“Criminal Expertise: Gunfighters, Burglars, Thieves, Perfect Murderers” is a featured revue article in the special Haphazard issue (volume 27, number 3) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if research about how to do crime inspires you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy individual back issues.
Tag: Crime
Crime and Sniffles
Crime may be affected by the sniffling of potential criminals which may be affected by the amounts of pollen in the air, which might explain all sorts of things, suggests this new study: “More sneezing, less crime? Health shocks and the market for offenses,” Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian, and Monica Deza, Journal of Health Economics, […]
Associations : Moonlight up | Crime up [new study]
On a broad, bright, moonlit* night would you expect outdoor crime rates to be higher or lower than on an overcast night with little or no moonlight? Numerous investigations have shown that, as a general rule, increasing environmental light levels can lead to a decrease in outdoor crime rates. By extension then, one might think […]
Canadian Crime Rates in the Penalty Box
The game of hockey generates both action and statistics. Does it generate crime, now more than ever? This police study analyzes that and other questions: “Canadian Crime Rates in the Penalty Box,” Simon Demers, arXiv:1810.05118, 2018. The author, an Audit Manager in the Planning, Research & Audit Section of the Vancouver Police Department, reports: “Over […]
Tracking glitter particles from a university building
A team of forensic researchers from Soonchunhyang University in South Korea have determined that glitter can be used to track a person’s location in a university building. “A distribution study of glitter was conducted from a local university building. The potential recipient surfaces chosen were the 1,000 chairs kept in 16 separate classrooms of […]
How to Commit a Perfect Murder [research study]
Perfect murders are more common in actual life than in crime fiction—and also more highly approved, suggests this forensic study: “How to Commit a Perfect Murder,” Mark Cooney, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, vol. 43, 2015, pp. 295-309. The author, at the University of Georgia, explains: Curiously, social science has ignored the problem […]
Earprints as criminal evidence
“An earprint is an impression of the external ear. House breakers may leave their earprints inadvertently when they listen at doors and windows to check if there is anyone inside before breaking and entering a premises. Owing to uniqueness and individualistic characteristics of the human ear, earprints can be used as evidence to link a […]
Is the face a window to the soul? (study)
‘Is the face a window to the soul?’ – asks Professor Stephen B. Porter, Ph.D. (University of British Columbia-Okanagan) and colleagues, in a 2008 paper for the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science. To find out, they devised an experiment in which undergraduate students were shown photos of both Nobel Peace Prize winners and criminals from […]
The (carbon) footprints of criminals (new study)
A news release from the University of Surrey, UK, draws attention to the first study to have systematically assessed the carbon footprint of UK crimes. The research team found that :- “[…] crime committed in 2011 in England and Wales gave rise to over 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. Burglary resulted in the […]
New uses for old CDs (part 3)
Got old CDs? Looking for uses for them? Have you thought about their application in crime scene photography? “Tripod legs of cameras often sink into sand, mud, or snow. To avoid this, old CDs can be used by placing approximately three of them under the feet of the tripod. CD’s can also be used as […]