UNASSIGNED: The purpose of this paper is to examine the application of psychology to the investigation of cold cases. The paper reviews the development of the discipline of operational psychology and reviews the role of the Behavioural Science Unit in assisting with cold case investigations within New Zealand.
UNASSIGNED: The paper integrates theory, academic principles, and practical investigative experience.
UNASSIGNED: As a field, operational psychology has a wide application to cold case investigations. The main areas where expertise can be provided, includes, indirect assessment and personality profiles, offender profiling, crime analysis, victimology and equivocal death analysis, and in the interviewing and engagement of offenders. Operational psychology advice should be based upon sound reasoning, evidenced based conclusion, and within the bounds of practitioner competence. Psychologists should seek to educate investigators on probabilities, likelihoods and error rates, and endeavour to indicate the strength of conclusions and statements provided within a report.
UNASSIGNED: The review aims to provide the necessary and relevant impetus for integrating operational, or forensic psychology expertise into cold case investigations. The application of psychological science to police investigations has been subject to numerous academic commentaries, however, there is a dearth of involvement from practitioners practicing in the field.

An increasing number of cybercrimes has presented new global challenges to law enforcement agencies that traditionally operate within designated geographical jurisdictions and patrol territories. The borderless nature of cyberspace has brought substantial opportunities-both legal and illegal-to its users, and many local law enforcement agencies have encountered motivated offenders taking advantage of the globally connected Internet and causing damage locally and transnationally. This study examines a high-profile case of European criminals who hacked into a Taiwanese financial institution-First Commercial Bank (FCB)-and programmed its ATMs to \"spit out\" cash netting the thieves $2.6 million US dollars in 2016 summer. Before the incident of FCB, this European criminal group committed more than a hundred similar ATMs hackings, victimizing dozens of financial institutions across several European countries, and profiting over one billion Euros. FCB is the only case revealing specific details about the modus operandi of ATM hacking thus far, in addition to disclosing reactions from law enforcement. By analyzing qualitative data collected from different branches of law enforcement involved in the investigations, this unique case study underscores the importance of national-local law enforcement collaboration in fighting transnational cybercrime. Empirical implications are particularly valuable in the law enforcement context of \"turf jealousies\" when defending homeland security.

Sexual assault is a highly underreported crime with even fewer cases proceeding to the point of charges and prosecution, suggesting that sexual assault victims have less opportunity for legal justice than other crime victims. Case attrition may, in part, be due to negative attitudes and rape myth acceptance (RMA) in police decision making. Yet, little attention has been paid to examining the evidentiary and extralegal factors surrounding the case that contribute to police decision making and case outcomes through examination of police case files. This examination is necessary to address the issue of differential processing of sexual assault cases in the criminal justice system. This study uses police data of sexual assault case files from 1999 to 2014 (N = 23,525) to examine the assault, victim, and detective characteristics that contribute to case outcomes of unfounded, cleared, and exceptionally cleared through arrest and victim refusal to prosecute. Logistic regression models tested 15 years of reported sexual assault data from one large police department and found that elements that correspond with RMA were predictive of unfounded, cleared, and exceptionally cleared case decisions, providing further indication that officers consider evidentiary but also extralegal factors in decision making. Overall, results support previous contentions that sexual assault victims have unequal access to legal justice, particularly victims possessing demographic and assault characteristics that do not align with stereotypical notions of rape. Implications for future research and policing practices are discussed.

Existing research clearly shows that the public-private divide is continuously being challenged, recast and transformed. However, this article argues that a sharp distinction between public and private continues to operate as an important norm for professionals involved in the investigation of insurance claims fraud in Sweden. It shows how power within private insurance companies and the police authority is organized around the public-private divide, which is in turn mobilized to justify repression and to give investigations legitimacy. The article indicates that the formal public-private distinction is far more thoroughly maintained than is suggested by the existing literature. Rather than challenging the centrality of state power, private insurers and the police construct, maintain and have a stake in the reproduction of a state-centric monopoly of crime control.

Significant research attention has been given to understanding the processes of drug policy reform. However, there has been surprisingly little analysis of the persistence of policy in the face of opposition and evidence of ineffectiveness. In this article we analysed just such a case - police drug detection dog policy in NSW, Australia. We sought to identify factors which may account for the continuation of this policy, in spite of counter-evidence and concerted advocacy.
The analysis was conducted using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). We collated documents relating to NSW drug detection dog policy from 1995 to 2016, including parliamentary records (NSW Parliament Hansard), government and institutional reports, legislation, police procedures, books, media, and academic publications. Texts were then read, coded and classified against the core dimensions of the ACF, including subsystem actors and coalitions, their belief systems and resources and venues employed for policy debate.
Three coalitions were identified as competing in the policy subsystem: security/law and order, civil liberties and harm reduction. Factors that aided policy stability were the continued dominance of the security/law and order coalition since they introduced the drug dog policy; a power imbalance enabling the ruling coalition to limit when and where the policy was discussed; and a highly adversarial policy subsystem. In this context even technical knowledge that dogs infringed civil liberties and increased risks of overdose were readily downplayed, leading to only incremental changes in implementation rather than policy cessation or wholesale revision.
The analysis provides new insights into why the accumulation of new evidence and advocacy efforts can be insufficient to drive significant policy change. It poses a challenge for the evidence-based paradigm suggesting that in highly adversarial policy subsystems new evidence is unlikely to generate policy change without broader subsystem change, such as reducing the adversarial nature and/or providing new avenues for cross-coalition learning.