By a Biometrica staffer This midterm election season, along with the state of the economy, the country's crime rate has been under the scanner. Forty percent of U.S. registered voters said crime is an extremely important issue when it comes to their...
By a Biometrica staffer Fraud accounted for 30.1% of all organizational offenses during the near-30 year period between fiscal 1992 and 2021. Environmental offenses was the second largest offense category at 24%, according to a report published late last month by the...
By a Biometrica staffer By now, most of us have probably read that on Tuesday, June 21, Senate bargainers reached agreement on an incremental yet necessary bipartisan gun violence bill. The bill is in response to recent deadly mass shootings in Texas...
By a Biometrica staffer At Biometrica, child safety and protection has always been at the heart of what we do. We ended 2021 with a look-back special at various issues surrounding this all-important public safety subject that took centerstage through last year....
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 On Wednesday, Dec. 15 the U.S. and Australia signed a landmark agreement that will facilitate access to electronic data for investigations of serious crime, including terrorism and child sexual abuse. The agreement is authorized by the Clarifying Lawful...
By a Biometrica staffer In this piece, we look at the DHS Blue Campaign Enhancement Act, introduced in both chambers of Congress, which seeks to increase coordination between various components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and augment the Blue Campaign....
By a Biometrica staffer In October, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) released findings of its surprise inspection initiative over the summer, which cracked down on safety issues related to the transport of hazardous materials and dangerous goods (HM/DG) as part of...
By a Biometrica staffer Late last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Open Courts Act of 2021, sending it to the full Senate to consider. The Act seeks to “overhaul” the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system that is...
By Aara Ramesh Going off the sheer volume of content generated about it, if there’s one thing Americans can’t get enough of, it’s a story about a cult. Be that NXIVM, which made headlines a few years ago when it emerged that...
By Aara Ramesh When it comes to gun rights, one demographic proponents of gun control are particularly concerned about is children that live in homes that also have firearms. While the presence of a firearm in the house can be dangerous to...
By Deepti Govind The 15-year-old who opened fire on his fellow students at Oxford High School in Michigan on Tuesday, Nov. 30, has been charged as an adult with two dozen crimes, including murder, attempted murder and terrorism. He faces life in prison...
By a Biometrica staffer U.S. prosecutors recently announced that they have filed sex trafficking charges against Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, the Philippine national who founded a church called Kingdom of Jesus Christ, as well as two U.S.-based administrators of that church. The superseding...
By a Biometrica staffer The death toll in the Wisconsin case of a man driving an SUV into a festive parade rose to six on Tuesday, Nov. 23, when an 8-year-old boy died of his injuries. The number of injuries resulting from...
By Aara Ramesh Among the many challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples in North America today, one that has gained particular attention is that of unmarked graves (usually associated with former Indian boarding schools) and of artifacts taken from various Tribes in the...
By Aara Ramesh Last month, we wrote about some gaps in the child welfare system that can lead to children in foster care being abused. Unfortunately, the reality is that it’s not just those children who can fall prey to abuse. Almost...
By Aara Ramesh A week ago, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning that the U.S. is facing a “heightened threat environment” from domestic terrorists this holiday season. Though there have been no “credible” or specific threats yet made, the...
By a Biometrica staffer Halloween 2017 turned out to be one the city of New York will never forget. At some point before 3 p.m. on the day, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov took the white Home Depot pickup truck he had rented in...
By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, the last year for which data is available, a total of 5,998 post-secondary institutions (across almost 11,000 campuses) reported 34,933 criminal offenses to the federal government, and 17,758 offenses related to violence against women, be that...
By Aara Ramesh On Wednesday, Oct. 27, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a Virginia man, 26-year-old Zackary Ellis Sanders, had been convicted by a federal jury for producing, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The DOJ alleges that...
By Aara Ramesh It’s not uncommon these days, unfortunately, to see stories of children or toddlers coming upon an unsecured firearm at home and accidentally setting it off. Research from the Gun Violence Archive and the Associated Press found that gun violence...
By Biometrica staffer The two most populous counties in the country — Los Angeles County, California, and Cook County, Illinois — are moving to tackle the problem of “ghost guns,” as law enforcement and the government continue to grapple with an ongoing...
By Biometrica staffer Over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, Kristin Denise Smart, a freshman at California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night when she was walking back to her dormitory after a party....
By a Biometrica staffer Well over 700 years ago, Song Ci, a Chinese judge, is said to have personally examined the crime scenes of physical assaults or difficult murders. His book, The Washing Away of Wrongs, was written around the year 1247...
By a Biometrica staffer In July, we wrote about how millions of elderly Americans become the victims of some kind of financial fraud or internet scam each year. And those numbers are not inclusive of the kind of abuse and neglect senior citizens...
By Aara Ramesh The exploitation of children is a real and present problem, one that has only worsened — like many others — as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Children are roped into forced labor; they are trafficked for sex; they...
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 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 the late 1960s, a New York-based attorney named Bertram Hirsch was sent to North Dakota to assist with a custody dispute case on behalf of the Spirit Lake Tribe. At that point, Hirsch was employed by the Association...
By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this year, the Measures for Justice (MFJ) project released a comprehensive report that looked at data collection — or lack thereof — in the criminal justice system in 20 states across the country. What the organization found...
By Deepti Govind It was just last Tuesday, July 28, that the House select committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol convened its first hearing. At that hearing, the entire nation heard the emotional testimony of four...
By a Biometrica staffer On Wednesday, July 21, a legislator in Wisconsin proposed what's known as "Kayleigh's Law" in the state legislature to help protect certain sexual assault victims from their attackers. The proposed bill would allow those who have been victims...
By a Biometrica staffer On Wednesday, July 14, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Cory Booker, and Sen. Ron Wyden unveiled a draft of their bill to legalize marijuana at the federal level. The proposal seeks to remove the drug from the Controlled...
By Aara Ramesh With the world slowly beginning its journey back to some semblance of normal, after a trying 18 months, climate change is jostling its way back into the limelight. Debates have recently been spurred by the two-front war America was...
By a Biometrica staffer A total of 1,864 suspects in matters involving violations of federal hate crime statutes were investigated by U.S. attorneys during the fiscal years 2005 to 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said in a report published last...
By Charlotte Spencer Plenty of bills are proposed that never become law. This summer, however, several crime and law enforcement bills have made progress in the process of becoming law. Here are the summer’s top movers so far in terms of bills...
By Charlotte Spencer Federal gaming law may be changing soon if any of the several proposed pieces of legislation currently in front of Congress pass this year. In this article, we review a few notable pieces of proposed legislation that touch on...
By a Biometrica staffer In a move likely may have a far-reaching ripple effect, on Friday, June 25, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Facebook can be held responsible for its users engaging in illegal sex trafficking activities on the site, regardless...
By Aara Ramesh A landmark law intended to radically alter the landscape of sex trafficking online has had a limited impact in the three years since it was enacted, according to a recent report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)....
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 Monday, June 7, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued model legislation for states to use as a blueprint to create their own extreme risk protection order (or ERPO) gun removal laws — sometimes called "red flag" laws...
By Dmitry Shifrin, Mary Tobin & Lindsay Dailey Polsinelli PC, Chicago, Illinois Biometric information and biometric identifiers are becoming more highly regulated in today’s data privacy and cybersecurity conscious landscape. Like other types of personal data, biometrics have the potential to identify...
By Charlotte Spencer The United States’ DNA database laws, many may be surprised to find, are not uniform across the country. Rather, they are a patchwork of laws that vary in when DNA can be taken, why DNA can be taken, how...
By Charlotte Spencer On Monday May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court issued a ruling further clarifying fourth amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment, and the long history of case law surrounding it, deals with search and seizure, specifically when it is allowed, and...
By Charlotte Spencer On Tuesday May 11, 2021 a Texas Judge granted a motion to dismiss the National Rifle Association's (NRA) attempt to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reasoning that “the NRA did not file the bankruptcy petition in good faith because...
By Charlotte Spencer Protective orders, also known as protection orders, are designed to protect people or animals from an ongoing threat. They are often used in domestic violence cases, and can vary a lot by jurisdiction. They are not by any stretch...
By a Biometrica staffer In the last week or so of April, sentences were given out to various individuals who had committed drug-related crimes. Biometrica rounds up ten of those for you, based on statements published by the Department of Justice (DOJ)...
By a Biometrica staffer The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will hear oral arguments on April 28 in a case involving a former high school cheerleader, which is expected to have major implications on the way schools can view and...
By Anand Vasu On April 21, the Manhattan District Attorney announced initiatives that would change the way cases with regards to prostitution and unlicensed massage would be prosecuted in the jurisdiction. District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr., who heads one of the...
By Charlotte Spencer As of April, 2021, Congress is considering several different pieces of legislation which address hate crimes. Many of them focus on hate crimes directly. Others have a different focus, but also take on the subject of hate crimes. Here...