introduce herself to her father. Without revealing their relationship, Lady Trieu earns herself a trip inside the facility by mentioning the little-known truth behind 11/2 and feeding Veidts ego by praising his unappreciated brilliance. Trieu briefly acts impressed by Adrians squidfall technology before calling it nothing more than a rerun and sharing a world-saving plan of her own: to destroy Doctor Manhattan and absorb his abilities. If I can take his power, I can fix the world, she tells Adrian. Disappear the nukes, end starvation, clean the air. All the things he shouldve done.

Even as Adrian patronizingly jeers and questions her, Trieu backs up her bold claims by explaining her process, from how she tracked down the blue gods location on Europa by sending out space probes that scanned the galaxy for his unique radioactive frequency, to her designs for a quantum centrifuge that could harness Doctor Manhattans abilities and transfer them to her. All she asks of Adrian is a cool $42 billion; in this moment she finally reveals to Adrian that she is his daughter. Outraged by the news of Bians thievery, Trieus existence, and her nerve to ask for money, Adrian adamantly denies her request.

When my parents died, I inherited wealth beyond imagining, and I gave it away, because I wanted to demonstrate that I could achieve anything starting from nothing, Adrian says to Trieu. And that is what I offer you, Sample 2346: nothing. And I will never call you daughter.

Back on Europa, we return to our favorite interplanetary castaway, now eight years into his life in paradise. And at long last, help has finally arrived. A spacecraft lands on the castle grounds, and Adrian exits his cell through an underground tunnel hes dug. He kills the Game Warden, who was trying to prevent his master from deserting their moon one last time, before walking past all his servants to enter his shuttle back to Earth. As he steps into the spacecraft and the ship enters space, the sign Adrian carved out of his servants bodies in Episode 5 is revealed in full: SAVE ME DAUGHTER. In full Star Wars fashion, Adrian is essentially frozen in carbonite for the duration of his space flight, solidified as the gold statue thats been standing in Trieus vivarium all along.

Back in present-day Tulsa, the Millennium Clock is about to be activated. Lady Trieu has completed her lifes work, and just as she told Angela, she has found a way to bring back both of her parents to witness the momentous occasion. With Bians clone and an awakened Adrian Veidt at her side, Lady Trieu starts up the clockthe flying quantum centrifuge Trieu built without the help of her estranged fatherand heads to downtown Tulsa to set up for the final piece of her plan.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Kavalry is also preparing to steal Doctor Manhattans powers, though theyre completely unaware that theyre playing right into Lady Trieus plans. Senator Joseph Keene Jr. has gathered the senior leadership of their white supremacist organization, including his father and Jane Crawford. Agent Laurie Blake is there as well, still held captive as they all await her ex-boyfriends grand entrance, and Wade Tillmanwho had been missing ever since a group of Kavalry members failed to kill him in his homehas managed to sneak into the warehouse wearing one of the Kavalrys trademark Rorschach masks. Doctor Manhattan is teleported into a synthetic lithium cage theyve constructed using old watch batteries (a painstaking task that we witnessed a glimpse of all the way back in the series premiere), catching us up to the moment he disappeared outside of the Abars home at the end of the previous episode. The cage functions similarly to the tachyon particles that limit Doctor Manhattans abilities, confusing his sense of time; inside the cage, he starts repeating lines of dialogue he said decades earlier, in the pages of the graphic novel. With the dazed blue god imprisoned, Keene addresses his audience, outlining the Kavalrys plan.

Thirty-four years ago, Adrian Veidt unleashed his monster on the world. No, not his giant one-eyed octopus, but his puppet president, Keene says as he begins to strip off his clothing in anticipation of his transformation into the new Doctor Manhattan. First, he took our guns. And then he made us say sorry. Sorry for the color of our skin. All we wanted was to get cops in masks, take some power back, start ourselves a little culture war. Keene concedes that their original planto get him into the White Housewas a little half-baked. But then the White Night happened, and changed everything.

When the Kavalry carried out their coordinated attack on the Tulsa police force, all went as planned, except for the raid of the home of Angela and Cal Abar. Cal, accessing his subdued abilities in an act of self-preservation, zapped one of the two Kavalry hitmen to Gila Flats, the site where Jon Osterman died and was reborn as Doctor Manhattan. The Kavalry was able to piece together Cals true identity, and from that point on their mission to make Keene president was punted for the bolder goal of making him into a god.

Just before Keene enters the chamberfrom which he will supposedly reemerge from as the blue prophet who will restore (restore) white power in America, Angela warns the Kavalry that theyre about to fall right into Lady Trieus hands. They proceed anyway, initiating the transference of Doctor Manhattans power. Right on cue, the Kavalry finds themselves suddenly in downtown Tulsa, now serving as an audience to Lady Trieu.

As the two plans converge, the Kavalry proves to be no more than a cog in Lady Trieus elaborate scheme (it turns out both of the Kavalrys plans were a little half-baked). Trieu begins to address the dazed group of white supremacists before opening a chamber that releases the pool of human slush that used to be Senator Keene; hed been reduced during his failed attempt to transfer Doctor Manhattans atomic energy (crucially, Keenes blood seeps underneath the bars of blue Cals cage). Trieu resumes her speech, reading the message that Will Reeves has asked her to deliver to the group hes been hunting down since his days as Hooded Justice in the 1930s: You represent the senior leadership of Cyclops, an organization that has terrorized and victimized men, women, and children of color for a century, including this very place, the site of the Greenwood Massacre of 1921.

Before Trieu finishes reading, Jane Crawford cuts her off to tell her to just kill her and the Kavalry already, and Trieu complies. She retrieves a remote from one of her crewmembers and flicks a switch, obliterating them all with a flash of purple light.

Following the casual massacre, Doctor Manhattantouching the pool of Keenes bloodteleports Adrian, Wade, and Laurie to Karnak, leaving Angela behind as his death approaches. Enraged that Doctor Manhattan shipped off her father before she could properly gloat about her success, Trieu fires up the centrifuge to extract his energy.

In Karnak, Adrian seizes the opportunity to save the world yet again, as he reminds his new companions of his murderous heroism. (Wade, who has lived nearly his entire life traumatized by the events of 11/2, is not too happy about this.) Adrian quickly devises a plan to rain one final squidfall over Tulsa, only this time he wants to significantly lower the temperature to unleash a hailstorm of frozen cephalopods.

Trieu succeeds in destroying Doctor Manhattan, but just then, the frozen squidfall begins, cartoonishly busting a hole through Trieus hand before sending the centrifuge crashing down upon her.

As the frozen squids fall, Bian takes shelter in the Manhattan prayer booth; the Tulsa policewho had arrived just as the squidfall beganscramble for cover; and Angela runs to the Dreamland Theatre to find her children and Will Reeves. Here, in the same theater that young Will watched Trust in the Law moments before the Greenwood Massacre of 1921, Will tells his granddaughter about how he and Jon Osterman made a deal to help each other, as well as what it means to put on the mask. The hood, when I put it onyou felt what I felt? Will asks her, referring to the Nostalgia pills she took that allowed her to experience the moment he became Hooded Justice.

Anger, Angela replies.

Yeah, thats what I thought too, Will says. But it wasntit was fear, hurt. You cant heal under a mask, Angela. Wounds need air. Will tells Angela that it was Jons idea to make a deal with Trieu all along, and that Jon knew he was going to die but said, You cant make an omelette without breaking a couple eggs, a phrase that would supposedly make sense to Angela when the time was right.

Will and Angela wake up the kids and return to Angelas house, passing by all the destruction left in the wake of Trieus failed plans. Just before the credits begin to roll, Angela cleans up the broken eggs scattered across her kitchen floor from her fight with the waffle-making Doctor Manhattan. She finds one egg remaining in the carton, still intact, and remembers the time that Jon told her that he could theoretically pass his abilities to another person through the consumption of organic material thats been exposed to him. Angela walks out to the pool, swallows the raw egg, rolls up her pants, and sets her foot over the water to test out the theory just as the season comes to an end.

Despite an incredible final performance by actress Hong Chau, Lady Trieu went out with little more than a whimper, capable of mustering no more of a reaction to her fathers attack than the utterance of motherfucker in Vietnamese with her final breaths. Wills mesmerism device that he stole from the Cyclops group decades earlier was never used again after seeing its power in manipulating Crawford into hanging himself, and the Kavalrys fate was decided in one quick purple flash. For all the meticulous effort the show put into weaving an intricate web of mystery, the vast and insidious conspiracy ultimately proved to be more hollow as the show rushed toward the finish line. The conclusions saving grace, however, was found in the chaoss calm aftermath in the Dreamland Theatre.

As Victor Luckerson recently wrote in The New Yorker: What Watchmen nails, more than details of Greenwoods history, is the way that history itself is so susceptible to manipulation, distortion, and erasure. A brutal invasion became a victimless crime, then a repressed memory, then a hazy urban legend that few people had even heard about. While bending elements of real historical events like the Greenwood Massacre and the Vietnam War, as well as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbonss original story, HBOs Watchmen remix turned out to be a story about a black family reshaping history. Will Reeves revealed that the first superhero was black, as he fought to eliminate white supremacy in the 1930s as Hooded Justice, and his granddaughter unknowingly carried the mission forward decades later as Sister Night. The two share similar traumatic experiences a century apart, while literally sharing some together through the aid of the psychoactive drug, Nostalgia.

As Will and Angela sit together in the Dreamland Theatre, just as Will did with his mother on the day of the Greenwood Massacre, we see how similar their paths have been, how they both masked their pain caused by racism and senseless violence at the hands of terrorists. And together, after delivering justice to white supremacist descendents of the massacre, the two are finally on the path to healing.

Throughout this entire season of Watchmen, each episode was laden with Easter eggs and callbacks to the original source material. You could compile an exhaustive list for each episode, but for the finale, Ill just point out the three that I appreciated the most.

Adrians Bullet Catch

When watching the Game Warden confront Adrian before his master left for Europa, you mightve thought, Did this guy really just catch a damn bullet with his bare hands?! And yesyes, he did but it also wasnt his first time. Heres Laurie trying kill Adrian on 11/2, only to find out that hes got quicker hands than Michael Thomas:

The Original Archie Ship

After Adrian saves the world from his daughters attempt to become an all-powerful god, he leads Laurie and Wade to the vessel that would bring them back to civilization. The ship is called Archie, as Laurie recalls fondly, and its the original ship that her ex-boyfriend Dan Dreiberg designed and used back in his days masquerading as the second Nite Owl. In the comics, Dan and Rorschach flew to Karnak in Archie on 11/2 to try to stop Adrians attack of New York. The ship has been collecting dust ever since, and now Laurie and Wade will use it to bring Adrian in to finally answer for his crimes.

Rorschachs Omelette Line

Doctor Manhattans hugely important omelette idiom was actually used in the graphic novel as well, only then it was said by Rorschach. After Rorschach interrogates the retired supervillain, Moloch, he swallows a raw egg and says the line on his way out the door:

Though the ending aligned with Lindelofs sensibilities, the ambiguous closing moments also mirrored the final page of Moore and Gibbonss graphic novel. The original Watchmen story ends at the office of the New Frontiersman, just as an editorial assistant, Seymour, discovers Rorschachs journal that contains the truth about 11/2. Rorschach had sent it to the newspapers office just before leaving for Karnak, where hed eventually be killed by Doctor Manhattan. And as the story comes to a close, the reader is left wondering what will happen if the journal is published, and whether or not the truth will undo the supposed utopia that 3 million New Yorkers died for.

HBOs Watchmen supplied answers to these very questions. Rorschachs journal was published, but the greater public didnt believe the words of a violent sociopath, especially while there were squids still periodically raining down from the sky. Only a select few actually knew that the journal was full of the truth, and others unconcerned with the truthlike the Seventh Kavalryused it to fuel their mistrust in the government.

As Angela reaches her foot over the pool in the final frames of the season, viewers are left with the same uncertainty that the journal elicited. Was Doctor Manhattan right about his theory? Has Angela attained all of his powers? If so, what will she do as the new Doctor Manhattan?

The fact that Doctor Manhattan told Angela that it was important for her to see him walk back and forth on the pool in the previous episode suggest he was right, but for now, theres no telling what happened the moment her foot hit the water. If Watchmen moves forward with a second season, we may find that not only does the American Superman exist again, but that she is black and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.

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Whats the Future of Doctor Manhattan on Watchmen? - The Ringer

Art crime is woven throughout museums, galleries and private collections alike. From forgeries to the theft of its most valuable painting, the University of Arizona Museum of Art has an art crime history all of its own.

The art museums Curator of Exhibitions Olivia Miller gave a community talk called Crimes Against Art about incidents of the museum at the Murphy-Wilmot Library on Dec. 6.

The Forgeries

ccording to Miller, the museums curator discovered in the late 1970s that Wassily Kandinskys painting Ruhe was a forgery. The director happened upon a poster reproduction of Ruhe, which did not look like the original and began to inspect museum files to research its provenance.

It turned out that parts of paintings provenance was fictional. The original was still part of a private collection belonging to Nathan Cummings, making the one hanging in the museum a forgery.

After the Kandinsky painting was found to be a forgery, the curator began tracking all the other pieces sold by the same gallery from which it had been bought. Miller said a sculpture called Dancer Posing by Edgar Degas was also discovered to be a fake after being inspected by experts at Harvard.

The conservators called the sculpture a poor copy of a copy, Miller said. It was not even a good forgery.

After the Kandinsky painting was found to be a forgery, the curator began tracking all the other pieces sold by the same gallery from which it had been bought. Miller said that a sculpture called "Dancer Posing" by Edgar Degas was also discovered to be a fake after being inspected by experts at Harvard.

The conservators called the sculpture a poor copy of a copy, Miller said. It was not even a good forgery.

The two falsified artworks were gifts from Edward Gallagher Jr.

According to the art museums website, Gallagher Jr. donated about 200 world-class modern art pieces to the museum in honor of his son who passed away.

Miller said the Kandinsky and Degas artworks were sold to Gallagher Jr. by a gallery that had supplied him many pieces, the majority of which later turned out to be forgeries.

She mentioned that a preparatory sculpture by Henry Moore is currently not on display, as it is from the same untrustworthy gallery and the authenticity is still unknown.

[These forgery discoveries] were quite unfortunate because the gallery owner and Gallagher had been friends since high school, Miller said.

It was found out that the gallery owner established an elaborate scheme. Apparently, he had forged letters from a non-existent corporation owner and created a shell company, all to deceive Gallagher Jr. and knowingly sell him forged artwork, according to Miller.

I guarantee that there are museums right now that have forgeries on view and just dont know it yet, Miller said. In 2016, half of a museum in France happened to be fake.

Karen Barber is an adult services librarian who has taken part in the organization of the art talks since 2012. Apparently, the first talk they ever hosted was about the Gallagher collection. Now, seven years later, the talk is about how Gallagher was duped.

I had no idea that the [UA] had all those forgeries, Barber said after the talk. I think its fascinating that [the museum is] being so open about the forgeries.

The Stolen Painting

The museums talk was brought up during Millers re-telling of the story about Willem de Koonings Woman-Ochre painting that was stolen over 30 years ago.

According to UA Police Chief Brian Seastone, on the morning of Nov. 29, 1985, a man and a woman entered the museum. Police believe that the woman distracted the security guard while the man went up to the second floor.

The security guard was suspicious after they left and immediately went upstairs to check on the artworks, Miller said. He discovered that the painting had been cut from its frame shortly after they left.

It wasnt until 2009 when Lauren Rabb became the curator of art at the UA art museum that Woman-Ochre came back into the spotlight. According to Rabb, she was always interested in art theft.

Art crime fascinates me because while its usually considered a victimless crime, at the same time its a crime against humanity, Rabb said in an email. Humanity is deprived of that work of art of the ability to experience it anymore.

According to Rabb, awareness about the stolen de Kooning painting needed to spread if it were ever to be returned to the art museum. Rabb contacted the FBI to remind them about the robbery and to inquire about the status of their investigations.

It seemed like a good time to reopen the case and make sure there was publicity around the 30-year anniversary of the theft, Rabb said.

Miller said the museum hosted an event titled Out of the Vault Art Crime, prompted by Rabb in 2015. It was about past forgeries, Woman-Ochre and the FBIs progress on the stolen painting case.

This talk renewed interest toward the unsolved disappearance within the community. According to Miller, the event received international press attention and an article was written about the stolen painting a few weeks later by Anne Ryman for the Arizona Republic.

On Aug. 3, 2017, we got a call that changed our lives, Miller said.

David Van Auker, an owner of an antique store in New Mexico, called the art museum to say that he believed he found the stolen de Kooning after he researched the painting he bought and came across Rymans article.

At first, I was cautious about getting excited, Miller said. It wasnt that I didnt believe him, but we wanted more proof, especially after discovering so many other forgeries in the museum.

Finally, it was found that Van Auker was indeed in possession of the long-lost painting. According to Miller, if it werent for the transparency and educational reach of the Out of the Vault Art Crime event, Rymans article wouldnt have been written.

Museums are public institutions, Miller said. The public should be aware of what goes on inside them. Keeping the public informed is what helped us recover Woman-Ochre.

Today, Woman-Ochre is being tested and repaired at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Miller expects that the art museum will get to welcome the painting back home in Spring of 2021.

Over 30 years after the crime, UA Museum of Art employees and community members alike celebrate the paintings recovery.

Art crime is a real and current issue, Miller said. Just recently, a couple paintings were burglarized in Germany. For [the art museum], its about finding a balance between visitor experience and painting safety.

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Forgery to thievery, a brief history of art crime at the UA Museum - Arizona Daily Wildcat

First storm of the year and what a storm! After I cleared my and my neighbors drive today, and shoveled out the local fireplug, it was off to the cemetery to dig out and visit my recently deceased wifes grave. That section of the cemetery isnt plowed, but with four-wheel-drive, no problem. I knew as I pulled up and looked that something was amiss. There should have been a snowy lump in front of her stone where I placed an evergreen basket a short time ago. A little digging confirmed you had stolen it. (You might see this, so Ive chosen to address you directly.)

My first reaction was anger followed very quickly by deep sadness. Not for me, or my wife, but for you. Perhaps you needed a Thanksgiving gift, but lacked the money. A better gift would have been to tell your Mom, wife, or girlfriend (it seems likely youre male), I wanted to get you something, but I didnt have the money. I was going to steal a beautiful, wood-slab sided basket with a branch for a handle, filled with evergreens, pine cones and a red ribbon, from the cemetery. But then I thought of you, and what you would think of me, and I couldnt do it. I hope you forgive me.

But instead, you stole the basket from the grave of a woman you never met. Perhaps you didnt notice the date on the stone. Its nearly the first anniversary of her passing, so its still very raw for me, her family and friends. Or perhaps you did, and didnt care.

Since you have her basket, you should know a few things about her. She was 70 years old when she died, and more beautiful than the day we met nearly 40 years ago. She was, in younger days, a three-time Womens National Judo Champion. So, congratulations. You stole a souvenir from a nationally ranked athlete.

Midlife, she scrapped a successful career and became a well-respected criminal appellate attorney for Massachusettss prisoners serving life without parole, primarily murderers, people that, in many cases, started out like you, committing petty crimes. Things often escalate from there, and due to joint-venture laws, many got caught up in something they never would have dreamed of. She was revered by her clients for her kindness, and never judging them. She helped more than a few with prison education programs. So, congratulations. You stole a memorial basket from a woman who would have worked tirelessly to preserve your rights.

Theres so much else to know. She was a talented portrait painter, and exhibited and sold many works. She played the piano. She was eternally optimistic, even during the course of the undiagnosable disease that took her life. She only knew two kinds of people, friends and friends she hadnt gotten to know yet. Had she known you, its a pretty sure bet she would have liked you, despite your shortcomings.

Perhaps you thought this was a victimless crime. After all, shed never know, right? But there are several victims here, and youre the first. Because youre not a petty thief or larcenist anymore. No, you have a new name. Grave robber. Now its your secret shame, your secret stain, to bear throughout your life. You may believe theres no price to pay for that, and who am I to say differently? But, regardless of your beliefs, or mine, this world seems all about balance, and youve tipped the scales. I have no idea what form it may take, and certainly offer no prediction, but I think what you have thrown out of balance will be restored one day. Good luck with that. The grave has been dug out, so you could put the basket back, which would help. You could pause there for a moment, just another mourner, and tell her youre sorry, and that youre going to make a real effort to turn things around in your life, to avoid becoming a client of someone just like her.

Being an optimist, she would believe you just might do that. Yin to her Yang, I tend to doubt it. But no matter. I know your name now, and thats enough.

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My first reaction was anger followed very quickly by deep sadness - The Recorder

The Peach State has received a considerable amount of money from the federal government to combat crime and improve public safety.

Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Claire Murray and Office of Justice Programs Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Katharine T. Sullivan joined Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp on Tuesday in announcing awards of almost $153 million to fight crime and improve community safety in Georgia.

Nearly $4.3 million will help law enforcement officials and victim service providers in the state investigate and prosecute human traffickers and aid human trafficking survivors. U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Byung J. BJay Pak, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia Charlie Peeler and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr also participated in the announcement.

Human trafficking is a cruel and barbaric practice that calls to mind the darkest moments of our history, and sadly it has left its mark on the communities of Georgia, said Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Murray. Under the direction of Attorney General Barr, the Department of Justice is putting the full weight of its resources behind the brave men and women of the state who are fighting trafficking perpetrators and bringing relief to victims. We commend these courageous and compassionate professionals and are proud to lend them our full support.

Human trafficking is an obscene violation of human rights and human dignity, affecting millions of people worldwide, countless victims in this country and hundreds if not thousands of men, women and children right here in Georgia, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Sullivan. We are so grateful to the law enforcement officers who pursue these vicious criminals and to the dedicated service providers who work around the clock to get survivors the help they so desperately need and deserve.

Department officials and First Lady Kemp made the announcement at a press event alongside law enforcement officials, anti-trafficking advocates and members of the Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. Georgias leaders have concentrated the states resources on fighting human trafficking, establishing a Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit in the Georgia Department of Law. First Lady Kemp co-chairs the Georgians for Refuge, Action, Compassion and Education, or GRACE, Commission, a task force of public officials, law enforcement and health care professionals, for-profit and non-profit organizations and subject matter experts dedicated to combating human trafficking in Georgia.

Many trafficking victims in Georgia are teenagers who are sexually exploited. Of the 375 cases reported from the state to the National Human Trafficking Hotline last year, most involved sex trafficking and almost a quarter involved a minor. During an FBI-led, month-long, nationwide operation focused on recovering child victims of sex trafficking, known as Operation Independence Day, the FBI, in cooperation with 400 law enforcement agencies, identified and/or recovered more than 100 child victims of sex trafficking, including seven in Georgia. Law enforcement officials also arrested 67 suspected traffickers. Grantee organizations that received previous Justice Department funding served 140 human trafficking clients in 2018.

The awards today support a range of activities designed to bring sex and labor traffickers to justice and provide critical services to victims. A grant to the Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council will fund a multidisciplinary task force composed of law enforcement agencies, including the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and several victim service organizations. Funds will also support direct victim services provided under the auspices of the Georgia Coalition to Combat Human Trafficking. Other awards will help ensure that children and minors who are victimized receive counseling, case management and other critical services. Georgia Care Connection Office, Inc.; Wellspring Living, Inc.; Tapestri, Inc.; and the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy are among the grant recipients.

Human and sex trafficking are not victimless crimes. These grants will go a long way in not just furthering our prosecutorial efforts for these terrible crimes, but also in providing much needed victim-centered services. Our office continues to be fully committed to eradicating human trafficking within the Northern District of Georgia, said Byung J. BJay Pak, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

In Georgia, the fight against human trafficking is a coordinated effort of federal, state and local law enforcement and prosecuting agencies working together to identify, arrest and prosecute those who choose to engage in this horrific industry, said U.S. Attorney for the Middle District Charlie Peeler. In the Middle District, we aggressively investigate and prosecute cases where offenders prey on vulnerable citizens, taking advantage of their age, their desire for love and affection, their financial status and their addictions. I am confident that these federal dollars will provide critical support to those who are dedicated to protecting victims and arresting perpetrators, which will lead to the end of human trafficking in our state.

Human trafficking is a pervasive, growing threat plaguing communities across our state and country, said First Lady Kemp. I applaud the federal, state and local partners who are committed to healing victims, seeking justice and holding bad actors accountable. By working together, we will end this criminal enterprise once and for all.

We thank the Department of Justice for making it possible for us to continue and expand on our anti-trafficking efforts in Georgia, said Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. The resources announced today, will help ensure more victims in Georgia get the support they need and help ensure that our law enforcement officials have every tool at their disposal to put buyers and traffickers behind bars where they belong.

The remainder of the states awards cover a wide range of criminal justice, juvenile justice and victim service activities. Grants will support school safety initiatives, law enforcement hiring, services for domestic violence and sexual assault victims, inmate reentry services, youth mentoring and efforts to combat online child exploitation and manage sex offenders. Awards were made by the three grant-making components of the Department of Justice OJP, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the Office on Violence Against Women.

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DOJ Awards ~$153 Million to Reduce Crime, Improve Public Safety in Georgia - All On Georgia

Retailers across Gloucestershire have welcomed new proposals put forward by the county's Police and Crime Commissioner aimed at reducing shoplifting.

Around 50 of the county's most prominent retail businesses were represented at the launch of a report into retail crime produced by Martin Surl's office.

The 33-page review painted a picture of retail crime up nationally by 25% since the turn of the century and highlighted many of the reasons for it.

In it, the PCC mapped out a new approach that will commit Gloucestershire Police to: investigate every retail theft and simplifying the way retailers are able to report crime.

It also sets out to establish Crime Prevention Advisors to improve links with businesses, improve information sharing and improve partnership working.

PCC Martin Surl said "Shop theft is considered attractive because of its accessibility and low detection rate. But it is not the victimless crime it is often perceived to be.

"Unfortunately, this is compounded by a police response which can only be described as 'patchy' due to an approach which has given priority to crimes considered to be more serious.

"This is a flawed approach. Every crime matters and what might seem trivial today can often lead to something much more serious tomorrow ".

The manager of Gloucester retailers' organisation 'City Safe' Steve Lindsay said, "The PCC's report is fantastic. It's honest; it's factual. It's what we've waiting years for."

Detective Superintendent Steve Bean, Gloucestershire Constabulary's Head of Investigations answered questions from retailers and promised to look into their complaints.

He told them, "The OPCC has conducted research both locally and nationally and you can't disagree with any of the recommendations.

"The PCC is right. Every crime does matter and it's clear to me the quality of investigation is nowhere near to where it should be.

"We've become oblivious to how bad the police response has been and be under no illusion we intend to address it".

Cheltenham BID Director Kevin Blackadder said, "It was a really good idea to bring together a number of businesses quite clearly concerned about the levels of retail crime.

"It gave them the opportunity to make it clear how they're suffering from crime that's not just a business problem but a society problem.

"I'm pleased the police recognise shoplifting can lead to more serious crime and their commitment to report back in six months".

To read the retail crime review in full on the OPCC website, Safer Days and Nights priority pages - https://www.gloucestershire-pcc.gov.uk/priorities/safer-days-and-nights-for-all/

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Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner reveals new approach aimed at tackling shoplifters - Punchline Gloucester

Retailers have welcomed new proposals aimed at reducing shoplifting in Gloucestershire.

Around 50 of the countys most prominent businesses were represented at the launch of a report into retail crime produced by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC).

PCC Martin Surl said Shop theft is considered attractive because of its accessibility and low detection rate. But it is not the victimless crime it is often perceived to be.

Unfortunately, this is compounded by a police response which can only be described as patchy due to an approach which has given priority to crimes considered to be more serious.

This is a flawed approach. Every crime matters and what might seem trivial today can often lead to something much more serious tomorrow.

You can read the retail crime review on the OPCC website at gloucestershire-pcc.gov.uk/priorities/safer-days-and-nights-for-all/

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Retailers welcome proposals to tackle shoplifting | Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard - Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard

Guest columnists Tom Wetzel and Denise DeBiase are certified law enforcement executives with close to 60 years of combined police experience.

Having collectively been police officers for over half a century, we, like cops everywhere, have seen and felt plenty of the damage caused by criminal activity. It is easy to wonder what more we can do to prevent or measurably reduce it.

The phrase We have met the enemy, and they are us is a good starting point.

What we mean by that is quite simple. Our appetite for pleasure can often be found in the form of vice crimes. These personal choices can have mind-boggling consequences for so many others. There may be debate on whether these types of activities should even be classified as crimes, as they often seem to be victimless on their face. But dig deeper, and you will see that these actions create a victim count beyond measure.

Drug use and prostitution are two such vices that both of us know have caused incalculable pain and have resulted in far-reaching criminal activity and suffering.

What would happen if we could find a way to reduce or eradicate our weaknesses toward certain behaviors like these? What if we turned off the spigot on criminal profits because our collective self-discipline suppressed demand? How much could we reduce crime not just in America, but across the entire world?

Anyone who has watched movies has probably seen a major motion picture that dramatized the life of real or fictionalized drug traffickers and how rich they got off the addictions of others. And now we are watching the loss of life in staggering numbers due to heroin and fentanyl overdoses.

How do we get people to stop? It is a complex matter, but we could start with a deeper understanding about how much suffering is caused when we decide to find pleasure or relieve pain through a mind-altering substance.

That same suffering is also caused when someone decides to solicit sex. Many may argue that there is a significant demand that must be met. But the woman who prostitutes herself isnt doing it for fun. Shes doing it for money. But that cash has a huge price tag, which includes exposure to sexually transmitted diseases, cruel physical violence, addiction to drugs and a battered soul.

Were certain these women didnt wake up one day and decide this was the best thing for them to do.

How do women who prostitute themselves mentally recover? For the most part, many wont, or the healing may take decades. As a society, we havent helped them enough. We need to find opportunities to help women avoid the poisonous siren call of prostitution, as well as provide opportunities to heal and nurture these exploited souls.

Another way is to find innovative ways to stifle the demand and let these customers understand that their actions are caustic and burn many around them.

We know that suppressing desires for pleasure or for pain avoidance is easier said than done. But an empathetic society will recognize that it holds the power within its individual members to snuff out so much criminal activity, simply by making them more aware that choices have consequences beyond the person looking in the mirror.

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Readers are invited to submit Opinion page essays on topics of regional or general interest. Send your 500-word essay for consideration to Ann Norman at anorman@cleveland.com. Essays must include a brief bio and headshot of the writer. Essays rebutting todays topics are also welcome.

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What if we turned off the spigot of grief?: Tom Wetzel and Denise DeBiase - cleveland.com

As state and federal policymakers are brainstorming ways to reduce prison populations and establish alternatives to incarceration, Iowa Auditor Rob Sand wants to go backward.

Sand is asking the Iowa Legislature to pass a bill requiring prison time for people convicted of a felony for stealing $1,000 or more of taxpayer money.

White-collar criminals frequently receive soft sentences, Sand laments, and often avoid jail time altogether. His bill would not impose mandatory minimums, but would mandate some amount of jail time, perhaps only days or weeks in some cases.

If we tell people who do this youre going to be treated like a criminal, I think we actually can deter people from doing it because theyre less likely to risk that reputational value, Sand told me in an interview last week.

I get it. Fraudsters are bad people. Bad people deserve to go to jail, or so weve been told. Most Iowans probably agree with Sands idea.

However, I challenge Iowans to reconsider the knee-jerk reaction to lock up people who do bad things. There are other ways to enforce laws and manage offenders, some of which actually work, unlike mass incarceration.

The open secret about our criminal justice system is that prison is not a great way to deter criminals. A significant body of research shows this, but people who write and enforce laws often ignore it.

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In a brief published during the Obama administration, the National Institute of Justice summarized it as such: Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences unlikely to deter future crime.

There is relatively little research about whether short prison sentences are an effective deterrent to financial crimes like the ones Sands proposal focuses on, but given everything else we know about incarceration, we have to wonder.

In most cases, incarceration is not a strategy to prevent future crimes or physically restrain people who are imminent threats to others. Its a tool to satisfy our desire for vengeance.

Tough-on-crime policymaking has been a disaster, making the United States the world leader in incarceration. There are an estimated 2.2 million people in American prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last 40 years, according to the Sentencing Project.

It cannot be the case that Americans are simply more criminal than other people. This is a systematic problem.

Encouragingly, Americans are evolving on the issues of crime and punishment. There is an emerging consensus that mandatory sentences are bad, and that imprisoning people has negative unintended consequences on society.

I admit it is difficult to get too worked up about thieves serving short jail sentences for stealing taxpayer money at a moment when we know peaceful people have been sent away for decades for victimless crimes.

We must recognize that jailing people who deserve it does not set free the people who dont. Quite the opposite, new sentencing mandates will grow and embolden the incarceration state, tightening its grip on current victims and claiming new ones.

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The movement to radically diminish the role of incarceration got national attention this month following the sentencing of Amber Guyger, a Texas police officer convicted of murdering a black man in his own apartment last year.

Many Americans were rightly frustrated that Guygers 10-year sentence seemed out of line with punishments handed down to people of color who have committed far less serious crimes.

In an essay published in the Appeal, lawyer and justice reformer Elisabeth Epps made the case that Guyger should be held accountable in some form, but not in a jail cell.

Abolitionists want and work to create a world where prisons need not exist. A necessary step in abolishing prisons, a prerequisite to ending mass incarceration, is stopping the inhumane practice of keeping people in cages even people like killer cop Guyger. Why?

Because people do not belong in cages, Epps wrote.

We have other tools besides cages. There are promising models for restorative and rehabilitative justice that seek to right whats wrong, rather than simply building more jail cells that we cant afford.

Prison abolition is a radical movement, but one whose vision a world where prisons need not exist we all should embrace.

We cant close the prisons tomorrow. But we can stop passing new laws to mandate prison time.

Comments: (319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com

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Iowa considers stepping backward on criminal justice reform - The Gazette

Two Troy University fraternities were recently suspended for hazing, which is a recurring problem at our nations colleges. According to Wikipedia, 20 college students have died in hazing incidents this decade. Economics can offer insight into how initiation rituals help build groups and why hazing persists.

In addition to fraternities and sororities, bands, sports teams, firefighters, and military units have all had abusive initiations exposed. Economists would hope that our insights will apply across different groups.

Economics distinguishes between positive and normative analysis. Positive analysis focuses on factual questions, cause and effect, and how things work. Normative economics deals with questions about what should be.

My discussion is positive. Personally I did not join a fraternity and consider initiation rituals ridiculous. Economists focus on understanding practices in society without imposing personal biases. We should understand what rituals do before we possibly ban hazing.

Enduring initiation signals a new members commitment to a groups cause or purpose. Initiation differs from training. Training develops skills used in group tasks; initiation generally does not. Demanding training can cause many applicants to drop out, similar to initiation.

What types of groups benefit from making prospective members signal commitment? Ones where the group experience or its performance depends on members actions and effort, and where the valued types of effort are difficult to describe. Fires and coworkers carelessness can put firefighters in grave danger. Firefighters need to have each others backs, and in ways that go beyond training protocols. Initiation signals this willingness.

Initiation screens prospective members. Sometimes a group can enroll all applicants and boot those failing to perform. Natural limits on group size make signaling more valuable. Only eleven players play football at once, only so many firefighters ride on a truck, and an exclusive fraternity or sorority cannot admit everyone.

Signaling also generates value when other ways of screening fail to identify high quality applicants. The inability of resumes, interviews, and background checks to identify the best potential members makes signaling more important.

An action works as a signal when only outstanding potential members willingly take the action. That is, a good signal separates the prospective great members from others. Many things serve as signals in life; I recently wrote about Professor Bryan Caplans book on higher education as a signal.

Economic models of signaling reveal an unpleasant truth: a signal is valuable because it is costly. Initiation rituals consequently must be unpleasant or humiliating. A pleasurable initiation would not deter any would-be members.

Initiation likely persists because it helps sustain cohesive groups. Yet even if hazing works, alternatives may exist. Perhaps a less costly signal could still separate the prospective good and bad members. The initiation could be less demeaning and dangerous and not cross the line into hazing and still help a fraternity or fire department function effectively.

Human emotions can make initiations unnecessarily dangerous or persist when no longer needed. Turnabout may not be fair play, but is a natural reaction after we undergo a trial. Rituals may not be precise and are carried out by members with imperfect memories. Members may believe they endured worse abuse than occurred and unintentionally push exercise and drinking into hazing.

Economics also suggests that preventing hazing will be difficult. A cooperative victim greatly facilitates criminal prosecutions. Normally crime victims want their attacker punished. Prosecuting victimless crimes like drugs or gambling is difficult because all parties voluntarily participate; few gamblers want their bookie arrested and put out of business.

Young men and women choose to join fraternities and sororities and undergo initiation. Pledges will be reluctant to report hazing, even with websites and hazing hotlines. And illegality serves as a further barrier to reporting; a fraternity member risks punishment when reporting an initiation that went too far.

Should initiations be done away with as a relic of the past? Perhaps, but we should recognize that they play a role in building valued groups in society. We should constantly assess if safer initiations can serve the signaling function.

Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. The opinions expressed in this column are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University.

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The persistent problem of hazing - Yellowhammer News - Yellowhammer News

Prosecutors are NOT willing to letLori Loughlin off the hook so easily.

Earlier, we heard theFull House stars chances of getting a late game plea deal had gone up thanks to a departmental dispute.

She and fashion designer hubbyMossimo Giannulli were arrested as part of the infamous Operation Varsity Blues and accused of bribing USC officials $500,000 to get their daughters fraudulently put on the crew team (despite the fact neither rowed) to ensure their conditional acceptance to the college.

The couple pleaded not guilty, but with their acknowledgement of the crimes caught on audio recording and others involved having already confessed and pled guilty, the case seems like a slam dunk.

However, insiders said prosecutors were worried after theprobation departments sentencing report of fellow college admissions scandal participantFelicity Huffman, which judged the crime to be victimless.

Related:Alec Baldwin Doesnt Think Felicity Or Lori Should Serve Jail Time!

Considering colleges only admit a certain number of students every year, cheating your way into those opportunities definitely knocks innocent people off the list, but OK. Lets say enough people think this way. Does it mean Lori is more likely to win her trial? Or to face an incredibly light sentence if she is found guilty?

Well, it turns out prosecutors are open to a plea deal, but theyre coming at it from a position of strength they just hit the Giannulllis with yet ANOTHER new charge to go along with mail fraud and money laundering.

The US Attorney out of Boston just charged 11 of the 15 parents who had pleaded not guilty with a new crime: federal program bribery.

The bribery chargecarries a max 5-year sentence btw, bringing Lori and Mossimos possible sentence to an intimidating 45 years.

Apparently the families were all given the heads up. They had a chance to reverse their pleas or else they would face even more charges, and four of the parents took deals.

(Some of the athletic officials involved were also hit by the bribery charges, as well asnew fraud conspiracy charges. The prosecutors are NOT messing around.)

However, since Lori and Moss chose not to fold under the threat of another charge, they likely wont take a plea deal at all. They vowed to fight this and they apparently still plan to.

So how are the girls taking all this? You know, the beneficiaries of all the alleged crimes,Olivia Jade andIsabella Giannulli?

Theyre still living their best lives following officially cutting ties from USC; on Monday night they went to see theJonas Brothers!

The infamous young women were spotted at the concert sharing a 4-seat box with with two girlfriends. Olivias on-again boyfriendJackson Guthy was in a nearby box with three other guys.

According to witnesses spilling toET, the couple met in the middle for a big kiss whenNick Jonas sangJealous!

Awwww. How romantic! Its like all the criminal charges and lifelong ignominy just melt away

[Image viaAdriana M. Barraza/WENN/Olivia Jade/Instagram.]

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Lori Loughlin Charged With ANOTHER Crime As Daughters Chill Out At Jonas Brothers Concert! - PerezHilton.com

The New Orleans City Council is looking at throwing out a majority of the city's 56,000 outstanding municipal and traffic court warrants. Some of those warrants date back to 2002. Others say those people still need to face the consequences of their actions. "They're still locking me up behind the same tickets that are 30-something years old," said Anthony Lee. "And I'm still suffering behind it."Lee said he'd repeatedly been to jail for the same tickets. He said he hopes to see some relief soon. Councilman Jason Williams is proposing a resolution to wipe out thousands of arrest warrants and wave the accumulated court fines and fees. "Poor residents committing victimless crimes out of desperation and poverty are too often trapped in a hopeless cycle of outstanding fines, fees and resulting warrants that ultimately drain all of our taxpayer resources," Williams said. The resolution would apply to low-level, nonviolent offenses often associated with homelessness and poverty. The group "Stand With Dignity" says these offenses account for a majority of the 56,000 warrants for municipal and traffic offenses. "These issues are not criminal," said Councilman Jay Banks. "Economic poverty should not be a crime. Somebody that hasn't done anything that will affect anybody's life other than theirs and their family, they should not be called criminal."Rafael Goyeneche, the director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said there have to be consequences. Goyeneche said there are many layers to this issue and, while it may look good politically, it is doing a disservice to public service and safety. The City Council Criminal Justice Committee gave its full support to the resolution.

The New Orleans City Council is looking at throwing out a majority of the city's 56,000 outstanding municipal and traffic court warrants.

Some of those warrants date back to 2002.

Others say those people still need to face the consequences of their actions.

"They're still locking me up behind the same tickets that are 30-something years old," said Anthony Lee. "And I'm still suffering behind it."

Lee said he'd repeatedly been to jail for the same tickets. He said he hopes to see some relief soon.

Councilman Jason Williams is proposing a resolution to wipe out thousands of arrest warrants and wave the accumulated court fines and fees.

"Poor residents committing victimless crimes out of desperation and poverty are too often trapped in a hopeless cycle of outstanding fines, fees and resulting warrants that ultimately drain all of our taxpayer resources," Williams said.

The resolution would apply to low-level, nonviolent offenses often associated with homelessness and poverty.

The group "Stand With Dignity" says these offenses account for a majority of the 56,000 warrants for municipal and traffic offenses.

"These issues are not criminal," said Councilman Jay Banks. "Economic poverty should not be a crime. Somebody that hasn't done anything that will affect anybody's life other than theirs and their family, they should not be called criminal."

Rafael Goyeneche, the director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said there have to be consequences.

Goyeneche said there are many layers to this issue and, while it may look good politically, it is doing a disservice to public service and safety.

The City Council Criminal Justice Committee gave its full support to the resolution.

See the rest here:

New Orleans City Council looking to throw out thousands of outstanding warrants - WDSU New Orleans

Chief statistican Fiona Dowsley said it was "certainly not" the case that the overall crime rate had risen in the past 12 months, although she pointed to a sharp increase in the number of family violence incidents recorded.

Family-related crimes increased by 8.6 per cent in the past 12 months to 82,652 incidents.

The rate of family violence also increased, by 6.4 per cent, reaching 1253.1 incidents per 100,000 people.

The agency, which uses Victoria Police data, said the state had recorded the highest number of unique alleged offenders or 84,989 individuals in the 12 months to June, which equates to about one alleged criminal for each 78 Victorians.

But this rise was accompanied by the lowest "victimisation rate" on record, which could be explained by the rise in "victimless crimes", or crimes against the state, like people breaching court orders.

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"In terms of the overall crime that's occured, that's obviously pretty stable," Ms Dowsley said.

"We are seeing record numbers of alleged offenders being processed by Victoria Police and the average age of these alleged offenders has been increasing," Ms Dowsley said.

"In terms of the victimisation rate [falling], that's unequivocally a good thing."

The average age of offenders is at an all-time high, with men 34.2 years old, and women 33.3 years old at the time of their alleged crimes.

A recent Ipsos study showed Victorians were more worried about crime than people in any other state, despite crime rates falling.

Forty per cent of Victorian respondents to a national survey nominated crime as their biggest worry, compared with 24 per cent in other states, where residents were more concerned about healthcare and the cost of living.

Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton, speaking with Police Minister Lisa Neville as the statistics were being released on Thursday morning, welcomed the drop in residential burglaries, which were down 11.2 per cent to 26,444 cases the lowest on record.

Victoria Police Minister Lisa Neville Credit:AAP

However, other crimes continue to preoccupy police, like carjackings, aggravated burglaries and rammings. While less common, they had a bigger impact on people.

"Its an absolute priority," he said. "This is what were putting all our attempts into. We know they are crimes that the public are very frightened of and rightly so."

Early on Thursday, a police officer and a teenage girl were hospitalised after being hit by an allegedly stolen car driven by a 19-year-old man north of Geelong.

The police officer was left with a fractured leg.

"Thats what confronts out members everyday," Mr Patton said.

"One every day is virtually occuring. Thats happening on a daily basis. Thats frightening."

In terms of young offenders, he said there were fewer criminals, but those who were offending were committing more crimes until they were arrested.

"There's a small core group of youths who continue to commit serious and regular crimes," Ms Neville said.

The question now, she said, was what authorities could do to help them. Getting them off the streets and into education or training was not working for this group.

"These kids seem to not care."

Opposition police spokesman David Southwick said the figures showed the Andrews government had no answer to crime increases.

"Daniel Andrews and Labor have no plan to keep families safe in their homes, take guns and drugs off our streets, and save young people from a life of crime," he said.

"Todays crime statistics show why Victoria has the worst perception of safety in the nation and this will continue until Daniel Andrews puts community safety first."

Bianca Hall is a senior reporter for The Age. She has previously worked in the Canberra bureau as immigration correspondent, Sunday political correspondent and deputy editor.

Erin covers crime for The Age. Most recently she was a police reporter at the Geelong Advertiser.

Continued here:

Victorians less likely to be victims of crime today than in last 15 years - The Age

A mum stole 15,000 of benefits by claiming her disabled son was "hiding in the loft" when he had actually moved 7,000 miles away to the Philippines.

June Roberts lied to the authorities to bankroll Paul Roberts, 45, who had in fact jetted off to Southeast Asia to start a new life.

The 65-year-old, from St Helens, acted as the appointee for her son, who has schizophrenia, when making claims on his behalf in 2016.

Paul was said to be unable to work through ill-health and to have both severe mobility difficulties and significant care needs.

His Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payments (PIP) were paid direct into his bank account.

But he booked a flight to the Philippines in May 2017 - where he then married - and never came back to Merseyside.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) rang Mrs Roberts in a review of his case that July.

She claimed he couldn't come to the phone because he was "hiding in the loft" and the dishonest scam continued undetected.

Paul continued to regularly withdraw cash in the Philippines until the DWP was alerted to a possible fraud and stopped his benefits.

On November 9, 2018, Mrs Roberts was interviewed and asked if she knew her son had moved to the Philippines.

The mum, of Sherdley Park Drive, St Helens, claimed: "Not really. Because Paul lives at home, he's at home now."

Mrs Roberts then conceded he may have been on holiday there for a few weeks, before admitting he had married out there.

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The officer asked why she hadn't told a DWP official in the July phone call that her son was really halfway across the globe.

She said: "I can't remember. I honestly thought he was upstairs in the loft because I shouted down to him to answer the phone."

Roberts, who now admits this was yet another lie, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. She has no previous convictions.

David Polglase, prosecuting, today said the Crown Prosecution Service accepted the money went into Paul's bank account.

Zillah Williams, defending, said her client had back problems but assured the court she was willing to do suitable unpaid work.

She said Roberts had already paid about 4,000 back to the DWP and that she "made no financial benefit from this whatsoever".

Ms Williams said: "She feels extremely let down by her son, who has absolved himself of any responsibility it appears, even though he was the one who took himself out of the country, against her better wishes, and has made no contribution to repay her.

"Mr Roberts who sits at the back of court is equally dismayed by his son's actions."

Ms Williams said Roberts was made her son's appointee in 2007 and couldn't remember signing the form to do so.

Judge Sophie McKone accepted the mum's remorse was "significant and genuine" and that the case had caused her anxiety and stress.

The judge also accepted that Roberts didn't benefit personally from the scam, but said benefit fraud was not a victimless crime.

She said such crimes reduced the limited amount of taxpayers' money available to help those who need it most.

Judge McKone handed her a 12-month community order with 180 hours of unpaid work.

Simon Tunnicliffe, of the Crown Prosecution Service's Fraud Unit, previously told the ECHO that Roberts' committed a "substantial fraud".

He said: "Her claims to have told her son to come down from the loft to answer the phone when he was in fact in the Philippines were ludicrous.

"He'd been withdrawing cash from the Philippines and it was clear his mother was helping him.

"She'd contested a rejected PIP claim on the basis that Paul couldn't move about at all. He was living in another continent.

"As Paul's appointee, she was responsible for letting the authorities know if his circumstances changed. She didn't and may never have done so if the authorities hadn't caught up with her.

"This is public money, there are many demands on it and cases like this could affect the many people who really need the support of the state to survive."

A Proceeds of Crime timetable has been set up to recoup the money that was dishonestly claimed.

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Benefit fraudster mum claimed son was 'hiding in the loft' but he was actually in the Philippines - Liverpool Echo

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

For gun owners like me, its hard to forget President Trumps promise on his 99th day in office, proclaiming that President Obamas eight year assault on our Second Amendment rights had come to a crashing end. But in the years since Mr. Trump took his seat in the Oval Office, the eight year assault of the Obama administration has seemed more like a holiday by comparison. Just this week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on banning assault weapons. Yet, the response from the Republican administration has been deafening silence, leaving millions of American gun owners like myself powerless against the continual assault to our constitutional liberties.

Mr. Trump and the Republican Party at large havent done gun owners any favors. The administration has managed to ban possession of bump stocks by administrative fiat, making felons out of tens of thousands of gun owners overnight. It also supported state efforts to implement red flag laws, restrict the gun rights of young adults, and threatened gun owners with domestic surveillance and unconstitutional seizures. So much for that crashing end to the assault on the Second Amendment.

Mr. Obamas administration, on the other hand, relaxed prohibitions on carrying firearms on federal land, and made it easier for people to acquire NFA items like suppressors and machine guns. Of course, it wasnt all good. The administration also cracked down on homemade firearms and tightened some import restrictions.

But despite constant claims that Republicans are beholden to gun rights organizations, when the GOP held the entire government in 2017 and 2018, nothing changed no concealed-carry reciprocity, no deregulation of firearm suppressors, no changes to any of the thousands of absurd regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). In fact, during the time the Republicans controlled the entire government, all that passed was stiffer background checks. Mr. Trump couldve taken action on many of these items anytime he wanted. This doesnt sound like a party under the thumb of gun owners.

Clearly, the GOP has gotten lackadaisical on the concept of civil rights. Some Republicans are even throwing support to dangerous red flag laws and other worrisome proposals, such as the TAPS Act, which would see law enforcement combing social media for threats to manage. Meanwhile, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear, Senate Republicans are waiting for Mr. Trump to hand them an agenda on gun control entirely forgetting how our government is supposed to operate.

A seventh-grade civics class would tell you that its absurd for a president to tell the legislative branch what laws to pass. When it comes to laws that might abridge our rights, nobody should be deferring to anyone. But now the president is poised to tell the entire Republican Party just how much respect our Second Amendment rights are due, and it seems the GOP will follow along with whatever he says.

Of course, the majority-Democratic House has committed to redpen the Second Amendment out of existence. And since the Senate has deferred its judgment on our rights to the president, gun rights advocates need to make it clear to him that the haphazard approach hes taken thus far with our civil rights will no longer fly. If we dont, well suffer yet another one of the proverbial thousand cuts. Unlike your flesh, though, cuts to our rights dont heal after a few days.

The right to bear arms is about the right to stay alive to have a real way to protect yourself against anyone who wishes you harm. For the ruling class sitting in Americas ivory towers with their security details, gated communities and quick police response times, that can be hard to understand. For the rest of America, especially those living below the poverty line, the threat of unlawful force is real, and having an effective mechanism for self defense is literally a life-or-death proposition. What the American people dont need is one more excuse for an overzealous, militarized law enforcement to lock us in cages for victimless crimes.

What we need is for our government to respect our lives and liberty. Mr. Trump claims to be the champion of ordinary Americans. If he really means this, he could direct the ATF to roll back any one of the absurd regulations that are irrationally restricting the rights of Americans. Things like George H.W. Bushs sporting purposes test which keep effective, inexpensive arms out of the reach of ordinary Americans are long overdue to be repealed. If we ever have a president who cares about the Second Amendment, he or she will actually work to restore our rights, not ever-so-slowly remove them while we arent paying attention.

Matthew Larosiere is the director of legal policy for Firearms Policy Coalition and a senior contributor to Young Voices. He can be found on Twitter @MattLaAtLaw.

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'No, your gun rights aren't actually safe with Trump' - Washington Times

By late afternoon on most weekdays, the orange brick Loving County Courthouse becomes an island in a rising tide of snorting, lurching oil field trucks.

The San Antonio Express-News reports at peak congestion, the wait to make a left turn on Texas 302 toward Kermit can be a half-hour or more.

"Sometimes the traffic on State Highway 302 is backed up 2 miles. It's gotten so bad that sometimes I have to get on a traffic vest and go to the intersection to direct traffic," said Sheriff Chris Busse, 51, who took office in 2015.

"When I was a deputy here in 2008, I was lucky if I saw 20 cars on Texas 302. Now you see 1,000 in half an hour," he added.

Long the answer to a trivia question about the least-populated county in Texas, Loving County in the 2010 census counted just 82 people. Only Kalawao County in Hawaii had fewer.

It's now up to about 140 residents spread over 671 square miles of harsh desert terrain. Even at that density of one person per 5 square miles, it still makes Mongolia -- the world's least densely populated country -- seem like Houston.

But these days, no one here is complaining of being lonely, as a tsunami of thousands of oil field workers swarms daily to this remote corner of the Permian Basin that borders New Mexico. About 1,000 to 1,500 additional workers are temporary residents who live in man-camps and RV parks.

Positioned over the Delaware Basin, a massive shale oil formation, Loving County is part of the hottest oil play on the planet.

"Right now, we're producing somewhere near 4.5 million barrels of oil a day, and a tremendous amount of gas and gas liquids. To put that in perspective, less than 10 years ago, we were producing about a million barrels of oil a day," said Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association.

"Loving County is an integral part of the phenomenal growth. I believe they have about 33 rigs running currently," he added.

An estimated 100,000 workers have come to West Texas for the boom, which Shepperd said is expected to last for decades.

The basin play, which extends into New Mexico, has about 250,000 producing wells. It also has more than 500 working rigs, about half the national total.

And perhaps no West Texas community has been more dramatically affected than Mentone, which just a few years ago barely had a pulse.

Loving County's only settlement is now rolling in traffic and new tax revenue, but also has parents worried about the kids and taking a simple drive.

A decade ago, before the oil boom hit, then-Sheriff Billy Hopper and Busse, who was a deputy, spent much of their time on traffic enforcement.

Now the department deals with drugs, thefts and other crimes, as well as numerous wrecks. Busse is looking to hire a seventh deputy and a school resource officer to escort the bus to and from Wink, 31 miles to the east.

In 2014, the school bus was hit head-on on Texas 302. The bus driver was injured and the other motorist killed. No children were hurt.

"They (deputies) are out on the road all the time, trying to get these people to slow down and pay attention, and to make sure they are legal," said dispatcher Verta Sparks.

"Half of them don't have Texas driver's licenses. All they have is a passport from Mexico or a lot of other places. They can get jobs and make a good bunch of money right now. These trucking companies are hiring anyone," she added.

A visitor to Mentone also notices odd rows of red traffic cones placed around town to prevent trucks from cutting through residential streets and endangering children.

On a wall in the courthouse is a faded picture of Oliver Loving. the pioneering 19th century cattleman who gave the county its name and also inspired a character in "Lonesome Dove."

In 1867, Loving, who helped blaze the Goodnight-Loving Trail, died from wounds suffered in an Indian attack while driving cattle northward.

In 1921, the first oil well was drilled, and within a decade, more than a million barrels was produced. Since then, the county's fortunes have risen and fallen with the oil and gas booms.

Mentone saw its population hit a peak of 300 or more in the 1930s. Since then, as ranching faded and the kids moved away, it has been in steady decline. Two decades ago, only 67 people lived in the county.

"My family has been here since 1906. In 1958, I was the last high school student in Mentone," said Hopper, 82, who traveled the globe as a Halliburton executive before finally coming home.

"Loving County has been between a boom and a bust for as long as I've been here. We've always had booms, but none in my lifetime like this. It's unbelievable to see," he said. "The other day it took me 47 minutes to get through a four-way stop sign on U.S. 285, going north,"

Hopper's large concrete block house on Harris Street is a block off Texas 302 and right behind the new 24-hour convenience store and gas station.

He is lulled to sleep nightly by a droning lullaby of idling diesels and passing trucks.

"Ever since this new Valero station opened, it's trucks running 24 hours a day, with guys sleeping in them. It's people coming and going all the time," he said.

One thing that everyone agrees has changed for the better is the once bitter local politics. For decades, factions and families fought to control the county government and jobs that came with it.

"When I was a kid out here, we seldom had an election where the Texas Rangers didn't show up," recalled Hopper.

On election day, the population typically swelled with absentee residents coming home to vote. Lawsuits, recounts and election contests were regular events.

One oft-told tale is about the local boy who cried bitter tears on election day when he learned that his dead father had voted but not bothered to visit.

"It's a lot better now that those old soreheads who were mad at each other have died off," Jones, the county judge, said.

In 2005, Hopper helped thwart a bizarre plot in which a group of out-of-town Libertarians hoped to move in suddenly and take over the county government with their votes.

According to a news account, their plan was to rid the county of oppressive regulations including planning, zoning, building codes, and also halt the enforcement of laws against victimless acts including dueling, gambling, incest, price-gouging, cannibalism and drug handling.

But after the Texas Rangers were called in and misdemeanor charges were filed, the group packed up and went back to California.

About 40 people live in Mentone, which despite the frenzied boom, still has an abandoned, broken-down look. The only green patch in town is the courthouse lawn, regularly watered under sturdy mulberry trees and Afghan pines. The latter, after 9/11, were renamed as "Desert Pines."

The school closed in the 1970s, and the little white church with a double outhouse out back has long sat idle. It was last used about three years ago for a wedding, Jones said.

Until 2007, when a municipal water system was installed, folks here had to truck in their drinking water.

Until recently, the county had no retail businesses, and locals drove to 33 miles to Kermit or 77 miles to Odessa to do their shopping.

Now there are about five businesses in town, including three food trucks, a Mexican restaurant and the Horseshoe Convenience store, which sells gas, groceries and beer. Lots of beer.

"It's a madhouse. We sell about 1,200 cases a week. Bud Light is the favorite. Modelo second. And also we sell about 2,400 bags of ice a week," said Downey Burns, 54, who manages the store for his son.

"Our biggest problem is trash. If the dumpster is full, they don't have any problem with throwing it right on the ground. I guess that's the polite way to put it," he added.

Oddly, none of the beer in the coolers has a price tag. The simple reason, according to a clerk, is "They don't care."

An energy boom always attracts workers and fortune-seekers from near and far.

In Loving County, a while back, some Libyan truckers were briefly around. Now, a water trucking company owned by Cubans from Florida is part of the mix.

"My father was a truck driver, and while in Texas he heard about the boom and hauling water," recalled Alex Guillama, 19, of Miami, who spent a few months in Mentone last year.

One thing led to another, and the family now runs a fleet of seven tank trucks here, delivering water for fracking operations for two large energy companies.

"I'd never seen a place so small. When I was in Cuba, I lived in Havana. Here, I live in Miami. It was very different," Alex said by telephone from Florida.

Waiting for his meal at the Super Pollo Food Truck, Richard Stott, 52, a truck driver from Mississippi, unsurprisingly groused about the "idiot drivers" he regularly encounters.

"It's like a war zone. The other day, I was waiting to turn left on 285 and I had a guy come around me on the left, and turn into the southbound lane," he said as two other truck drivers somberly nodded in agreement.

Stott says he sleeps in his truck, showers in the yard, and once a week goes to Lubbock, where he and his wife are staying.

As he stood up to leave, bagged lunch in hand, the CO2 monitor on his belt started chirping.

"There is no global warning," he remarked while shutting it off, adding, "God says he will destroy this place by fire. That's global warming."

For county officials, the lean times are only a fading memory. The boom and related investments have raised the tax base from $809 million in 2010 to $8.2 billion this year, a nine-fold increase.

"We've had tremendous development; Numerous oil and gas wells, gas plants, pipelines, man camps, and RV parks. It's been huge for the county," said Jones, 68, now in his fourth term.

The county's annual spending is also climbing rapidly, even as the tax rate goes down. The proposed 2020 budget is just under $20 million, double that of last year, and three times the 2017 budget.

Jones said the county will use some of the windfall for long-needed improvements, including a bypass around Mentone, a truck weigh station, improving the municipal water system and town roads, and replacing the crumbling school building with a new community center.

One of the perks for local people are the free meals available just north of town at Anadarko's "Wolf Camp," which houses about 500 workers.

On a recent weekday, Jones sat down with two of his grandnephews and two others for a hearty lunch of pulled pork or patty melts. The kitchen also offers a salad bar and freshly squeezed orange juice. The dining room seats about 200 workers.

"I come every day. The food is good," said Jonathan Alvarado, 20, who works cattle on the Jones ranch.

"I love the animals. I could do anything else and make more money, but I wouldn't enjoy it," he added.

But Alvarado's passion is quickly becoming Loving County's past. It takes about 120 acres to sustain one cow here, and the cattle are few and far.

Where a century ago, 10,000 or more head grazed on the meager forage, fewer than 1,000 remain, Jones said.

"A hundred years ago, it was a different climate and it was all grass," he said. "A lot of the ranchers have opened their gates and sold their cattle. They are making more money selling water and getting surface damages than selling cattle."

Besides being the least populated county in Texas, Loving has long enjoyed having the highest per capita income.

Those who have mineral rights here are getting richer, everyone else is eating well and no one is thinking of leaving.

Alan Sparks, 61, who came to Mentone in 1991 and works for a land trust, said locals are used to the dramatic changes that come with a boom.

"We're complaining about the traffic, but not about the boom. Everyone has a little money in their pockets now. It's good for West Texas," said.

"Everyone is going to ride it out. It takes a special person to live out here. You can't run us off."

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West Texas County Benefits From Oil Boom, Population Surge - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Classification of crimes

Most legal systems divide crimes into categories for various purposes connected with the procedures of the courts, such as assigning different kinds of court to different kinds of offense. Common law originally divided crimes into two categories: feloniesthe graver crimes, generally punishable by death and the forfeiture of the perpetrators land and goods to the crownand misdemeanoursgenerally punishable by fines or imprisonment. The procedures of the courts differed significantly according to the kind of crime the defendant was charged with. Other matters that depended on the distinction included the power of the police to arrest an individual on suspicion that he had committed an offense, which was generally permissible in felony cases but not in misdemeanour ones. (See felony and misdemeanour.)

By the early 19th century, it had become clear that the growth of the law had rendered this distinction obsolete, and in many cases it was inconsistent with the gravity of the offenses concerned. For example, whereas theft was always considered a felony, irrespective of the amount stolen, obtaining by fraud was always a misdemeanour. Efforts to abolish the distinction in English law did not succeed until the late 1960s, when it was replaced by the distinction between arrestable offenses and other offenses. An arrestable offense was one punishable with five years imprisonment or more, though offenders could be arrested for other crimes subject to certain conditions. Subsequently, further classifications were devised. For example, a subcategory of serious arrestable offenses was created, and, in order to determine more easily the court in which a case should be tried, a different classification of offenses into the categories of indictable, either way, and summary was adopted. Nonetheless, the traditional division between felony and misdemeanour has been retained in many U.S. jurisdictions, though there has been a rationalization of the allocation of offenses to one category or the other, and it has been used as the basis for determining the court that will hear the case. In some jurisdictions, minor offenses were classified under a new category called violations, which corresponded broadly to the English category of summary offenses.

In systems utilizing civil law, the criminal code generally distinguished between three categories: crime, dlit, and contravention. Under this classification, a crime represented the most serious offense and thus was subject to the most-severe penalty permissible. Dlits were subject to only minor prison sentences, and contraventions were minor offenses. Beginning in the 19th century, some civil-law countries (e.g., Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil, Portugal, and Colombia) consolidated their codes; dlits were reclassified under the broader category of crimes, and contraventions came to denote criminal offenses committed without intent.

All types of criminal codes account for a variety of crimes, including those generally committed by individuals or unorganized groups, as well as other modes of criminal activity. For discussions of particular crimes and types of criminal activity, see arson; assault and battery; bribery; burglary; child abuse; counterfeiting; cybercrime; drug use; embezzlement; extortion; forgery; fraud; hijacking; homicide; incest; kidnapping; larceny; organized crime; perjury; piracy; prostitution; rape; robbery; sedition; smuggling; terrorism; theft; treason; usury; and white-collar crime.

Estimating the amount of crime actually committed is quite complicated. Figures for recorded crime do not generally provide an accurate picture, because they are influenced by variable factors, such as the willingness of victims to report crimes. In fact, it is widely believed that official crime statistics represent only a small fraction of crimes committed.

The publics view of crime is derived largely from the news media, and because the media usually focus on serious or sensational crimes, the publics perception is often seriously distorted. A more accurate view is generally provided by detailed statistics of crime that are compiled and published by government departments; for example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) publishes U.S. crime statistics annually in what is called the Uniform Crime Reports. In the late 1990s, the United Nations (UN) began publishing the Global Report on Crime and Justice, which includes official data from about 90 nationsmostly the more-developed nations, as those are primarily the ones that collect such statistics.

Policy makers often use official crime statistics as the basis for new crime-control measures; for instance, statistics may show an increase in the incidence of a particular type of crime over a period of years and thus suggest that some change in the methods of dealing with that type of crime is necessary. However, official crime statistics are subject to error and may be misleading, particularly if they are used without an understanding of the processes by which they are compiled and the limitations to which they are necessarily subject. The statistics are usually collected on the basis of reports from police forces and other law enforcement agencies and are generally known as statistics of reported crime, or crimes known to the police. Because only incidents observed by the police or reported to them by victims or witnesses are included in the reports, the picture of the amount of crime actually committed may be inaccurate.

One factor accounting for that distortion is the extent to which police resources are directed toward the investigation of one kind of crime rather than another, particularly with regard to what are known as victimless crimes, such as the possession of drugs. These crimes are not discovered unless the police endeavour to look for them, and they do not figure in the statistics of reported crime unless the police take the initiative. Thus, a sudden increase in the reported incidence of a crime from one year to the next may indeed reflect an overall increase in such activity, but it may instead merely show that the police have taken more interest in that crime and have devoted more resources to its investigation. Ironically, efforts to discourage or eliminate a particular kind of crime through more-vigorous law enforcement may create the impression that the crime concerned has increased, because more instances are likely to be detected and thus enter the statistics.

A second factor that can have a striking effect on the apparent statistical incidence of a particular kind of crime is a change in the willingness of victims of the crime to report it to the police. Victims often fail to report a crime for a variety of reasons: they may not realize that a crime has been committed against them (e.g., children who have been sexually molested); they may believe that the police will not be able to apprehend the offender; they may fear serving as a witness; or they may be embarrassed by the conduct that led them to become the victim of the crime (e.g., an individual robbed by a prostitute). Some crimes also may not appear sufficiently serious to make it worthwhile to inform the police, or there may be ways in which the matter can be resolved without involving them (e.g., an act of violence by one schoolchild against another may be dealt with by the school authorities). All those factors are difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy, and there is no reason to suppose that they remain constant over time or by jurisdiction. Thus, a change in any one of the factors may produce the appearance of an increase or a decrease in a particular kind of crime when there has been no such change or when the real change has been on a much-smaller scale than the statistics suggest.

A third factor that may affect the portrait painted by official crime statistics is the way in which the police treat particular incidents. Many of the laws defining crimes are imprecise or ambiguous, such as those related to reckless driving, obscenity, and gross negligence. Some conduct that is treated as criminal or is more aggressively pursued in one police jurisdiction may not be treated similarly in another jurisdiction owing to differences in priorities or interpretations of the law. The recording process used by the police also influences crime statistics; for example, the theft of a number of items may be recorded as a single theft or as a series of thefts of the individual items.

Researchers in the field of criminology have endeavoured to obtain a more-accurate picture of the incidence of crimes and the trends and variations from one period and jurisdiction to another. One research method that has been particularly useful is the victim survey, in which the researcher identifies a representative sample of the population and asks individuals to disclose any crime of which they have been victims during a specified period of time. After a large number of people have been questioned, the information obtained from the survey can be compared with the statistics for reported crime for the same period and locality; the comparison can indicate the relationship between the actual incidence of the type of crime in question and the number of cases reported to the police. Although criminologists have developed sophisticated procedures for interviewing victim populations, such projects are subject to several limitations. Results depend entirely on the recollection of incidents by victims, their ability to recognize that a crime has been committed, and their willingness to disclose it. In addition, this method is obviously inapplicable to victimless crimes.

The U.S. Census Bureau began conducting an annual survey of crime victims in 1972. By the beginning of the 21st century, the survey included a random sample of about 60,000 households, in which approximately 100,000 residents aged 12 and over were interviewed twice a year and asked whether they had been the victims of any of a wide variety of offenses in the last six months. The results of the household survey have been at variance with the reports published by the FBI. The most-common explanation for the differences in the trends reported is that the victim survey data reflect the actual trends in the incidence of criminal behaviour and that the data in the FBIs Uniform Crime Reports primarily reflect increases in the reporting of crimes to the police by victims. Using both types of data, it can be estimated that about half of all violent victimizations and less than half of all property victimizations generally are reported to the police. Many other countriesincluding Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Israel, and New Zealandalso have adopted victim surveys. Since the late 1980s, the UN has sponsored an international crime victim survey as well, with interviews taken in more than 50 countries. Like the UNs official statistics, for various practical reasons this survey has tended to focus on more-developed nations. In less-developed nations, the survey has focused on more-developed urban areas.

An alternative method of collecting crime statistics that some criminologists favour is the self-report study, in which a representative sample of individuals is asked, under assurances of confidentiality, whether they have committed any offenses of a particular kind. This type of research is subject to some of the same difficulties as the victim surveythe researcher has no means of verifying the information, and the subjects can easily conceal the fact that they have committed an offense at some time. However, such surveys often have confirmed that large numbers of offenses have been committed without being reported and that crime is much more widespread than official statistics suggest.

Knowledge of the types of people who commit crimes is subject to one overriding limitation: it is generally based on studies of those who have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted, and those populationswhich represent only unsuccessful criminalsare not necessarily typical of the whole range of criminals. Despite that limitation, some basic facts emerge that give a reasonably accurate portrayal of those who commit crimes.

Crime is predominantly a male activity. In all criminal populations, whether of offenders passing through the courts or of those sentenced to institutions, men outnumber women by a high proportion, especially in more-serious offenses. For example, at the beginning of the 21st century, in the United States, men accounted for approximately four-fifths of all arrests and nine-tenths of arrests for homicide, and in Britain women constituted only 5 percent of the total prison population. Nevertheless, in most Western societies the incidence of recorded crime by women and the number of women in the criminal-justice system have increased. For instance, from the mid- to late 1990s in the United States, arrests of males for violent offenses declined by more than one-tenth, but corresponding figures for women increased by the same amount. To some analysts, those statistics indicated increasing criminal activity by women and suggested that the changing social role of women had led to greater opportunity and temptation to commit crime. However, other observers argued that the apparent increase in female criminality merely reflected a change in the operation of the criminal-justice system, which routinely had ignored crimes committed by women. Although arrest data suggested that female criminality had increased faster than male criminality, the national crime victim survey showed that violent offending in the United States by both males and females had fallen in the same years. At the beginning of the 21st century, the rate of murders committed by women was about two-fifths below its peak in 1980.

Crime also is predominantly a youthful activity. Although statistics vary between countries, involvement in minor property crime generally peaks between ages 15 and 21. Participation in more-serious crimes peaks at a later agefrom the late teenage years through the 20sand criminality tends to decline steadily after the age of 30. The evidence as to whether this pattern, widely found across time and place, is a natural effect of aging, the consequence of taking on family responsibilities, or the effect of experiencing penal measures imposed by the law for successive convictions is inconclusive. Not all types of crime are subject to decline with aging, however. Fraud, certain kinds of theft, and crimes requiring a high degree of sophistication are more likely to be committed by older men, and sudden crimes of violence, committed for emotional reasons, may occur at any age.

The relationship between social class or economic status and crime has been studied extensively. Research carried out in the United States in the 1920s and 30s claimed to show that a higher incidence of criminality was concentrated in deprived and deteriorating neighbourhoods of large cities, and studies of penal populations revealed that levels of educational and occupational attainment were generally lower than in the wider population. Early studies of juvenile delinquents also showed a high proportion of lower-class offenders. However, later research called into question the assumption that criminality was closely associated with social origin, particularly because such studies often overlooked white-collar crime and other criminal acts committed by people of higher socioeconomic status. Self-report studies have suggested that offenses are more widespread across the social spectrum than the figures based on identified criminals would suggest.

The relationship between racial or ethnic background and criminality has evoked considerable controversy. Most penal populations do contain a disproportionately high number of persons from some minority racial groups relative to their numbers in the general population. However, some criminologists have pointed out that this may be the result of the high incidence among minority racial groups of characteristics that are commonly associated with identified criminality (e.g., unemployment and low economic status) and the fact that in many cities racial minority groups inhabit areas that have traditionally had high crime rates, perhaps as a result of their shifting populations and general lack of social cohesion. Other explanations have focused on the enforcement practices of the police, which may be influenced by racial discrimination.

Knowledge of the types of people who are victims of crime requires that they report their crimes, either to the police or to researchers who ask them about their experiences as a victim. Some crimes are greatly underreported in official statisticsrape is an examplebut may be more accurately reported in victim surveys. Yet just as those who are caught or admit to committing crimes do not necessarily represent all criminals, those who report being victims of crime are not necessarily typical of the whole range of victims. Nevertheless, some basic facts gathered from official reports and victim surveys give a reasonably accurate portrayal of crime victims. Probably the most important basic fact is that patterns of offending and patterns of victimization are quite similar. That is, the groups that are most likely to be crime victims are the same groups that are most likely to commit crimes. In particular, crime victims are more likely to be male, young, part of a lower socioeconomic class, and members of ethnic or racial minority groups. (See victimology.)

As discussed above in the section Characteristics of offenders, because criminals who are caught are not necessarily representative of all those who commit crime, reaching robust explanations of the causes of crime is difficult. Nevertheless, criminologists have developed several theories of the phenomenon. Although some criminologists claim that a single theory can provide a universal explanation of criminality, more commonly it is believed that many different theories help to explain particular aspects of criminality and that different types of explanation contribute to the understanding of the problem of crime. A brief discussion of criminological theories follows. For a more detailed analysis, see criminology.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there was great interest in biological theories of criminal activity. These theories, which took into account the biological characteristics of offenders (e.g., their skulls, facial features, body type, and chromosomal composition), held sway for a time, but support for them has waned. In the late 20th century, criminologists attempted to link a variety of hereditary and biochemical factors with criminal activity. For example, adoptees were found to be more likely to engage in criminal behaviour if a biological parent was criminal but their adoptive parent was not; other research suggested that hormonal and certain neurotransmitter imbalances were associated with increased criminality.

In psychology, explanations of delinquent and criminal behaviour are sought in the individuals personality. In particular, psychologists examine the processes by which behaviour and restraints on behaviour are learned. This process often is conceptualized as the result of the interaction of biological predispositions and social experiences. Psychological explanations of crime originated in the 19th century and were linked in part to the work of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (18561939). Social learning theory gained many adherents in the 20th century, and there was also a considerable body of research that examined the relationship between mental disorders and criminality.

In sociology a variety of theories have been proposed to explain criminal behaviour as a normal adaptation to the offenders social environment. Such theoriesincluding the anomie theory of American sociologist Robert K. Merton (19102003), which suggests that criminality results from an offenders inability to attain his goals by socially acceptable meansgained widespread support and were staples of sociological courses on crime and delinquency.

All the preceding theories are primarily Western in origin. Since about 1980, however, such explanations have been adopted in a growing number of non-Western and developing countries, partly by educational and cultural transmission and partly through technical assistance provided by Western countries. There are only a few alternative explanations of crime. In China, for example, the official view is that the causes of crime lie in the class structure of society. Chinese criminologists have maintained that crime is a result of exploitation, which is based on the capitalist institution of private property; they have argued that the lack of private property under pure socialism would result in the absence of crime. Thus, because China for decades prohibited any form of capitalism, it blamed criminal activity on remnants of precommunist society and a lingering bourgeois mentality among some individuals. With economic reform and the introduction of a limited capitalist economy beginning in the 1970s, crime increased, even within the families of Communist Party officials, and the government attempted to curb that trend by imposing stiff penalties on offenders.

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Crime - Classification of crimes | Britannica.com

Over 100 child sex traffickers have been arrested in Florida during a massive undercover investigation on human trafficking.

Detectives with the Polk County Sheriffs Office conducted a six-day Human Trafficking sting from November 27 to December 2.

Abcactionnews.com reports: Undercover detectives posted fake ads or profiles on social media platforms, websites, and mobile phone applications, posing as prostitutes or those soliciting prostitutes. Some of the detectives found profiles and online ads posted by prostitutes and responded to them.

A total of 104 arrests were made. Fifty-four of the arrests were for those who advertised as prostitutes online. Twenty-nine of the arrests were those who solicited undercover detectives who posted ads posing as prostitutes. Thirteen arrests were those who derive support from proceeds ofprostitution and seven were taken into custody for drug charges and other offenses.

Three of the suspects arrested,Walter Leiva, Juan Loaisa and Yefri Guevara, are in the country illegally and have all be charged with soliciting a prostitute, according to Sheriff Judd. Detectives are searching for a traveler suspect who is on the run. William Welch, 49, reportedly arrived near the location to have sex with a 14-year-old girl. His vehicle was found in the area, but deputies were unable to locate him. Welch is facing several charges, including Traveling to meet a minor, Using a 2-way communication device, Using a Computer to Solicit a Child and Attempted Lewd Battery.

Charges for those arrested include soliciting another for prostitution, deriving support from proceeds of prostitution, transporting to building for prostitution and using a communication device to commit a felony.

We conduct these kinds of investigations because of the link between prostitution, human trafficking, drug crimes, economic crimes such as burglary and fraud, and violent crime. We have learned over many years that when we pay attention to public order and quality of life crimes such as prostitution, we can reduce and prevent other crimes while strengthening the community. Prostitution is not a victimless crime. From the spread of disease, destruction of families, and to the scourge of human trafficking, prostitution is bad for our community. In some cases, children and women are forced to prostitute while under the control of pimps. We remain committed to fighting human trafficking by arresting those who engage in prostitution and trying to identify human trafficking victims. Our goal is to change the lives of those who are feeling trapped in this horrific lifestyle. Grady Judd, Sheriff

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Over 100 Child Sex Traffickers Arrested In Florida - News ...