视频监控系统在街面犯罪侦查中的应用

近年来,街面犯罪呈现出许多新特点,案件总量不断攀升,如何及时有效地侦破街面犯罪案件,已成为公安机关面临的一项重大课题。合理安装、维护、使用视频监控系统,并将其与其他常规措施、手段相结合,视频监控将在街面犯罪侦查中发挥不可替代的作用。从国内外实践状况和发展趋势看,视频监控系统在街面犯罪侦查实践中的应用成效显著。     

论我国视频警务的现状与完善

随着公安视频监控建设飞速发展,以充分发挥视频图像信息效能为核心的视频警务模式已悄然兴起。当前,视频警务在视频监控系统建设、视频图像分析技术等方面存在诸多问题,但最为核心的还是体制和机制方面的问题,表现为缺少系统化的工作体制,缺少规范化的工作流程。因此,应从视频图像信息的获取、分析、应用环节构建视频警务工作体系,科学设计视频的采集报送、分析研判、运行和保障的工作机制,进一步完善视频警务工作。     

Forensic examination of security features of the CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination card and suggested improvements to minimize counterfeiting

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States released the CDC-issued vaccination card to document the status of immunizations. It eventually was used as a verification system to allow patrons to safely access public venues. This is/was apparently a simple printed piece of paper with minimal security features which made it an easy target for counterfeiters with little expertise required. Those unvaccinated who wished to enter areas that required proof of the COVID-19 vaccine were soon finding alternative illegal methods to do so which led to public health concerns. This research was divided into two parts. Part A aimed to forensically identify the security features with a video spectral comparator and a stereomicroscope. Ten “known” blank cards were collected directly from dispensaries that administered the vaccine and 68 “unknowns” from individuals who received the COVID-19 vaccine. Part B aimed to evaluate the authentication systems employed by countries outside the United States to propose a model on how the vaccination card could be improved and what security features should be included for future instances requiring proof of immunization. The results revealed the CDC document was produced with minimal security features making the document prone to counterfeiting. Furthermore, based on the information collected from other countries' vaccination certificates, it is recommended to develop a dual authentication system, with digital and printable aspects, that contains a QR code linked to a database. Other security features may include a non-optical brightener substrate, security fibers, a watermarked logo, offset printing, and a geographical color-coded system.     

VARIETIES OF VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

There is an implicit assumption of homogeneity across violent behaviors and offenders in the criminology literature. Arguing against this assumption, I draw on three distinct literatures [child abuse and neglect (CAN) and violence, violence and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and CAN and PTSD] to provide a rationale for an examination of varieties of violent behaviors. I use data from my prospective cohort design study of the long‐term consequences of CAN to define three varieties of violent offenders using age of documented cases of CAN, onset of PTSD, and first violent arrest in a temporally correct manner [CAN → to violence, CAN → PTSD → violence (PTSD first), and CAN → violence → PTSD (violence first)], and a fourth variety, violence only. The results illustrate meaningful heterogeneity in violent behavior and different developmental patterns and characteristics. There are three major implications: First, programs and policies that target violence need to recognize the heterogeneity and move away from a “one‐size‐fits‐all” approach. Second, violence prevention policies and programs that target abused and neglected children are warranted, given the prominent role of CAN in the backgrounds of these violent offenders. Third, criminologists and others interested in violence need to attend to the role of PTSD, which is present in about one fifth (21 percent) of these violent offenders, and not relegate the study of these offenders to the psychiatric and psychological literatures.     

An innovative method for human height estimation combining video images and 3D laser scanning

Digitalization has increased the number of video surveillance systems that sometimes capture crime images. Traditional methods of human height estimation use projective geometry. However, sometimes they cannot be used because the video camera surveillance system is not available or has been moved and there are no reference lines on the frame. Scientific studies have developed a new method for human height estimation using 3D laser scanning. This model necessarily requires a series of approximations, which increase the final measurement error. To overcome this problem, in the present study, images of a subject are projected directly on the 3D model, estimating the height of the subject. This article describes the methodological approach adopted through the analysis of a real case study in a controlled environment executed by Carabinieri Forensic Investigation Department (Italy). The aim is to obtain a human anthropometric measure derived from frames extracted from the videos associated with the digital survey of the framed area obtained with 3D laser scanning and point cloud analysis. The result is the height estimation of five subjects filmed by a camera obtained through the combination of 2D images extracted by a DVR/surveillance systems with 3D laser scanning. Results show that most estimated measurements are less than the real measurement of the subject; it also depends on the posture of the subject while walking. Furthermore, results shows the differences between the real height and the estimated height with a statistical approach.     

Zimbabwean Indigenisation and the Shadow Economy of Cinematic Production

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Zimbabwe has suffered a political and economic crisis, which has generated impulses that have traumatised the country's film industry, among many other sectors. Resultantly, Zimbabwe's cinematic context of production has been reimagined and reconfigured in recent years. The southern African country's ruling elite, during former president Robert Mugabe's tenure, championed controversial policies of indigenisation in economic sectors, partly as a way of countering external economic and political hostilities. This article explores how the Zimbabwean film economy has responded to postcolonial indigenisation impulses and how the production context has developed parallel to or in tandem with this reality. It teases out the challenges and prospects posed by impulses of indigenisation in Zimbabwe to the country's fledgling film production industry by analysing the video-film production value chain post-2000, when the indigenisation agenda emerged and was consolidated. Informed by the theorisation of the shadow economies of cinema, the study employed in-depth interviews to collect data from purposively selected Zimbabwean filmmakers and policymakers. Thematic analysis was used to analyse this data. The study shows that indigenisation has been a pragmatic response to the economic trauma facing the film industry, although it has, in turn, sent out its own traumatic impulses that continue to affect the industry's structure and aesthetic.     

The relationship between aggressive behaviour in prison and violent offending following release

Aggression during incarceration impacts on parole release decisions. However, research examining the link between aggressive behaviour in custody and violence post-release is limited, particularly in relation to adult violent offenders. Several factors complicate the use of institutional aggression as a marker of risk for future violence, including environmental causes of aggressive behaviour and adaptation to prison. This study explored the association between aggressive behaviour in prison and violent recidivism post-release in a sample of 148 adult male violent offenders. Prisoners with three or more aggressive incidents recorded in prison incurred a violent charge more often and sooner after release than those with no aggressive incidents, when controlling for age, ethnicity, length of incarceration and risk for future violence. Subjects with one or two aggressive incidents were not at increased risk of violent recidivism. These findings suggest that institutional aggression can be used to identify individuals at risk of violence following release but only when repeated aggressive behaviour is evident. Importantly, some prisoners who were not aggressive in prison were charged with violent offences post-release and some prisoners with three or more aggressive incidents were not violent following release, highlighting the complexity of using in-prison aggression as a marker for violent recidivism.     

The cultural labor of surveillance: video forensics,computational objectivity,and the production of visual evidence

This essay argues that the status of video evidence as an index of real events—a sign or representation that offers a direct, empirical connection to material reality—is the result of an intentional process of production. This process involves the repurposing of new technologies borrowed from the domain of creative media production in order to transform a chaotic field of raw surveillance video into useable evidence. In addition to the exchange in technologies, an unavoidable epistemological and interpretive exchange takes place between evidentiary uses of surveillance video on the one hand, and the now prevalent forms of surveillant narration found in both fictional and reality-based storytelling. But despite this exchange in meanings and technical systems, considerable effort has gone in to establish formal standards for the evidentiary uses of surveillance video that distinguish the discovery of video evidence from the production of creative content. Building on Daston and Gallison's historical study of the prevailing “epistemic virtues” that have defined objectivity over time, I argue that what we see emerging in the field of forensic video analysis, as a means of establishing its scientific and legal status, is a commitment to a new epistemic virtue of “computational objectivity.”     

Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.