Cyber security incidents and their risk continue to rise, says a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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Analysts explore some intriguing factors that may account for declining U.S. crime rates, and highlight one area of criminal behavior that gets little attention from cops on the beat.
Read full entry »An Ohio study found that people in "unsuccessful" community-based correctional facilities were 32 percent more likely to re-offend than those who were not involved in a program at all.
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The State Department released their annual report, "To Walk the Earth in Safety," about its worldwide weapons eradication program in mine clearance and destruction assistance. Th U.S. works in 32 countries to destroy weapons, as well as implement programs to assist conflict survivors and inform area residents of potential risks from unexploded munitions.
Read the report here.
Use The Crime Report for more information on international criminal justice.
Read full entry »Long after the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, the United States is still unprepared to respond to the threat of large-scale bioterrorism, reports the Washington Post. In a report released Tuesday, a congressional commission gave the government mixed grades for how it has protected Americans from weapons of mass destruction. The report criticized the White House and Congress for failing to build a rapid-response capability for dealing with disease outbreaks from bioterrorism, or providing adequate oversight of security and intelligence agencies.
Within hours of the report's release, the Obama administration revealed plans to fill gaps in the nation's public health defenses with a series of initiatives to be announced in Wednesday's State of the Union address. The proposals, which administration officials said had been in the works well before the report's findings were known, will seek to speed up delivery of drugs in the event of a major attack, addressing one of the principal shortcomings identified by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
As a topic of research and training expertise, terrorism has boomed since Sept. 11, 2001. Not coincidentally, the spigot of both government and private funding has been flowing wide open into the field. Thousands of potential sources now claim expertise in terrorism, from academics to think tanks to expert witnesses to for-profit firms that hawk anti-terrorism law enforcement or consumer products. (A Stanford University sociologist put together a research paper on the burgeoning subject—not terrorism, but terrorism experts: “The Rise of the Terrorism Expert: The Emergence of a New Field of Expertise.”) As always, journalists should be aware of the motivations of potential sources. This source list includes the RAND Corporation, the vast California-based nonprofit has one of the world’s largest and most venerable terrorism research divisions, with dozens of experts on staff who can speak to a number of terrorism-related topics. It might be a good place to start in the non-government sector.
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