Private Investigator News: Study: Multiple toxic victims receive less empathy than one

An examination of jury verdicts over the past decade involving people charged for exposing others to toxic substances, has revealed that the more victims are involved in a case, the less harshly the perpetrator of the crime is penalized.

Saltburn Gill
  © Copyright Mick Garratt and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The study, which also included two experiments in the lab, is the first to show that the bias toward feeling empathy for a single individual versus many — known as the identifiable victim bias — causes people to make judgments based on emotion that are disproportionate to the severity of a crime.

“The inspiration for the study was the observation that we tend to focus an extraordinary amount of attention and resources to crimes that have a really small number of victims, and have a harder time remaining engaged to larger scale kinds of crime,” said psychologist Loran Nordgren of Northwestern University, lead author of the paper Aug. 25 in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Seattle Online Crime Map Offers Redacted Reports

"Several cities offer online maps showing where various types of crimes have been committed. However, the map recently deployed by Seattle, Wash. is one of the few to offer links to redacted police reports. The city’s My Neighborhood Maps eliminated a labor-intensive manual process that will free up employees to do other work, according to Bill Schrier, CIO of Seattle. Before deployment of the online map, citizens had to visit police stations to request police reports and typically wait 12 days to receive them. Now, a few simple clicks on the map can get citizens any police reports they need, instantly."
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Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Supreme Court rules some juveniles can't be sentenced to life in prison

"The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that juveniles who commit crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

Five justices, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, agreed that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids such sentences as a categorical matter.

The case, which attracted nationwide attention because of a trend toward increasingly strict punishment for juveniles who commit violent crime, could reverberate in Silicon Valley. Four defendants, including three teenage boys, are currently being tried as adults in Santa Clara County for an attack last Halloween on a pair of young trick-or-treaters. The attempted murder charges against them still could result in life sentences, but the Supreme Court ruling ensures the juvenile defendants will have a shot at parole if convicted."
Read more Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

California bill would have eliminated access to names and addresses in crime records - Fails in committee

"A bill that would have eliminated California reporters’ access to names and addresses of most crime victims failed on a 4-2 vote this morning in the Assembly Committee on Public Safety, reports Melissa Cabral for the online news organization Crime Voice. The bill, up for reconsideration in the committee after failing its first hearing two weeks ago, was opposed by the California Newspaper Publishers Association and by Californians Aware, which called the central arguments supporting the measure a myth and a distortion." Read more
Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

California legislature considers bill to close criminal record information

Californians Aware and the California Newspaper Publishers Association are opposing a bill, up for its first committee hearing next Monday, that would remove the addresses of all those arrested and all crime victims from the public record, leaving only the city of residence, if any, listed. AB 1682 by Assemblywoman Norma Torres (D-Ontario) will be heard in the Assembly Committee on Governmental Organization. CalAware's opposition letter reads as follows:"  
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Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator