Call the police about a domestic violence situation in the 1960s, and the response may have been sympathetic but often was not. People were told to work it out or sleep it off. Call the police about a domestic violence situation in the first decade of the 21st century, and the response is completely different: there will probably be an arrest and the victim will be told of social service and legal options.

The response to domestic violence has changed drastically and positively in a single generation. The domestic violence programs were founded in the early 1970s as shelters for battered women; the first one was in England but they came to the U.S. very soon. At that time, these shelters were designed for women to stay a few days because at that time no one really knew the kinds of services that would be most helpful for victims of domestic violence and their children. Shelters were often a project of the women’s movement and as such were marginalized in the world of social services in a community.

Relations with the police in those days were not generally strong for a number of reasons. One is that domestic violence runs are really dangerous for police officers and they were frustrated with having to deal with the same families over and over. At that point, they typically did not see the shelter as an ally and a service that could prevent violence towards officers. Another is that as a part of the women’s movement, shelters seemed strange and somewhat threatening to mainstream law enforcement.

In the first twenty years of their existence, shelters developed in a number of ways. First off, as shelter personnel listened to the needs of the people using their services, domestic violence programs changed. Families could stay longer than just a few days and ultimately some larger programs created transitional housing where families could stay for a year or two. Domestic violence programs began also to create legal advocacy programs with personnel who would go to criminal court with victims and who would explain what was going to happen and the victim’s legal options. They also began to create programs for the many children who stayed in the shelters.

Domestic violence programs began to network with each other as more and more communities developed programs. In the state of Ohio, for example, the marriage license tax helps to pay for domestic violence programs in each county, which became incentive for each county to develop a program. Shelters networked to serve clients, particularly when a situation became dangerous enough that a client needed to get out of town. But they also began to create statewide organizations and eventually a national organization, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. By working together in state and national organizations, domestic violence programs shared information and effective strategies for advocating for their clients with each other.

Within each community, the domestic violence program became a major player in the social service network. Getting into the network was a function of having survived in the community even while marginalized but also through gaining a reputation for being able to change relationships at least in some families. Children’s services workers often recognized that when women were in shelters, there was staff observing family relationships and that was helpful to their planning for potential victims of abuse and neglect.

Over time, relations with law enforcement changed, too. In one town, the police officers and court official began to notice that when the shelter legal advocate worked with a victim, the victim did not drop charges. They began to feel that their efforts in helping families with violence problems would actually lead to something positive instead of just going to the same old houses over and over again. In some communities, police response options began to be studied and it was discovered that when an arrest was made, police were less likely to be called back to the family’s home. This led to mandatory arrest policies in many cities. In order to implement mandatory arrest, police officers had to be trained in understanding the dynamics of domestic violence and this training was part of the change in their responses.

Another area where change is really evident is the church. During the 1960s it was not uncommon for women to be encouraged by the church to stay in violent relationships because “God hates divorce.” Over time, ministers and church people have gotten involved with domestic violence programs as volunteers and donors and have learned about what it is really like in a violent family. Now, many ministers and pastors advise victims to get out of violent relationships. Nowadays, shelters are a mainstream social service agency, along with alcohol and drug treatment programs, children’s services, and many other social services in a typical community.

Domestic violence programs may offer a wide range of services, from shelter to community-based support groups, long term housing, legal advocacy, advocacy in other areas of life, and even programs for the abusers. While average citizens may not know much about domestic violence programs in their community, they probably know that these programs exist—domestic violence programs and their values have become part of Americans’ consciousness.

Domestic violence programs have also become better funded and often they have moved from old rickety houses to spacious and professional-looking quarters, sometimes to buildings that were specifically designed to be shelters. In the past forty years we have moved from racist laws to having an African American President. But progress in Civil Rights has not been our only achievement. America’s response to domestic violence has moved from non-existent to very effective and helpful. While there are many social issues that remain a problem for our culture, our children at least know that both racism and family violence are wrong.

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What is Money Laundering? Black Money?

The origin of the expression “money laundering” is that money acquired illegally is called dirty money . This money is often derived from trafficking in weapons, drugs, human beings or other mafia activities. Laundering money allows the money to be spent to without any illegal acts being tied to it. Another possible origin of the term “money laundering” comes from the fact that Al Capone, the head of a Mafia family in the in 1920’s in Chicago, used a chain of laundries called the the Sanitary Cleaning Shops . This allowed him to cover illegal money and recycle resources from many of its illicit activities. Money laundering was not used in a court case until 1982. However, the arrest of Al Capone for tax evasion, and not for crimes committed, shows the importance and difficulty of laundering money in the fight against organized crime.

The mafioso Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky right arm from 1932 understood the importance of inventing new techniques for money laundering, including through the network of politically independent islands or the well known terms, offshore countries. Money-laundering methods With the fight becoming increasingly important against the laundering of money from banks and tax havens, as well as the lifting of banking secrecy on the orders of Justice, criminals were forced to turn to others to launder their money. Businesses such as jewelers and companies who commonly import and export were the first targets to launder money. The creation of a number of false invoices from dummy companies can pose as clean money.

But there are of course many other methods, the imagination of criminals in this case is almost limitless, for example, smurfing is probably the most common method of money laundering. This method requires the involvement of many individuals whose role is to deposit cash in bank accounts or to obtain bank drafts of less than $10k of the currency of the said country to avoid the reporting threshold. Complicity bank is when an employee of the bank was criminally involved to facilitate the process of money laundering.

Another way to launder money is called company remittance and exchange, in this method offices make available to their clients that allow them to earn foreign currency that can be taken across the border. It may also, through these offices, telegraph money to accounts in foreign banks. It is even possible to obtain mandates, bank checks and travelers checks through these companies. Procurement of goods for cash is were launderers buy and pay cash for high value goods such as cars, boats and certain luxury goods such as jewelry or electronic equipment. They will use these items, but they buying on behalf of a partner. Electronic Funds Transfer, also known as electronic or wire transfers, is a method which the criminal can transfer funds from one city or one country to another to avoid the physical transportation of money. Money orders are used in technique which exchanges cash against mandates outpost, which are then sent abroad to end bank deposit.

Credit cards can be used by criminals pay the balance in excess of their credit cards and keep a high credit balance which can be used in many ways such as purchasing goods or conversion value of the credit balance in check. Casinos used to be commonly used launderers where they buy tokens in exchange for cash and then collect their fees by check. Refining is a technique which involves exchanging small against large cuts in order to decrease the volume. To this end, the money launderer exchange large sums of money from one bank to another to avoid arousing suspicion. This is to reduce the large sums of money.

Alteration of values is when launderer purchases a property of a person willing to declare a price significantly below the real value of the property and pay the difference in cash “in secret”. The launderer can buy a home worth two million dollars for only a million and secretly send the seller the rest of the money it owes. After a certain period of detention of the property, the money launderer sells its real price, or two million dollars. Auto loans are used when a dealer gives an accomplice money illegally. This accomplice lends a sum equivalent loan documents in support, to create the illusion that the criminal money is legitimate. The schedule for repayment of the loan by the Criminal adds to the appearance of legitimacy of the combine, and provides yet another way to transfer funds.

Amalgamation of funds in legitimate businesses is a metheod of money laundering by criminal organizations and individuals that are involved where money is landered by investing in companies that normally have a high volume of cash transactions to include the proceeds of crime to business legitimate brewed by the company. Finally, some criminals buy businesses that generate gross receipts from sales in cash. This is the case of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels, and vending machine companies. They then invest those funds obtained by fraudulent means by combining with an income that otherwise would not be sufficient to support a company honest.

With globalization of trade and capital are becoming increasingly important and frequent, the fight against money laundering is now done on an international scale. Thus, groups like the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), meet regularly to develop and implement new methods to combat and adapt to new techniques of criminals. Money laundering contributes (among others) the financing of terrorism, political parties, unions, etc.. States have established various agencies and services in the fight against money laundering.

However, criminals are finding it increasingly difficult to use this method because of the guiding principles, practices and training methods advocated all over the world including the United States, Canadian Bankers Association (CBA), and in France with the French Banking Federation. Additionally strict enforcement of legislation (Monetary and Financial Code and Penal Code) along with banking regulation had made money laundering tougher to perform.

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Summary: In the United States the most popular crime rate measure are statistics published each year by the FBI. The US crime rates present many interesting crime rate facts.

In the United States, one of the most widely accepted and used crime rate measure are statistics published each year by the FBI. The FBI crime rate stats are based on numbers of crimes reported to local police throughout the United States. Local police departments in communities with at least 10,000 residents are required to keep track of several types of crimes, and report to the FBI.

In fact, in 2004 alone, over 17,000 local agencies reported their crime statistics to the FBI Crime Rate program. These agencies cover 94 percent of the U.S. population. With such a high percentage of the US population being accounted for, the national average crime rate reported by the FBI is generally considered a highly accurate US crime rate estimate. However, it is only an estimate. Besides the national standard FBI crime rate, it is difficult to determine the crime rate trends in the U.S. because the criteria for calculating the other crime rate changes over time and deem to be inconsistent.

It is widely recognized that not every crime that occurs will be reported to the police. For example, it is estimated that only as few as 50% of rapes that occur in the US are actually reported. Thus, the National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, attempts to measure the number of crimes which occur, but are not reported to the police.

There are two primary indices for crime reporting which are divided into violent and non-violent crimes. The violent crime index includes statistics on homicides, serious violent crimes, forcible rapes, assaults, and robberies. The non-violent crime index, also referred to as the “property crime” index, includes statistics on burglaries, larcenies (thefts), motor vehicle thefts, and arsons. Other notable breakouts of types of crimes are the gender of the victim, whether guns were involved, whether drugs were involved, race related, gang related, domestic, non-domestic, how many arrests are made just to name a few.

In order to appropriately compare different areas by compensating for population differences, both violent crimes and nonviolent crimes report crime on a per capita basis, usually expressed as the ratio of crimes reported per every 100,000 persons. Because it is possible to obtain both the national average and the statistics for a specific local area, one can easily determine whether a particular local area has a high or low overall crime rate, simply by comparison to the national average.

While the overall crime rate numbers are reported by the FBI as a national average, it should be noted that certain demographic and geographic considerations do come into play. In general, it is typical for crimes to be more highly concentrated in urban, economically disadvantaged areas. It was also once widely considered as fact that drug use contributed greatly to the overall incidence of crime, as drug users would naturally turn to crime to support their habit; however, the correlation has not borne out over time, as the overall number of drug users nationwide has not decreased, while the overall crime rate has gone down.

Moreover, young persons, minority groups, and financially disadvantaged persons have a higher incidence of both commission and victimization. In fact, it has been reported that, in the U.S., in 1998, nearly 33% of Black men aged 20-29 were either in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole, and, on average, nearly 70% of all prisoners are non-Whites. A report released by the Department of Justice in February 1997 noted that of the crimes studies for the report, 56% of the arrested suspects were White, 42% Black, and 2% were “other races”; however, Hispanics were included in the numbers of suspects considered to be “White”.

The report also noted that rape victims were approximately evenly divided between Whites and Blacks, and that it was typical (about 88%) for forcible rape victims and their rapists to have been from the same race. In 2004, and again in 2005, the incidents of forcible rape with a White rapist and Black victim was reported at 0.0%; in contrast, in 2005, if the victim was White, there was a 33.6% chance that the rapist was Black – whereas in 2004, that number was only 8.3%.

Another very interesting crime stat is the larger the police presence, the more crime rates go down. For example, in New York City during the 1990’s the crime rate for violent crimes dropped by 35% interestingly enough the population of the police force from 1991 to 1998 was increased by 35%.

In general, the property crime index parallels the overall U.S. crime rate, but the violent crime index does not. The violent crime rate rose during the 1960s and 1970s, but not to the same extent as the non-violent crime rate; however, the violent crime rate reached its height at a much later time (1991, whereas the property crime rate peaked in 1980). At its peak, the property crime rate was in excess of 5,000 crimes per 100,000 persons, while the violent crime rate stayed below 800 at its height. The indication from this is that property crimes affect the total U.S. crime rate more than the more severe but less frequent violent crimes.

In the late 1960s through the early 1970s, the crime rate in the U.S. rose sharply. During the rest of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the US crime rate reached an all-time high. There are many factors which are considered to have contributed to this increase, including: protests centering on the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the addition of crime statistic reports from Alaska and Hawaii into the national average, the upswing in racial militant groups, and the creation of “criminal-friendly” rules by the Supreme Court, including the Miranda case.

The overall U.S. crime rate has decreased dramatically since 1991, and, by 2004, it had returned to 1970 levels (3982 crimes per 100,000 residents), with the homicide rate at the lowest point since 1965, and, between 2000 and 2005, remained at an all-time low (5.5 to 5.7 homicides per 100,000 persons). This has been generally attributed to a range of considerations, from an aging population to mandatory sentencing laws.

There was a short period of “rebound” in the property crime rate, following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. This has been attributed in large part to the economic instability that resulted from the attacks. Violent crimes, however, dropped by 9% in 2001 as a whole, and this decrease is also considered to be, in large part, due to a record low number of assaults, perhaps also in reaction to the 9/11 attacks.

Current research on the crime rate trend shows it spirally downward. In conclusion, as the population grows, one would think that the crime rate would grow as well. However, statistics show that the crime rate, since the early 1990’s, has actually gone down and has gone down significantly.

Additional Interesting Facts about Crime Rate Trends in the U.S:

• Males are victimized by strangers.
• Females are victimized by people they know.
• Murders of young children are almost always committed by a family member.
• Almost half of all murders of all persons are committed by a family member.
• Over half of violent crimes are committed during the day.
• Two-thirds of rapes occur during the night.
• More crimes are committed on the street than in a person’s home.

Increased crime rates are seen in crimes committed against persons who are not at work or at home. They are engaging in some type of leisure activity, activities where the victim’s “guard” is down or distracted by their surroundings.

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