Portal:Criminal justice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia portals: Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology

edit

The Criminal justice Portal

Criminal justice is the system of, practices, and organizations, used by national and local governments, directed at maintaining social control, deterring and controlling crime, and sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties. The primary agencies charged with these responsibilities are law enforcement (police and prosecutors), courts, defense attorneys and local jails and prisons which administer the procedures for arrest, charging, adjudication and punishment of those found guilty. When processing the accused through the criminal justice system, government must keep within the framework of laws that protect individual rights. The pursuit of criminal justice is, like all forms of "justice," "fairness" or "process," essentially the pursuit of an ideal. Throughout history, criminal justice has taken on many different forms which often reflect the cultural mores of society.

More about Criminal justice...

Show new selections

edit

Selected article

The École Polytechnique massacre occurred on December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. Twenty-five year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a legally-obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen (all of them women) and injuring the other fourteen before killing himself. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the men and women students from each other. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism", he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. He killed fourteen women and injured four men and ten women in just under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself. Lépine's suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note include a list of nineteen Quebec women whom Lépine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill. Since the attack, Canadians have debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and Lépine's motives. The massacre is regarded by most feminists and many official perspectives as an anti-feminist attack and representative of wider societal violence against women; the anniversary of the massacre is commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The incident led to more stringent gun control laws in Canada, and changes in the tactical response of police to shootings, which were later credited with minimizing casualties at the Dawson College shootings.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

Selected picture

Credit: United States Department of War

The wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth (center) and his co-conspirators John Surratt (left) and David Herold (right), following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Booth, one of the most popular actors of his day and an outspoken advocate of the Confederacy, originally planned to kidnap Lincoln, but after that plan failed, plotted to kill the President upon hearing Lincoln's plan to give suffrage to former slaves. Herold was supposedly to have killed Vice President Andrew Johnson at the same time, but this attack was never carried out. After the assassination, Herold and Booth fled to a farmhouse in Virginia where they were discovered by Union Army soldiers on April 26. Booth was shot and killed, but Herold surrendered and was later executed for his actions. Surratt, meanwhile, had been involved in the kidnapping plot, but not the assassination attempt. He fled the country and was arrested in Vatican City, but was never convicted on any charges relating to the shooting.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

News

Wikinews Crime and law portal

edit

Selected biography

Albert Hamilton Fish (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American sado-masochistic serial killer and cannibal. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria and possibly the Brooklyn Vampire. He boasted that he had "had children in every State," putting the figure at around 100, although it is not clear whether he was talking about molestation or cannibalization, less still as to whether it was true or not. He was a suspect in at least five killings in his lifetime. Fish confessed to three murders that police were able to trace to a known homicide, and confessed to stabbing at least two other people. He was put on trial for the kidnap and murder of Grace Budd, and was convicted and executed via electric chair.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

Did you know...

... that the horses in the Minneapolis Police Department mounted patrol (horse pictured) commute to Minneapolis from a nearby ranch?
... that the 7th District Police Station, on Maxwell Street in Chicago, Illinois, was used as the picture of the precinct house in the opening credits of Hill Street Blues?
... that Romanian businessman Gheorghe Ştefănescu was executed for selling large quantities of adulterated wine?

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

WikiProjects

What are WikiProjects?

edit

Selected quote

Anyone who takes it on himself, on his own authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

— Denis Diderot

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

Featured content

Featured articles: John Martin Scripps • Michael Brown Okinawa assault incident • Red Barn Murder • Virginia Tech massacre • École Polytechnique massacre • Texas Ranger Division • W. Mark Felt

Featured lists: FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

Featured pictures:

Man holding sign protesting during Iran hostage crisis by Marion S. Trikosko, U.S. News & World Report	Wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth, author unknown	German police chief of Hamburg by Daniel Schwen	LAPD police aircraft, by Matthew Field
Alcatraz Island, by David Corby