Wikipedia:Notability (criminal acts)

This guideline is intended to explicate the notability guideline with regard to criminal acts. Within Wikipedia there have been differences of opinion at various AfD debates about crimes that have received intense media coverage. Examples of such debates include those of Eve Carson and Lauren Burk. In these cases, those favouring deletion did so on the basis of several policies, including WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:BLP1E, whilst those opposing deletion cited the breadth of coverage as satisfying the general notability guidelines. These have been highly contentious debates, and this guideline was proposed to attempt to reach a community consensus on how future similarly situated articles should be handled.

Notability of criminal acts

"Criminal act" includes a matter in which a crime has been established, or a matter has been deemed a likely crime by the relevant law enforcement agency or judicial authority. For example, the disappearance of a person would fall under this guideline if law enforcement agencies deemed it likely to have been caused by criminal conduct, regardless of whether a perpetrator is identified or charged. If a matter is deemed notable, and to be a likely crime, the article should remain even if it is subsequently found that no crime occurred (e.g., the Runaway bride case) since that would not make the matter less notable.

Intense media coverage can confer notability on a high-profile criminal act, provided such coverage meets Wikipedia's policies and guidelines on reliable sources. However, since Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, it may be better in the first instance to create a Wikinews article about it until the event is mentioned by a significant number of third-party sources that have at least national or global scope.

Multiple, independent sources

This criterion means that multiple sources are required, not just multiple references from a single or small number of sources. It would therefore be insufficient to base an article on a series of news reports on a crime by a single newspaper or news channel. The requirement for national or global scope refers to how widespread the coverage of a topic is. In the case where a television or radio channel has several regional outlets, such as Fox News, one regional station counts as local coverage. Repeating this over multiple stations belonging to the same network that covers an entire country is considered to be a single instance of coverage with national or global scope.

Similarly, where a single news wire story or press release has been used by several news publications, this should only be counted as a single source in all notability decisions. Likewise, when reporters base their information on other news coverage (for example, "AP reported that ..."), the coverage is only a single source. Such derivative reports are not independent and so cannot be used to verify each other. However, if multiple mainstream news outlets report on a single event separately and without reference to others, these constitute multiple sources.

Finally, media sources sometimes report on events because of their similarity to another widely reported incident. For example, the death of Mari Luz Cortés was compared in multiple outlets of the British tabloid press to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Editors should not rely on such sources to afford notability to the new event, since the main purpose of such articles is to highlight the old event.

Notability of perpetrators and victims

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source. Articles on individuals, especially living individuals, should be drawn from reliable secondary sources. Tabloid stories about a murder victim are not a good basis for a biography, ideal sources are books and scholarly articles offering substantial treatment of the individual and the background for their involvement.

In accordance with WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E, perpetrators and victims of high-profile crimes do not automatically inherit the notability of such crimes nor do they automatically qualify as being notable enough to have stand-alone articles solely based on their status as perpetrators or victims. However, the victims and/or perpetrators of notable crimes may have articles under certain conditions. Notability with regards to this is normally defined as satisfying some other aspect of the notability of persons guideline that does not relate to the crime in question.

An editor should consider creating an article about a perpetrator or victim if at least one of the following is true:

Perpetrators

1. The perpetrator is notable for something beyond the crime itself. An example is Phil Spector.
2. The victim is a renowned world figure, or immediate family member of a renowned world figure, including but not limited to politicians or worldwide celebrities. A good test for this (but not a necessary prerequisite) would be if the victim has an uncontested Wikipedia article that predates the alleged crime or death. Examples of perpetrators meeting this standard are John Hinckley, Jr., Mehmet Ali Ağca, Yigal Amir, André Dallaire and Gavrilo Princip.
3. The motivation for the crime or the execution of the crime is unusual or has otherwise been considered noteworthy such that it is a well-documented historic event. Generally the historic significance is indicated by persistent coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources that devote significant attention to the individual's role. The assessment of notability on the basis of news coverage should follow the same criteria for assessing the notability of the crime, as above. Examples of perpetrators meeting this standard are Jeffrey Dahmer and Beverley Allitt.

Editors must take note of the stringent conditions imposed by the guidelines for biographies of living persons. In particular, editors should remember that someone accused of a crime is not considered guilty of that crime until they have been found to be so under judicial process. If such adjudication has not occurred, editors must give serious consideration to not creating an article on an alleged perpetrator until a conviction is secured, since doing so not only risks violating WP:BLP, but also may not adequately satisfy notability guidelines.

Victims

1. The victim is notable for something beyond the crime itself. An example is Adrienne Shelly.
2. The victim, consistent with WP:BLP1E, had a large role within a well-documented historic event. The historic significance is indicated by persistent coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources that devote significant attention to the individual's role. An example is Matthew Shepard.

Article structure

Article title

In cases where the victim or the perpetrator of a crime does not meet the criteria for an individual article, but there exists sourced coverage of the crime itself sufficient to meet notability standards, the article should focus on documenting the crime event and does not need to cover the history of people involved who are not relevant nor notable. Sometimes, a high profile crime would have an article entitled "Murder of Joe Bloggs", "Disappearance of Jane Doe", etc. However, some people have become notable because they were victims or perpetrators of crimes. This is usually because the victim or perpetrator remained in the public's attention long after the crime. In these case subsequent events—such as political events, legislation or organizations—used the person's name, so the article is not just about the crime. These articles are often titled just using the person's name, such as "Joe Bloggs" or "Jane Doe".

Some articles have already been created with a title not conforming to these naming convention. As a clear community consensus on these naming conventions has not yet been established, a discussion on the article's talk page should be attempted prior to moving the article to ensure that there are no editorial reasons for the preexisting name to remain. If there are no convincing arguments either way, the article can be named either using the person's name or the the event. The name of the article, one way or the other, does not justify the addition of non-notable or irrelevant information.

In cases where it would assist readers in finding the information, editors may wish to use redirect links or links on disambiguation pages to direct requests for key names, such as an individual victim or perpetrator, to the article based on the event. In the case where a participant already has an article, the usual guidelines regarding summarizing main articles should apply.

Templates

If an event is still being widely covered in the press, editors may wish to place the {{currentevent}} template on it to inform readers of the rapidly changing nature of the article.