all criminology stories

Catching criminals through their relatives' DNA

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:27:18 -0400

Harvard University researchers say recent cases demonstrate the potential of using the DNA of relatives to catch guilty kin. "Close relatives have particularly similar DNA profiles due to shared ancestry," notes David Lazer, an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government. "[T]his could be exploited in criminal investigations."

IOP student report raises U.S. sexual slavery profile

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:25:25 -0400

A group of Harvard undergraduates studying sexual slavery in the United States has recommended that states set up task forces of state, federal, and local officials as well as victims and victim advocacy groups to fight a horrific but, so far, low- priority problem.

The students, members of the Institute of Politics' Sex Trafficking Policy Group, discussed their results with Massachusetts state Sen. Mark Montigny during a briefing session at the Institute of Politics. Montigny has spearheaded efforts to establish such a task force in Massachusetts.

The state bodies, the students said in their report, should have four main goals: improving identification of victims, increasing prosecution of sex traffickers, aiding victim recovery, and promoting awareness of the problem in the public.

Though some states and the federal government have already taken action to curb sex trafficking, the report said that actions taken so far are dwarfed by the problem.

Nearly 300,000 American youth are in danger of being exploited by commercial sex operations, the report says, and between 14,500 and 17,500 foreigners are brought into the United States each year to work in brothels. Eighty percent of those foreigners are women and half are under age 18. Many of those foreigners are lured by promises of jobs or marriage and, on arrival, are trapped in apartments, raped, beaten, and forced to have sex with strangers.

Americans are equally in danger, with native-born women and youth reporting being held against their will, raped, and forced to have sex for money.

The magnitude of the task that lies ahead is illustrated by the relatively few victims found and the low numbers of prosecutions, the report said. Despite the tens of thousands of people thought to be trafficked into the United States over the last four years, just 611 victims have been found over that period. Similarly, the Justice Department filed just 29 human trafficking cases in 2004, when the estimated number of victims indicates that there are far more traffickers in operation.

Childhood abuse hurts the brain

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:30:56 -0400

A thick cable of nerve cells connecting the right and left sides of the brain (corpus callosum) is smaller than normal in abused children, says Martin Teicher, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He and his colleagues at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility affiliated with Harvard, compared brain scans from 51 patients and 97 healthy children. The researchers concluded that, in boys, neglect was associated with a significant reduction in the size of the important connector. It was also abnormally small in girls who were sexually abused. "We believe that a smaller corpus collosum leads to less integration of the two halves of the brain, and that this can result in dramatic shifts in mood and personality," Teicher explains.