Assignment: In the first required reading “Crimes Against Persons, Property, and Society – Fall 2019”, the FBI identifies a broad category of offenses that “represent society’s prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity and are typically victimless crimes.” (FBI, 2019). If you look at the offense groups in the reading, you will see that it lists offenses such as prostitution, gambling, drug violations, animal cruelty, weapons law violations, and pornography.
For your discussion:
(1) pick ONE (1) of the above listed offense types, find an applicable criminal code for your state (or state of your choice) and discuss some of the penalties associated with that offense. You only need to pick one specific offense from your state – for drug violations, you don’t need to discuss every potential drug violations – pick one particular statute and discuss its elements and penalities;
(2) describe what you believe your biggest challenge as an investigator would be proving all of those elements of the offense;
(3) identify AT LEAST ONE investigative tool or technique that you think would be critical to successfully investigating this type of incident and explain why it is important – is it undercover operations, informants, surveillance, witness interviews, computer evidence, etc.
(4) express an opinion as to whether the creation of a specialized investigative unit would be the best response to this type of crime issue and support your position.
For example, of you pick burglary as your topic, you will need to explain what the general elements of that offense are and then identify an element that you think is the biggest challenge to prove (is it proving the entry was unlawful, that a theft actually occurred, that a felony was committed, etc) then identify an investigative technique or service that will be critical (is it polygraphs, ballistic evidence, interviewing, crime scene management, etc), and finally explain if you believe creation of a specialized investigative unit would be an appropriate response (for example, would creating a crime analysis unit to better track these crimes be a good idea, or would creating a unit that does only those types of investigations, or would creating a community policing unit that raises community awareness be a good response, etc)
Submission Requirements
- APA Style elements required
- Separate Title Page with Name, class, date and topic/title
- At least one (1) page of your writing on this topic that includes using in-text citations
- 12 point font
- Times New Roman or Arial
- Separate Reference Page – List detailed source information for all references
Brown, Thomas. (2019), “Criminal Investigation”. Virginia Wesleyan University. OERCommons. eBook.
Viewed from: https://www.oercommons.org/courses/criminal-investigation/view#
