Photograph by: Les Bazso, Postmedia News, Vancouver Sun

Crimes around the corner

(Dr. Richard Frank and Natalia Iwanski)

A student paper explaining a new method for tracking the likely routes of criminals on crime sprees has won a Best Paper award at the 2011 European Intelligence and Security Information

conference. 

Authored by math undergraduate Natalia Iwanski and criminology graduate student Richard Frank, the paper, Analyzing an Offender’s Journey to Crime: A Criminal Movement Model (CriMM), was selected from among 260 entries.

For more on this story click HERE:

Podium 2, located adjacent to the campus’s main space, the Dale B. Regehr Grand Hall, includes new classrooms and teaching and wet labs for first-year science programs. It also provides physical support for research labs in such areas as kinesiology, criminology, interactive arts and technology, and gerontology.

The School of Criminology’s International Cybercrime Research Centre (ICRC) will be located in Podium 2. The centre’s current research includes studies on criminal networking online, including two major research studies for Public Safety Canada, one of them on the subject of cyber-fraud, says ICRC associate director, Sara Smyth. The centre also oversees the development of cybercrime courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

SFU Surrey also provides the Police Studies Certificate program.  Undergraduate courses in police studies are organized into clusters reflecting particular areas of interest. These clusters include, forensic studies, restorative justice, and crime analysis and crime prevention. Courses cover such topics as criminal profiling, terrorism, policing illegal drug markets, and forensic anatomy including skeletal pathology. Forensic courses take advantage of the resources available through our new Centre for Forensic Research.

Congratulations to Govenor General Gold Medal Winner

Jesse Cale.

"The coveted medal is bestowed annually on graduate students with at least 60 semester hours of course credit who have achieved the university’s highest scholastic standing."

For the full story click here!

graduate student Raven bowen: awarded grant from the soroptimist foundation of canada

The Soroptimist Foundation of Canada annually offers several $7,500 grants to female graduate students in Canada to assist them with university studies which will qualify them for careers which will improve the quality of women's lives.

"Raven has strived to build alliances between sex workers and government and law enforcement officials to develop programmes to reduce the violence and predation experienced by this group of women."

For the full story click here!

Pontus Agren (left) seeks to erase illegal graffit and garner support for programs such as RestArt.

"Once arrested and charged for illegal graffiti writing, Agren hopes his thesis on the program, which he credits with changing many lives, will help ensure its survival. A similar restorative justice program steered Agren clear of pursuing a path to illegal graffiti convictions in 1998.

Now threatened by funding cuts in many Lower Mainland municipalities, RestArt was first conceived of by graduate students and professors in SFU’s School of Criminology and launched in 2004."

(Carol Thorbes, June 8, 2011)

MA-ALS PROGRAMME WINS AWARD"

"We are pleased to announce that the School of Criminology's MA in Applied Legal Studies has been selected by the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (CAUCE) for the 2011 excellence in programming award (credit programming over 48 hours).

CODE Program Director for Criminology Dr John Whatley will attend the June 7th CAUCE awards ceremony in Toronto to accept the award as representative of the team and units that produced this outstanding program."

All in the family: l-r: Paul, Patricia and Jeffrey Brantingham use computational criminology to analyse urban crime and design neighbourhoods that are less attractive to criminals.

Read the full story at: http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/news/defeating-crime-with-urban-design.shtml

April 7, 2011

SFU criminologist David MacAlister on the Tasering of an 11-year-old boy by a Mountie in Prince George. (This after the boy allegedly stabbed a 37-year-old man.)

April 2011.

• CBC News: “David MacAlister, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University's School of Criminology, studies police policies on the use of Tasers, or conductive energy weapons. ‘It doesn't seem right,’ MacAlister said. ‘Canadian law doesn't even hold individuals who are under the age of 12 criminally responsible.’
  “MacAlister said that it's difficult to know just yet why police used the Taser but, to his knowledge, the boy is now the youngest person ever to be shocked with a stun gun by RCMP in Canada, which is a medical concern.”
  The story ran across the country on CBC-TV national news, and on the CBC News Network.
• The Canadian Press: “‘To hear that somebody as young as 11 was on the receiving end of a big jolt came as a bit of a surprise,’ said MacAlister, who stressed it was impossible to make any conclusions about the officers' conduct without knowing exactly what happened.
  "‘What were the police thinking? What alternative responses were they contemplating? You have to wonder what happened in the situation to merit the use of a Taser.’"
• QMI news agency (the Quebecor-Toronto Sun group of newspapers): “David MacAlister, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, said  . . . being stunned by a Taser can be harmful, especially if the individual is thin and zapped in the chest.
  "‘The distance between the heart and skin is much smaller and that increases the danger,’ he said. ‘Presumably the 11-year-old would be in that category.’"
  MacAlister also appeared on GlobalTV.
  CBC News story: http://at.sfu.ca/ytrHFt
  The Canadian Press (in the Globe and Mail): http://at.sfu.ca/glgaSL
  QMI/Toronto Sun: http://at.sfu.ca/PeKUdt