Unit 3 Crime and Punishment

Text 3.1 Seeking the Roots of Violence

It’s tempting to make excuses for violence. The mugger came from a broken home and was trying to lift himself out of poverty. The wife beater was himself abused as a child. The juvenile murderer was exposed to Motley Crue records and Terminator movies. But do environmental factors wholly account for the seven-year-old child who tortures frogs? The teenager who knifes a teacher? The employee who slaughters work mates with an AK-47? Can society’s ills really be responsible for all the savagery that is sweeping America? Or could some people be predisposed to violence by their genes? But not if the research is suppressed. Investigators of the link between biology and crime find themselves caught in one of the most bitter controversies to hit the scientific community in years. The subject has become so politically incorrect in America that even raising it requires more bravery than many scientists can muster. Critics from the social sciences have denounced biological research efforts as intellectually unjustified and politically motivated. African-American scholars and politicians are particularly incensed; they fear that because of the high crime rates in inner cities, blacks will be wrongly branded as a group programmed for violence.

The backlash has taken a tall. In the past year, proposed U.S. government research initiative that would have included biological studies has been assailed, and a scheduled conference on genetics and crime has been canceled. A session on heredity and violence at February’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science turned into a politically correct critique of the research; no defenders of such studies showed up on the panel. “One is basically under attack in this field”, observes one federal researcher, who like many is increasingly hesitant to talk about his work publicly.

Some of the distrust is understandable, given the tawdry history of earlier efforts to link biology and crime. A century ago, Italian physician Cesare Lombroso claimed that sloping foreheads, jutting chins and long arms were signs of born criminals. In the 1960s, scientists advanced the now discounted notion that men who carry an XYY chromosome pattern, rather than the normal XY patter, were predisposed to becoming violent criminals. Fresh interest in the field reflects a recognition that violence has become one of the worst public-health threats in the U.S. The U.S. is the most violent nation in the industrialized world. Homicide is the second most frequent cause of death among Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 (after accidents) and the most common among young black men and women. More than 2million people are beaten, knifed, shot or otherwise assaulted each year, 23,000 of them fatally. No other industrialized nation comes close: Scotland, which ranked second in homicides, has less than one-forth the U.S. rate.

This cultural disparity indicates that there are factors in American society- such as the availability of guns, economic inequity and a violence- saturated culture- that are not rooted in human biology. Nevertheless, a susceptibility to violence might partly be genetic. Errant genes play a role in many behavioral disorders, including schizophrenia and manic depression. “In virtually every behavior we look at, genes have an influence- one person will behave one way, another person will behave another way”, observes Gregory Carey, assistant professor at the University of Colorado’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics. It stands to reason that genes might contribute to violent activity as well.

Some studies of identical twins who have been reared apart suggest that when one twin has a criminal conviction, the other twin is more likely to have committed a crime than is the case with fraternal twins. Other research with adopted children indicates that those whose biological parents broke the law are more likely to become criminals than are adoptees whose natural parents were law-abiding.

No one believes there is a single “criminal gene” that programs people to maim or murder. Rather, a person’s genetic makeup may give a subtle nudge violent actions. For one thing, genes help control production of behavior-regulating chemicals. One suspect substance is the neurotransmitter serotonin. Experiments at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in North Carolina suggest that extremely aggressive monkeys have lower levels of serotonin than do more passive peers. Animals with low serotonin are more likely to bite, slap or chase other monkeys. Such animals also seem less social: they spend more time alone and less in close body contact with peers.

Findings like these may be essential to understanding-and perhaps eventually controlling- chronic wrongdoers, argue proponents of this research. “Most youth or adults who commit a violent crime will not commit a second”, observes Kagan. “The group we are concerned with are the recidivists- those who have been arrested many times. This is the group for whom there might be some biological contribution”. Kagan predicts that within 25 years, biological and genetic tests will be able to pick out about 15 children of every thousand who may have violent tendencies. But only one of those 15 children will actually become violent, he notes. Do we tell the mothers of all 15 that their kids might be violent? How are mothers then going to react to their children if we do that?”

It is just such dilemmas that have so alarmed critics. How will the information be used? Some opponents believe the research runs the danger of making women seem prisoners of their hormones”.

TIME,April 1993

Text 3.2 The Devil’s Disciple

Westley Dodd may die at the end of a rope, but he leaves behind a controversial law against sex offenders.

It takes a certain act of faith, the first time a mother and father let their children go out and play by themselves. Faith that sons and daughters will cross streets safely, that they will abide by their curfew, that they will remember not to talk to strangers. Faith that when they go to the park, someone like Westley Allan Dodd will not be there waiting for them.

Westley Dodd is the man who shook the faith of enough people in the state of Washington to prompt legislators to pass the U.S. most unforgiving, possibly unconstitutional, laws against sexual predators. After his sentencing for the kidnap, rape and murder of three little boys in 1989, hardened reporters who covered the case sought counseling to help them handle what they had heard in court.

Throughout his years as a child molester, Dodd showed a gift for rebuking the justice system. With each arrest, he passed like a cold breeze through the court system and mental health institutions and wound up back where he had started: hunting children in public parks and devising new schemes to kidnap, mutilate, drown, strangle or suffocate them. Time and again, the courts reduced the charges, suspended the sentence, offered therapy over incarceration. “Each time I entered treatment, I continued to molest children”, he told the court. “I liked molesting children and did what I had to do to avoid jail so I could continue molesting”.

Dodd says he molested dozens of children and never served a sentence longer than four months in jail. Once while baby-sitting for some friends, he molested their 10-year-old son. After one arrest in Seattle in 1987, he told police that his urge was “predatory and uncontrollable”. His one-year sentence was suspended. In the summer of 1989, Dodd moved to Vancouver, Washington, and began stalking children. “I was getting bored- I didn’t have a TV”, Dodd told police. The park, he said, looked like “a good hunting ground”. One day he selected 19 different children he considered killing: 15 boys, 4 girls. One by one, he ruled them out, often because they were with an adult. He returned the next evening, bringing shoelaces to tie up his victims and a 15-cm-fish-fillet knife that he did inside an Ace bandage drawn tight around his ankle.

He came upon two brothers. Cole and William Neer, who were taking a shortcut through the park on their way home to supper. He tied them up, molested one, stabbed them both, then fled back to his apartment as police and ambulance sirens wailed in the distance. Dodd wrote about the thrill of it. “I was kind of afraid that I was going to get caught”, he told the Oregonian. “And then as I watched the papers, I realized that the police didn’t have any clues”.

Seven weeks later, Dodd found a four-year-old boy playing alone in an elementary school playground. He coaxed Lee Iseli home with him to play some games. “When he got there, I told him he had to be real quiet because my neighbor didn’t like kids”, Dodd said. He then stripped off Lee Iseli’s clothes, tied the boy to the bed and began taking Polaroid pictures as he molested the child. He later mounted the photos in 10-cm-by-15-cm pink photo album labeled FAMILY MEMORIES.

Police were shocked at the pitiless confessions Dodd offered freely upon arrest. His crimes easily persuaded a jury to condemn him, but they had a far more incendiary effect on public sentiment toward sex offenders in general. As Dodd’s story unfolded in court, pressure mounted on Governor Booth Gardner and state lawmakers to pass what became a uniquely tough law. It requires that convinced sex offenders register wherever they move; that authorities must let the community know about the felon in their midst; and, most controversial, that the state be allowed to look up repeat offenders after they have served their sentences if they are thought to still pose a threat. Such pre-emptive imprisonment, which civil libertarians say is grossly unconstitutional, is being challenged in court. The legal system that treated Dodd far too gently until way too late now struggles to make amends. Unless the predator law is overturned, sex offenders in Washington will be either watched, or jailed, forever. It is ironic that for Dodd, who fought hard for the right to be hanged, that would be the worst possible punishment. The prospect of what amounts to a glamorous public suicide was vastly more appealing than a life alone in a cell the size of a parking space, crushed by boredom, without the least chance of freedom. For him, perhaps justice would have been better served by denying him his death wish and letting him wait, for a very long time, for death to come to him.

TIME, January 1993

Text 3.3 The rise of the cyber-stalker

These days men don’t need to hang around their exes’ homes to torment them- all they need to do is log on. Julie Bindel on an old crime in new clothing.

Wednesday January 10, 2007

When Karen Allison ended her marriage she knew her husband wouldn’t let her go quietly. “He had been abusive,” she says, “so I expected him punish me for leaving”.

She was right. Last November, Darlington magistrates court heard evidence of a two-year campaign of harassment Thomas Welsh had directed at Allison since their split. Immediately after ending their relationship, she had been bombarded with sexually explicit text messages and photographs on her mobile phone. Worse was to come. She soon discovered that her details had been posted on a website aimed at cross-dressers and sadomasochists, where she had been advertised as being “available for sexual services”. “It was horrific”, she says. “I was getting all these disgusting emails and phone calls.”

The court fined Welsh, imposed an indefinite restraining order banning him from going within 100yards of Allison and also banned him from putting her details on the internet.

In the most recent British Crime Survey, published last summer, 8% of women and 6% of men said they had been stalked within the previous year. And 20% of all women are stalked at some stage of their lives. In the case of men stalking women, the harassment usually starts when a woman ends an abusive relationship or rejects the sexual advances of a man prone to violence and jealousy. According to research carried out at Leicester University, more than 200 women leave the UK each year because a stalker has made their lives unbearable; the average length of time that a woman is stalked is seven and a half years.

Cyber-stalking - the use of technology such as internet and mobile phone – to track victims has increased sharply in the past few years. Many of the offenders are men who are disgruntled and angry at being rejected by their partners. Rather than creeping around outside the victim’s home, or following her to work, though, some of these men, as Allison found, post details of their victim on websites containing sexually explicit material.

Others email pornographic photographs and videos of the victim (often taken without her knowledge or consent) to family members and work colleagues.

Welsh, who runs a transvestite mail-order and cross-dressing service for men, used his personal website to post Allison’s details. Other cyber-stalkers sign their victims up directly to public sites where people advertise for casual sex, often writing their victim’s profile as if she is available for all manner of sexual activity with strangers.

Such men, according to Hamish Brown, a former police officer and expert on stalking and harassment, fit the profile of the “obsessional stalker”- an ex-partner who refuses to believe that a relationship is over. “These men refuse to give up, however clearly the victim tells him she doesn’t want to know. He has this attitude of, ‘If I can’t have her, no one will’,” says Brown.

When Sophie Green started getting emails from her ex-partner, Simon Ward, saying things such as, “Oh, you saw so-and-so and went to that bar at that time, did you?”, she realized he was tracking her movements through information she had written on her personal blog. “There was always an implicit threat that he would track me down so I stopped blogging, which I really resented”. Green began to receive sexually explicit mails from Ward, often containing pornographic photographs. “I found them really disturbing and felt sexually violated, which is presumably what he wanted, because I would not have sex with him any more,” she says.

“Simon knew I had been raped when I was 13, although he insisted on calling it ‘surprise sex’. He discovered my email address and password and then would subscribe me to really violent rape sites”.

Green changed her personal email address, but Ward soon discovered her work one, and began sending her pornography and threats on a regular basis.

When sexually explicit emails are sent to victim’s workplace, they risk humiliation and even losing their jobs. Jane Thompson split from her boyfriend of only three weeks, “because I felt smothered by him”. One morning soon after, when she arrived at work, a colleague asked her if she had emailed her from home over the weekend. It turned out that her ex-boyfriend had sent Thompson’s colleague “a folder with about 10 photos of us both having sex”, she says, “and at that moment I wanted to die”.

Thompson’s ex had used a method common to cyber-stalkers- tracing their victims email address and sending messages from that address containing offensive, pornographic and even libellous material.

According to research by an expert on stalking, Dr Lorraine Sheridan of Leicester University, half of all victims are now harassed via internet. And despite the image of the stalker as a creepy loner, there is a growing online community to help and support the cyber-stalker’s efforts. So-called “revenge” websites, such as Avengers Den and Get Revenge on Your Ex, are becoming more popular, says Sheridan.

I spent an hour surfing such sites and what I found was profoundly disturbing. One site advertised itself as being able to assist those wishing to experience “the pure, unadulterated satisfaction you get from totally crushing your ex’s self-esteem and annihilating their reputation”. Another offered a service called “fake SMS”, where a message can be sent “to your ex” which appears to come from someone else. One satisfied customer wrote that, “I sent the bitch a message saying she is a dirty slut (etc) and made it come from her mum’s boyfriend!!!”

One man had sent his ex a text message saying, “I know I said you were the best sex ever, but I lied – it was the drugs talking and I needed them to f… you”, and programmed it to repeat on the hour, as well as play down her phone answering service on her landline.

These sites are not specifically targeted at men wanting to exact revenge on women (there are women who post on such sites, often describing how they sent advertisements for Viagra, or penile enlargement operations) and there are no figures to give a breakdown on the gender of users. But trawling through them, the majority of those leaving posts seem to be men.

“Whether the stalker harasses his victim by letter, in person or by email is relevant”, says Brown. “But victims of cyber-stalking have often told me they get terrified of the ‘invisible’ stalker who is hiding in cyberspace, because he could be anyone and everywhere”.

One woman who responded to a request I posted on an anti-stalking website told me that her ex-husband posted her name and address on a website used to meet sexual partners, posing as her, and offering “group sex with her”. It was really scary”, she tells me in an email, “because when I read the posting it said I like to act out rape fantasies, so men in twos and threes should break into the house, have sex with me and ignore my screams of terror, as that is all part of the game”.

The good news is that cyber-stalkers are more likely to be caught than others, because there is usually a trail of evidence from computers and mobile phones. However, stalkers are usually determined and often put time and effort into becoming technical experts.

“I had no idea that what he was doing was illegal”, says Green. “The police need to make it clear, and get the message out to women that sending malicious communications – whether by hand, post or computer – is a crime”.

The effects on victims of stalking do not go away when the stalker finally does. “It will take me years to get over what he did and to feel safe again”, says Allison. “I just wish something had been done to stop him before he almost ruined my life”.

• Some names have been changed.

Text 3.4 Migrant crime wave a myth – police study

ACPO report concludes offending no worse than rest of the population

Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent

The Guardian, Wednesday April 16, 2008

A wide-ranging police study has concluded that the surge in immigrants from eastern Europe to Britain has not fuelled a rise in crime, the Guardian has learned.

The findings will be presented to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, tomorrow when she meets chief constables to discuss the issue. Several of them had complained that they needed more money to deal with increases in migrant populations in their areas. However, the study prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers challenges claims that up to 1 million people from EU accession countries have caused a rise in criminality.

The report finds that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among mainly Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities are in line with the rate of offending in the general population.

A senior source with close knowledge of the report said: “Any rise has been broadly proportionate to the number of people from those communities coming into this country. People are saying crime is rising because of this influx. Given 1 million people have come in, that doesn’t make sense as crime is significantly down”.

The fall in the annual crime rate in England and Wales is accelerating, with a drop of 9% recorded by police in the year to September 2007, according to Home Office figures published earlier this year.

The report by Grahame Maxwell, chief constable of North Yorkshire, and Peter Fahy, who leads the Cheshire force, says that “resentment and misunderstanding” about why new migrants are coming to Britain has stoked tensions. It calls for businesses benefiting from the new workers to do a better job of explaining the economic benefit of migrant workers.

The report says: “While overall this country has accommodated this huge influx with little rise in community tension, in some areas sheer numbers, resentment and misunderstanding, have created problems”. It adds that the immigration from Eastern Europe has been different to previous arrivals, because it happened much more quickly. The report says that new migrants may be more likely to commit certain types of offences. Polish people are linked to drink-driving, and problems have arisen in central London with some Romanian children being used by adults to commit petty robberies.

There are also problems with people trafficking and exploitation, but while these may be more likely in some migrant communities, other types of offences are less likely to occur.

The reports calls for new agreements with east European countries to share intelligence and information on less serious crimes, such as domestic violence and serial theft.

It also calls for immigration authorities, schools and the health service to share information with police about new nationalities in their areas.

The report is primarily based on intelligence gathered by detectives about crime patterns in different areas of England and Wales. Police recording codes only contains the category “white Europeans” covering people originating from France to the Urals. The report says more analysis is needed.

The source with close knowledge of the report said: “Given the number coming into the country, the problems have been very few in terms of criminality, increases in crime or community tensions”.

“Most are coming here to earn money, most are professionals with qualifications, and they work then go home”.

The report says areas that have faced most demands include Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire because of the demand for agricultural workers, as well as Slough. Cambridgeshire’s chief constable, Julie Spence, has warned of increased demands on her force and Kent’s chief constable, Mike Fuller, also reportedly wrote to ministers saying that the government’s failure to give his force more money was not taking account of extra demands on his officers.

Text 3.5 One in three back carrying knives

Youths claim they need protection against peers

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor

The Observer, Sunday May 18, 2008

One in three young people living in cities thinks it is acceptable to carry a knife in self-defence because violence is so rife, according to research revealed today. Teenagers and twenty-somethings have lost faith in politicians, the police or schools to protect them and increasingly believe they need to be armed to defend themselves against people of their own age. Nearly half said they knew someone who had been a victim of knife crime.

The survey has been released as the Home Office prepares to launch a national advertising campaign aimed at teenagers who carry knives for protection, warning that doing so makes them more likely to be stabbed. Mothers will also be targeted by ads in women’s magazines urging them to talk to their children about the risk of carrying weapons.

However, experts warned that unless children can be made to feel safer on the streets, they are unlikely to give up their weapons. “There is a picture of young people completely taking it for granted that guns and knives and violence is a kind of everyday part of their landscape”, said Don Slater, a sociologist at the London school of Economics.

The survey of 355 people aged 16 to 24 in London, Manchester and Bristol was carried out by Tuned In, a market research company specializing in your issues. It found 30 per cent said it was acceptable sometimes to carry a knife while 23 per cent would use one. One in 10 claimed to have had access to a gun.

A third admitted that fear of gun and knife crime affected where they went out socially while 34 per cent believed that they would witness a knife attack.

Slater said that young people’s perceptions risked creating a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ as they reacted to the perceived threat by taking up weapons. He said knives were not seen as glamorous accessories, and that politicians who attacked ‘gangsta’ culture or rap music were missing the point: “Nobody that I could see was glamorising what was going on: gangs were not popular”.

The Home Office advertising campaign to be launched later this month will argue that those who carry knives raise the risk of having their on weapon used against them as well as of escalating fights that would once have been settled by fists. It was designed in consultation with teenagers themselves.

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said the ₤1m campaign would ‘challenge the fear, glamour and peer pressure that can drive youngsters to knife crime’, alongside recent moves to double the maximum sentence for carrying a knife to four years.

However, Enver Solomon of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College said there was little research on what worked in deterring knife carrying. He said the unit had been told by senior Met officers that the most pragmatic response would be to train teenagers in first aid in the hope that more stabbing victims could be kept alive until emergency help reached them.

He said stop and search campaigns similar to a police exercise in London lat week were of limited use, since seizing knives did not take them out of circulation when a teenager could easily take another one from the kitchen: “It’s a losing battle trying to confiscate them.”

Two teenagers were in a critical condition yesterday after they were stabbed outside a nightclub in London’s Brick Lane during the early hours.

Text 3.6 Her Crime was to fall in love. She paid with her life

When 17-year old Rand Abdel-Qader met a British in Basra, she dreamt of romance. But five months later she was murdered in a savage attack by her father. But there will be no trial: this was an ‘honour killing’. Investigation by Afif Sarhan in Basra, Mark Townsend and Caroline Davies.

The Observer, Sunday April 27 2008

Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, told her closest friend that she was in love from the moment she set eyes on the young British soldier working alongside her in Basra, and she dreamed of a future with him.

It was an innocent infatuation but five months after Rand, a student of English in Basra University, met Paul, a 22-year-old soldier posted to southern Iraq, she was dead. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father. Several brutal knife wounds punctured her slender, bruised body – from her face to her feet. He had done it, he proclaimed to the neighbors who soon gathered round, to ‘cleanse his honour’.

And as Rand was put into the ground, without ceremony, her uncles spat on her covered corpse because she had brought shame on the family. Her crime was the worst they could possibly imagine – she had fallen in love with a British soldier and dared to talk to him in public.

Rand was murdered last month. That the relationship was innocent was no defence. She had been seen conversing intimately with Paul. It was enough to condemn her, because he was British, a Christian, ‘the invader’, and the enemy. The two met while he was helping to deliver relief aid to displaced families in the city and she was working as a volunteer. They continued to meet through their relief work in the following months.

Rand last saw Paul in January, two months before her death. It was only on 16 March that her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, learned of their friendship. He was told by a friend, who worked closely with police, that Rand had been seen with Paul at one of the places they both worked as volunteers. Enraged, he headed straight home to demand an explanation from his daughter.

‘When he entered the house, his eyes were bloodshot and he was trembling’, said Rand’s mother, Leila Hussein, tears streaming down her face as she recalled her daughter’s murder. ‘I got worried and tried to speak to him but he headed straight for our daughter’s room and he started to yell at her’.

‘He asked if it was true that she was having an affair with a British soldier. She started to cry. She was nervous and desperate. He got told of her hair and started thumping her again and again.

‘I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away from her. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life’, she said.

She said Ali used his feet to press down hard on his own daughter’s throat until she was suffocated. Then he called for a knife and began to cut at her body. All the time he was calling out that his honour was being cleansed.

‘I just couldn’t stand it. I fainted’, recalled Leila. ‘I woke up in a blur later with dozens of neighbors at home and the local police’.

According to Leila, her husband was initially arrested. ‘But he was released two hours later because it was an “honour killing”. And, unfortunately, that is something to be proud of for any Iraqi man’.

At the police station where the father was held Sergeant Ali Jabbar told The Observer last week: ‘Not much can be done when we have an “honour killing case”. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.

‘The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn’t hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten. Sorry but I cannot say more about the case’.

Rand, considered impure, was given only a simple burial. To show their repugnance at her alleged crime, her family cancelled the traditional mourner ceremony.

Two weeks after the murder, Leila left Ali. She could no longer bear to live under the same roof as her daughter’s killer and asked for a divorce. ‘I was beaten and had my arm broken by him’, she said. ‘No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed with a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter, who, over the years, had only given him unconditional love’.

Now she works for a women’s organization campaigning against honour killings’. I just want to try to stop other girls having the same fate as my beloved Rand’, said Leila who is forced to move regularly from friend top friend.

‘What they did to her was ugly and pathetic. Rand was just a young girl with romantic dreams. She always kept her religion close to her heart. She would never even hurt a petal on a rose’.

Last year 133 women were killed in Basra – 47 of them for so-called ‘honour killings’, according to the Basra Security Committee. Out of those 47 cases there have been only three convictions for murder.

Since January this year, 36 women have been killed.

Text 3.7 US deal over illegal immigrants

BBC News Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:09 GMT 22:09 UK

The White House and the US Senate have reached a deal on an immigration bill that could give legal status to many of the 12m illegal immigrants in the US.

The agreement was announced by the Democratic Party’s negotiator on the issue, Senator Edward Kennedy.

President George W Bush endorsed the deal, which also strengthens border controls, as a “much needed solution”.

The proposal needs to be passed by both houses of Congress and formally signed by Mr. Bush to become law.

It comes after months of bitterly fought debate over the issue.

Mr. Bush said the deal offered a system that was “secure, productive, orderly and fair”.

“With this bipartisan agreement, I am confident leaders in Washington can have a serious, civil and conclusive debate so I can sign comprehensive reform into law this year”, he said in a statement.

Points system

After first paying visa fees and a $5,000(£2,530) fine – and returning to their home

country – illegal immigrants in the US would be eligible for the planned “Z visa”.

Holders of this proposed visa would have to wait between eight and 13 years for a decision on their permanent residency application.

Another key component of the deal was the establishment of a “points system” that would emphasize new immigrants’ education, language and job skills over family connections in awarding green cards.

New limits would also apply to US citizens bringing foreign-born parents into the country.

The bill also establishes a two-year temporary guest worker visa.

Holders of this visa would be allowed to renew their papers twice, but would have to return home for a year between each stint, and would have virtually no chance of gaining permanent residency or citizenship under this program.

But these measures would not come into force until the number of border guards had been doubled, the fence with Mexico reinforced and high-tech enforcement measures put in place.

“The agreement we just reached is the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders and bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America”, Mr. Kennedy said as he announced the deal.

“Deadline”

The bill expected to cause passionate debate in the Senate next week.

And in the House of Representatives Mr. Bush is likely to have quite a fight on his hands, says the BBC’s James Coomarasamy in Washington.

Immigration reform has been one of Mr. Bush’s top priorities in government, after the so-called “war on terror”.

Many potential immigrants die on the perilous border crossing – often due to extreme thirst, although the threat of vigilante attacks is also rising.

President Bush has said he wants to see new legislation in place by the end of this year

Analysts say the issue could stall if it drags on into 2008, when attention will turn to presidential elections.

Text 3.8 Prosecutors charge disgraced cloning scientist

Agencies

Friday May 12, 2006

South Korea’s disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk was today charged with fraud, embezzlement and violating bioethics laws with his now-discredited stem cell research.

State prosecutors have been investigating Dr Hwang since January after the university where he once worked said his team deliberately fabricated key data in two research papers.

The world’s scientific community was shocked by revelations that his groundbreaking work – such as producing stem cell lines from cloned human embryos – had been found to be fake.

Today’s formal indictments are a new low for Dr Hwang, who was once a national hero in South Korea.

Among today’s charges were allegations he used millions of pounds in research grants for private purposes.

However, prosecutors said they did accept one key argument Dr Hwang used in his defense, that some of his claims were due to a junior researcher deceiving him into believing his lab successfully created patient-specific stem cells from cloned embryos.

The prosecutors added, however, that Dr Hwang compounded this alleged fraud by fabricating further research.

Senior prosecution official Lee In-kyu announced the indictments of Dr Hwang and five members of his research team during a nationally televised news conference.

Mr. Lee said prosecutors had decided not to take any of them into custody at his stage, although he did not elaborate on the reasons for this.

Dr Hwang was fired in March from his post as a professor at Seoul National University’s veterinary department after admitting he fabricated data for two papers published in academic journals in 2004 and 2005.

Their claims of advanced in embryonic stem cells – basic human cells that can develop into nearly any kind of tissue – had offered hope of new treatments for millions of patients suffering from debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Creating patient-specific stem cells, with a patient’s own DNA, would be a key breakthrough because they could theoretically be used for treatments to replace sick cells with the assurance that they would not be rejected by the body.

Dr Hwang was also charged with fraud for accepting 2 billion won (£1.1m) in private donations based on the outcome of the falsified research, Mr. Lee said.

He is suspected of using part of the funds to purchase human eggs – in violation of a bioethics law that went into effect in 2005 – and for donations to politicians who approved state grants he was awarded. Contravening bioethics laws can result in up to three years in prison.

Mr. Lee, speaking at prosecutors’ officers in southern Seoul, said Dr Hwang also embezzled about 800 million won (£450,000) in private and government research funds. Misuse of state funds carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Dr Hwang is alleged to have used some of the money awarded for his research to buy a car.

Prosecutors said Dr Hwang had falsified his research papers, but decided not to charge him for that, because “there has been no precedent in the world” of bringing criminal charges for fabricating academic papers.

Of the five researchers, one was indicted for tampering with research samples, three for fraud and one for violation of the bioethics law. At the prosecutor’s office, around two dozen people staged a rally in support of Dr Hwang, calling for him to continue his research.

Text 3.9 “Mom, Mom, Mom, it’s not right”. After a day at home, Paris Hilton is back in jail

• Judge rules celebrity must serve entire sentence

• Media circus follows star on journey to courtroom

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

Saturday June 9, 2007

Sobbing, handcuffed and wearing no make-up, the socialite and heiress Paris Hilton was sent back to jail yesterday to complete her 45-day sentence for driving while her licence had been suspended.

Hilton, 26, screamed “It’s not right”, and cried “Mom, Mom, Mom” to her mother seated behind her in court as she was led away by sheriff’s deputies.

Her departure to the Twin Towers correctional facility ended – at least for the time being – the latest episode in the bizarre world of celebrity justice.

The Hilton courtroom fiasco takes its place in the pantheon of celebrity mishaps alongside OJ Simpson’s slow – motion ride in a Ford Bronco and Michael Jackson dancing on a car roof outside a courthouse.

The ruling by Judge Michael Sauer, who sentenced Hilton a month ago, was the culmination of a frantic and sometimes surreal morning in Los Angeles which began with photographers and news crews gathered outside Hilton’s red tiled villa on King’s Road in the heart of Hollywood, just off Sunset Boulevard. They were awaiting her departure for a 9am hearing that had been ordered by Judge Sauer following her “reassignment” from jail to house arrest on Thursday.

Judge Sauer had not approved the move and the prosecuting attorney opposed the change.

But the sheriff’s department, which takes charge of prisoners while they serve their sentence, agreed she could serve out the remainder of her sentence at home wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.

The turf war between the judge, the sheriff and the city attorney resulted in yesterday’s hearing. But early in the morning a court official announced that Hilton would participate in the hearing by phone from her home. Judge Sauer was not amused, and ordered sheriff’s deputies to bring her to court.

They arrived at Hilton’s home almost an hour after the hearing was scheduled to begin. A plane circled over the house towing a We Love Paris banner, while the gates of her home were festooned with pink balloons left by a well-wisher.

Helicopters circled overhead, anticipating Hilton’s journey to the downtown courthouse.

At the court, lawyers and reporters from the OJ trial greeted each other, aware that, in the words of one cable news anchor, they were once again at the center of “the story that has transfixed all of America”.

Almost another hour passed before Hilton emerged from the house, helicopter shots showing her dressed in baggy clothing, hugging her parents before being handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser.

And so she set off down King’s Road, across Sunset Boulevard and towards the court in downtown Los Angeles, 14 miles away, crying in the back of a black and white police cruiser.

Initially, as it pushed through the throng of the media, the car was pursued by sprinting paparazzi. Eventually they gave up the chase, and the journey of Los Angeles sheriff department vehicle 865 was relayed from the air, a Hollywood shot reminiscent of the OJ chase along the freeways through Los Angeles.

When she appeared in court, it was to face a grim judge and perfunctory hearing. Judge Sauer said he was still awaiting papers from Hilton’s lawyers concerning her alleged medical condition. It had been reported that a psychiatrist who had treated Michael Jackson had visited Hilton in prison and persuaded officials she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

After hearing representations, Judge Sauer said: “The defendant is remanded to country jail to serve the remainder of her 45-day sentence. This order is forthwith”.

It was not clear whether the order meant Hilton would have to serve the entire 45 days or the 23 days previously been agreed.

A sobbing Hilton, who had been dabbing away tears with a handkerchief, screamed and turned to her mother seated behind her in the court as sheriff’s deputies cleared the public gallery and escorted her to a holding area. She was immediately transferred to the detention centre and it was thought she would spend the weekend at a medical facility at the prison. Her lawyers were expected to file an appeal.

City attorney Rocky Delgadillo, who brought the prosecution, welcomed the ruling: “This decision sends the message that no individual – no matter how wealthy or powerful – is above the law. Today, justice was served”.

Hilton was arrested in September and convicted of reckless driving after police saw her driving erratically late at night. She was subsequently stopped twice while driving on a suspended licence.

On May 4 she was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating the terms of her probation.

Text 3.10 Naomi Campbell pleads guilty to assaulting airport police

Anil Dawar and agencies

The Guardian, Friday June 20, 2008

Naomi Campbell flew into a rage at cabin crew over a missing suitcase and assaulted police officers who were called to remove her from a plane, a court was told today.

The 38-year-old supermodel accused the pilot of racism, kicked and spat at the officers and threatened to sue them after she was removed from a BA jet at Heathrow on April 3.

Campbell pleaded guilty today at Uxbridge magistrates court to four charges, including two counts of assaulting a police officer.

The court heard that the row was sparked by the disappearance of a bag containing a dress Campbell was contracted to wear during a television appearance. The incident came at the height of the baggage-sorting chaos that blighted the opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

Such was the star’s fury, a fellow passenger moved out of the first-class cabin for his own safety as Campbell hurled a torrent of abuse at the crew before turning on three police officers drafted in to help defuse the situation.

Melanie Parrish, prosecuting, said the plane’s captain, Miles Sutherland, had taken the unusual step of talking to the model personally after hearing that one of her bags was missing.

As he tried to explain the situation, Campbell was heard shouting: “I can’t believe you have lost my fucking bag. Bring me my fucking bags now.”

She told him to leave the aircraft, get her bag and show it to her. When he reeled off a list of options open to her, Campbell snapped: “How dare you tell me what my options are? You are not leaving until you find my fucking bags.”

When he walked away, she shouted: “You are a racist, you wouldn’t be doing this if I was white”.

Two high-level BA staff were called in, one trained to deal with difficult situations, the court heard. “Miss Campbell was clearly upset and explained to them the reason why this was so awful for her was that she was contracted to wear a particular Yves Saint Laurent outfit on a US chat show and it was in the bag that hadn’t been loaded”, Parrish said.

As staff tried to reason with her, the model shouted into her mobile phone: “They have lost my fucking bags, get me another flight, get the press, get me my lawyer”. She refused to leave the plane, shouting “Fuck you, fuck you, captain” and “Fuck off, I have paid ₤5,000 for this. I have a right to be on this plane”.

Violence erupted when three police officers arrived to escort her from the jet. PC John Eastwick was struck on the arm with the star’s phone and spat on, and PC Charles Campling was struck in the thigh with her “formidable platform boots with stiletto-style heels”, the court was told.

As they arrested her for assault, Campbell shouted at the officers: “You are only doing this because I am black and famous. It is because I am a black woman.

You are all racists. I am going to sue you. I am going to fuck you. I am going to sue you like a motherfucker”.

Campbell’s lawyer, Richard Nicholls, said his client was “genuinely apologetic” towards the police officers but not “quite so sorry about British Airways”.

He said the situation had not been caused by drink but the loss of her dress.

“It’s not like a pair of flip flops and shorts were lost, these were working clothes – it’s like a worker not having his tools. It would not have been a problem if her luggage had not been lost. This was not just a trip to LA, she was also going the mother of her friend’s funeral”.

“It is not the first time the supermodel has had a run-in with the law. Three times in the past eight years Campbell has pleaded guilty in court to hitting her staff with mobile phones. In one case, her housekeeper was left needing four stitches in her head.

Last year, a New York court ordered Campbell to spend five days mopping floors and cleaning toilets, as well as attending anger management classes, as punishment for hitting her maid with a phone.

It is understood that since the incident, Campbell has been banned from all BA flights.

The hearing continues.

Text 3.11 Iran arrests ‘Agatha Christie serial killer’

Woman accused of drugging, suffocating and robbing her victims was inspired by classic crime novels, police claim

Robert Tait (guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 May 2009)

Police in Iran believe they have caught the country’s first female serial killer and are claiming she has disclosed a literary inspiration behind her attempts to evade detection: the crime novels of Agatha Christie.

The 32-year-old suspect, named only as Mahin, stands accused of killing at least six people, including five women, according to officials in the city of Qazvin, about 100 miles north-west of Tehran.

“Mahin in her confessions has said that she has been taking patterns from Agatha Christie books and has been trying not to leave any trace of herself,” Mohammad Baqer Olfat, the Qazvin prosecutor, told Iranian journalists.

Mahin, who it is claimed also admitted the earlier murders of her former landlord and an aunt, is said to have carefully chosen her victims, targeting elderly and middle-aged women and offering them lifts home after picking them up at shrines in the city where they had been praying.

Police said she confessed in custody to killing four such women in Qazvin since January, claiming to have been driven by a desperate need for money after chalking up debts of more than £16,000. After offering her victims a lift, Mahin allegedly gave them fruit juice which she had spiked with an anaesthetic to knock them out. She would then suffocate them before stealing their jewellery and other possessions and dumping the bodies in secluded spots. One victim was beaten to death with an iron bar after regaining consciousness.

Which Christie novels Mahin studied has not yet been revealed, though many of the books describe killers using drugs. Christie’s novels, some of which depict unsolved murders, are highly popular among Iranians. The writer, who died in 1976, visited Iran several times and used it as the setting for one of her stories, The House at Shiraz.

Qazvin’s police chief, Ali Akbar Hedayati, said Mahin was afflicted by a mental disorder triggered by having been deprived of her mother’s love. She would draw her chosen victims into conversation by telling them they reminded her of her mother, the police chief said.

After apparently being so careful to stay ahead of the police, it seems that the most mundane of transgressions, a road traffic offence, alerted detectives and led to her arrest.

Officers first suspected the killer may have been a woman after studying a footprint found near one of the bodies. They were only led to Mahin after a 60-year-old woman, having read about the murders, told them she had escaped from a light-coloured Renault car after becoming suspicious of the female driver.

After checking cars matching description, their attention was drawn to Mahin by records showing she had been fined following a recent road accident.