crime & crime prevention library

Crime and Crime Prevention is a challenge for every government and society. Learn more about how governments deal with crime, criminals and crime prevention.

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Articles 101-120 of 153

Lie Detector

Lie Detector, or Polygraph, a device used to help determine whether a person is lying.

Lynching

Lynching, or Lynch Law, the practice of inflicting punishment without due process of law on a supposed or convicted criminal.

Mafia

Mafia, an Italian secret criminal society. The Mafia is active in the western provinces of Sicily.

Mayhem

Mayhem, in law, a willful injury inflicted by one person on another and resulting in the loss or weakening of some member of the victim's body.

Misdemeanor

Misdemeanor, in law, a minor criminal offense, less serious than a felony. Under the common law offenses were classified as treason, felonies, and misdemeanors.

Misprision

Misprision, in law, any serious offense that has no specific name. The 18th-century English jurist Blackstone defined misprision as a crime less than, but bordering on, treason or felony.

Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation, in law, a false statement or misleading act that deceives another person in a transaction or contract.

Mutiny

Mutiny, a revolt against constituted authority in the armed forces, or aboard any ship at sea.

Newgate

Newgate, the name of a former prison in London. It stood at the western end of Newgate Street.

Obscenity, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court, conduct or material appealing solely to lewd tastes and “lacking serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Obscenity includes pornography (indecent writing or pictures), indecent exhibitions, and indecent language in a public place.

Organized Crime

Organized Crime, illegal activities conducted as a business by permanently organized groups.

Osborne, Thomas Mott

Osborne, Thomas Mott (1859–1926), a United States authority on the treatment of criminals.

Outlaw

Outlaw. In old British law, an outlaw was a person put outside the protection of the law because of treason or felony, or for other reasons.

Pardon

Pardon, in law, an official release from the legal penalties of a crime. A pardon may be an act of clemency, or leniency, or may be granted on the ground that the convict has apparently reformed, or because the evidence indicates he was innocent of the crime.