Criminal profiling
Criminal profiling is a probabilistic description of the likely offender group: approximate age, whether they live nearby and whether they act alone.
What profiling really isEvery term in one plain sentence. How it works is in the 2-minute article behind it.
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False confession
A false confession is an admission of a crime the person did not commit, often after a long interrogation, exhaustion and pressure.
Why a Confession Isn't ProofG
Geographic profiling
Geographic profiling is a method that uses the locations of a crime series to calculate where the offender's home base is most likely to be.
What Is Geographic ProfilingI
Investigative tunnel vision
Investigative tunnel vision is when an early theory becomes the frame of a case: supporting evidence is noticed and everything else is explained away.
What Is Investigative Tunnel VisionK
Kleptomania
Kleptomania is a disorder in which a person steals not for profit or out of need, gets no pleasure from the item and feels deep shame.
Where the Word “Kleptomania” Came FromL
Locard's exchange principle
Locard's exchange principle is the forensic rule that whenever two things come into contact, material passes in both directions.
Why Traces Are Left at Crime ScenesM
Milieu control
Milieu control is a cult's gradual narrowing of whom members talk to, what they read and where they go, until no outside opinions remain.
How Environmental Control Works in a CultP
Panopticon
The panopticon is an 18th-century prison design with cells in a ring around a central tower, from which prisoners can be watched without seeing the guard.
What Is the PanopticonPerjury
Perjury is knowingly giving false testimony under oath, as opposed to an honest mistake or a lapse of memory.
What Happens When You Give False TestimonyPerjury trap
A perjury trap is a situation where someone who can't be charged over the original matter is prosecuted for lying about it under oath.
What Is the False-Testimony TrapPhishing
Phishing is a scam that uses a familiar pretext and urgency to get someone to click a link and enter a password or other data.
How phishing worksPonzi scheme
A Ponzi scheme is a fraud that pays earlier investors with money from newer ones instead of real income, so it collapses when the inflow slows.
How a Ponzi scheme worksPrisonization
Prisonization is the process of absorbing a prison's rules and habits, which make sense inside but get in the way after release.
What Prison Does to a PersonProsecutor's fallacy
The prosecutor's fallacy is confusing the probability of finding evidence on an innocent person with the probability that the defendant is innocent.
What Is the Prosecutor's FallacyR
Ransomware
Ransomware is malicious software that blocks access to files on a device and demands a ransom for the key to unlock them.
How Ransomware WorksRecidivism
Recidivism is returning to crime after release, counted as a new arrest or conviction; within three years, a third to two-thirds of those released go back.
Why People Return to PrisonS
SIM swapping
SIM swapping is a scam in which a fraudster gets a carrier to issue a new SIM card for someone's number and receives their calls and texts.
What Is SIM SwappingSocial engineering
Social engineering is getting passwords or access by manipulating people while posing as someone they trust, instead of breaking technical defenses.
What Is Social EngineeringStockholm syndrome
Stockholm syndrome is a hostage's attachment to their captor, named after a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm; it is not a recognized diagnosis.
What Is Stockholm SyndromeT
Thought-terminating cliché
A thought-terminating cliché is a short stock phrase that sounds like an answer but shuts down a question without explaining anything.
What is a thought-stopping cliché in cults