By a Biometrica staffer The inmate population at Indian country jails increased 8% at midyear 2021 to a total of 2,180 inmates held in 80 jails, from the 2,020 inmates held in 82 facilities at midyear 2020, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)...
By a Biometrica staffer There's no doubt that combating child sex abuse material (CSAM) is a serious challenge that law enforcement officers, parents, caregivers, and various others involved in or concerned about child safety and protection face. Sample this: Of the 21.7+...
By a Biometrica staffer When 2021 began, it was not a Covid-19-free world as many had hoped. For all of 2020 and several months into 2021, casinos across the country were either entirely closed or operating under capacity restrictions and other measures...
By a Biometrica staffer At Biometrica, the safety of children has always been a priority. This year, amidst general chaos and anxiety, the safety of children took center stage like never before. Here are some of the relevant issues and news stories...
By a Biometrica staffer The last few days have brought a mixed bag of news for the casino industry, with extremely positive tidings on the gaming revenue front, and less positive reflections on the crime front. Even with two months still to...
By a Biometrica staffer Two reports released recently draw attention to a mental health crisis plaguing schools and students in the U.S. One is an advisory issued by the Surgeon General, which warns that “symptoms of anxiety, depression and other mental health...
By a Biometrica staffer Last week, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its Fall Semiannual Report to Congress, in which it was found that the efforts of the HHS in the 2021...
By a Biometrica staffer Around 2.31 million passengers passed through airport screenings last Wednesday, Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA). That's over double when compared with the 1.07 million people who went through...
By Aara Ramesh Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the child welfare system was rife with gaps that made children in foster care extra susceptible to abuse. Like with many other societal problems, however, the pandemic only worsened that situation on a number...
By a Biometrica staffer Due to a small technical issue that omitted part of the data submission from the state of Ohio, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has updated and re-released its statistics on hate crimes and bias-motivated incidents in 2020....
By a Biometrica staffer October 28 marks National First Responders Day in many parts of the country — a day that is meant to celebrate the many hundreds of thousands of people that make up the fabric of the emergency response system...
By a Biometrica staffer Nurses in the United States experience suicidal thoughts "in greater numbers" than other general workers, a study published in the American Journal of Nursing said. Among nurses, those who do have suicidal thoughts are also less likely to...
By a Biometrica staffer The inmate population at Indian country jails fell 30% at mid-year 2020 to a total of 2,020 inmates held in 82 jails, from 2,890 inmates held in 83 facilities at mid-year 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)...
By Biometrica staffer On Monday, Oct. 18, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released the last of its Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) dataset for 2020, reporting that 60,105 law enforcement officers (LEOs) were assaulted while on the job last...
By a Biometrica staffer September became the deadliest month for employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since the Covid-19 pandemic began, even as coronavirus fatalities dropped across the state, a Dallas Morning News report said. Covid-19 led to the death...
By Aara Ramesh A year ago, last October, USA TODAY reported in a bombshell investigation that a foster father in Florida had been arrested in 2019 and had pleaded guilty to charges for rape, molestation, and producing and consuming child sexual abuse...
By a Biometrica staffer With the Covid-19 virus and vaccines having underscored the importance and strategic role played by objective scientific research, many, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, are saying it’s time for us...
By a Biometrica staffer The Global Organized Crime Index paints a "worrying picture of the reach, scale and impact of organized crime in 2020." The data driven analytics tool evaluated 193 United Nations member states. The 2020 report, the first published by Global Initiative,...
By a Biometrica staffer The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its Unified Crime Report for 2020 on Sept. 27, and it showed that the number of homicides increased by 30% from the previous year. There were more than 21,500 homicides reported, a height...
By a Biometrica staffer Law enforcement officers, manufacturers, and sports shooters across the country are expressing worries over recent record gun sales leading to an ammunition shortage, with many saying that such a state of affairs could drag on for at least...
By a Biometrica staffer As of June 30, 2021, 155 federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement officers (LEOs) died in the line of duty, according to preliminary data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF). That's roughly a...
By a Biometrica staffer In late 2020, much before anyone ever imagined that a deadlier variant of the Covid-19 virus would sweep across the world and wreak renewed havoc on healthcare and governance systems, organizations like the United Nations Office on Drugs...
By Deepti Govind On Sept. 17, 2020, in recognition of National Physician Suicide Awareness Day, the Physicians Foundation published the alarming results of a new survey that found that nearly one in four physicians (22%) know another physician who has committed suicide,...
By Aara Ramesh In and among the 2,996 people who died at the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, were 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers. They were just a...
By a Biometrica staffer Healthcare workers in the U. S., hailed as heroes at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, have become — over the last several months — the targets of a disgruntled public. The hostility against workers administering Covid-19 vaccines...
By a Biometrica staffer In March, Biometrica did a round-up of some of the key crime, prison, and law enforcement bills with most support in the House in 2021 up to that point. Today, we pick a few crime-related bills in the...
By Deepti Govind In July, the U.S. government reported that drug overdose deaths last year, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, soared nearly 30% to a record number of around 93,000. That's a massive spike from 2019's 72,000 drug overdose deaths,...
By a Biometrica staffer This past weekend, Chicago police noted six shooting-related deaths and at least 39 injuries in the city over the four-day period beginning in the evening of Friday, Aug. 20, and ending early in the morning on Monday, Aug....
By a Biometrica staffer Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition, said it received 9,081 reports of hate incidents committed against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community since the Covid-19 pandemic began, i.e., between March 2020 and June 30, 2021. The...
By a Biometrica staffer Monthly operator revenue at sportsbooks across the country came in at $318 million in June, the highest nationwide win rate for this year, and only the fourth time that the number has clocked in higher than $300 million...
By a Biometrica staffer The number of nursing home patients and staff infected with the Covid-19 virus rose sharply last week, at a time when the nation is reeling under the menace of the highly contagious delta variant and as total cases...
By a Biometrica staffer On Monday, July 26, the United States government said it will not be lifting existing travel restrictions due to concerns over the highly transmissible delta variant of Covid-19 and the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country,...
By a Biometrica staffer Last week, a coalition of researchers from organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the UN’s World Health Organization, and the World Bank published a report in the medical journal Lancet, in which it was...
By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this month, officials released the 2020 edition of the annual audit of the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) that is jointly run by the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Justice (DOJ). According...
By a Biometrica staffer This time last week, we established that yes, terror groups were very much active during 2020, even when much of the world was closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as the Europol Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2021...
By Aara Ramesh Despite many countries closing their borders and restricting travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, the United Nations (UN) has said that the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers actually worsened in 2020. As of the end of the year, over 82.4...
By Charlotte Spencer Earlier this year we discussed pending legislation in an article titled, “Pending Hate Crime Legislation in Front of Congress,” published April 22, and a February 4 article titled, “More Legal Firepower Proposed in Battle Against Child Abuse.” More has...
By a Biometrica staffer On Thursday, June 3, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced that preliminary data seems to indicate that U.S. traffic deaths shot up by 7.2% in 2020 (as compared to 2019), despite the pandemic and associated lockdowns...
By a Biometrica staffer The US House of Representatives on Tuesday, May 18, passed the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act in a 364–62 vote, sending it to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The initiative to pass the bill was led...
By a Biometrica Staffer According to the American Gaming Association’s (AGA) Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker, 2020, the year that life came to a virtual standstill on account of the coronavirus pandemic, marked the first market contraction for the U.S. gaming industry since 2014...
By Wyly Wade Section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights, to post notice of any breach of unsecured protected health information that affects 500 or more individuals. According to...
By Anand Vasu In their 2021 Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment, or SOCTA, Europol has identified the most serious threats posed by criminal organizations to individuals and businesses. The annual report, put together by Europol after analyzing data from law enforcement...
By Anand Vasu The Nevada Gaming Commission has said that casinos seeking to operate at higher than 50% capacity — which will be allowed from May 1 — need to take steps that encourage their workers to take the Covid-19 vaccine. This...
By Michael P. Johnson Prior to March 2020, when walking through the front doors of any casino resort hotel, whether it was on the Las Vegas Strip, in Atlantic City, or on the Mississippi Coast, you would typically spot a security officer,...
By Charlotte Spencer Congress has had several new bills proposed so far this year to address the issue of prison reform. Together, they cover the topics of youthful offenders, nonviolent offenders, elderly offenders, Covid-19, solitary confinement, monitoring of electronic communications, re-entry into...
By Michael P. Johnson March 11, 2021, marked the 1st anniversary of Covid-19 being labeled a "pandemic." A year ago, the casino industry was turned on its ear, having to shut down. Looking back on it now, as a casino professional with...
By Anand Vasu Olakitan Oluwalade, his cousin Odunayo Baba Oluwalade and Kelly Lamont Williams were arrested after the HSI Intellectual Property Rights Center and the HSI Cyber Crimes Center became aware of a fraudulent replication of the website of Company 1, a biotechnology company based in...
By a Biometrica staffer David T Hines of Miami fraudulently obtained $3.9m in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and used part of these funds to buy himself a Lamborghini Huracan sports car worth $318,000. At the time of his arrest, the car...
50 Small Businesses Receive $20,000 Grants Each In Partnership With IEEP Some of the business owners that were among the 50 chosen for the San Manuel-IEEP grants watch on Zoom while the grants are announced. All images in this post are courtesy of the...
By a Biometrica staffer If you think scammers also took a break during the Covid-19 pandemic, think again! On Feb. 4, the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) said it received more than 2.1 million fraud reports from consumers in 2020. Imposter scams were...