CJI Forum

Some police colleagues in the United States viewed with trepidation the news that the “Brits” were going soft on the possession of cannabis. You may recall that the drug had been declassified. In 2004, guidelines were introduced that developed the concept of “Street Warnings” for the possession of cannabis. However, in January 2006, the Home Secretary, having taken advice from the Advisory Counsel on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), decided to keep cannabis as a Class C Drug. Police officers became confused, and as a result the top police chiefs commissioned their professional organization, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), to write updated guidelines for police officers dealing with cases of cannabis possession. They did so. The guidelines were published and implemented on January 17, 2007. The aims of the ACPO guidelines are as follows: * To give a justifiable and proportionate response in dealing with persons found in possession of cannabis which can be seen to be ethical ...

Police are expected to bring charges against the owner of a pet python that strangled a 2-year-old Florida girl in her crib, killing her. According to police, the snake's cage was not locked as mandated by Florida law, and the owner did not have a required permit to own the snake. You be the judge: Has this family been punished enough, or should criminal charges be filed? And if so, what sentence would you pass?

Today I want to take you into the realm of Artificial Intelligence and look at its potential to create an impact in the fight against terrorism. The aim of AI (artificial intelligence) is to get at what is happening when one’s mind silently and invisibly chooses, from a myriad of alternatives, which one makes most sense in a very complex situation. In many real-life situations, deductive reasoning is inappropriate, not because it would give wrong answers, but because there are too many correct but irrelevant statements which can be made; there are just too many things to take into account simultaneously for reasoning alone to be sufficient. — Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is a concept that is too big to ignore and too exciting to deny. We should not be frightened by it—either its “hype” or its implied shortfalls—but rather should use it as an aid in the development of practical tools. The concept has a wider appli...

In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, where the world witnessed a quiet campus in the hills of southwestern Virginia become a shooting gallery that left 32 people dead, it is time to do something about guns in America. This is not the first such tragedy in the United States and unfortunately they seem to be appearing with more frequency and greater violence. One only has to remember such incidents as the McDonald’s (1984), Luby’s (1991), and Columbine (1999) massacres to understand this. Based on our current state of affairs, America simply has a plethora of guns and too many irresponsible people. Something needs to change regarding our public policy toward guns. The question is what to do? The news-reporting in the aftermath of the VA Tech Massacre labeled it as the worst shooting spree in the United States and most likely the entire world. When measured in numbers killed, the media was correct in that it was the worst tragedy for America, but they were wrong in...

What happens when the “W” in weapons of mass destruction stands for water? The world witnessed the catastrophic impact of nature’s fury and the seams in society it exposed in the wash. Using sophisticated technological or human means to smuggle in a weapon across borders and through various levels of security may have been potentially obviated by the breeching of infrastructure – heretofore hidden in plain sight in terms of targeting. Laid bare was a host of social justice issues mostly related to poverty and the lack of access to mainstream society when it was most important. Also exposed, however, were myriad possibilities for the opportunistic, ranging from looting to homicide with all the milestones in between the two extremes: fraud, theft, assault, arms and drug trafficking, and rape. Law enforcement agencies were confronted with an event which tested their training, response capability, persistence, and even their resolve yet they performed their duties to serve and protect with...