This thesis assesses the mitigating impact of repentance upon the fixed punishments for brigandage (hiraba), theft, and the accusation of fornication (qadhf) under Islamic law, focusing on classical sources of Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), law (fiqh), and legal theory (usul al-fiqh). It examines and compares the opinions of jurists and exegetes who are not affiliated with a school of law as well as jurists who belong to any of the eight legal schools--namely the Hanafis, Malikis, Shafi`is, Hanbalis, Zahiris, Zaydis, Imamis, and Ibadis. This thesis demonstrates that the mitigating impact of repentance upon the fixed punishments for brigandage, theft, and qadhf constitutes a case of casuistry as jurists do not assign legal significance to the concept of repentance in all of these three cases. Furthermore, the legal tradition on the mitigating impact of repentance upon fixed punishments shows a high degree of commonality that transcends school affiliation and theological orientation.

This paper examines two contrasting ethical approaches to waste within the context of modern day western food poverty and attempts to examine the justifications that these ethical definitions of waste might lend to impoverished people in re-appropriating the wasted food for themselves. Towards the end of the paper there is also a brief discussion regarding the political implications that can be found in competing ethical definitions of waste.

The crime of theft under s. 205 of the Criminal Code Theft is a traditional offence against a property and it is the most frequent offence in Czech Republic. A statistic of the thefts committed in 2011 compared to the other offences against a property is attached to this dissertation work. Every criminal offence in Czech Criminal law must be established by a statute. Theft is regulated in section 205 of the Criminal Code. Theft is unique for its duality of body of an offence. Subsection 1 regulates the basic form of the theft, whilst subsection 2 regulates recidivism. The following subsections 3-5 deal with circumstances in which more severe sanctions might be applied. The basic element of theft is wrongfulness. Only a wrongful act might be regarded as a crime. The wrongfulness might be presumed from various statutes and branches of law other than Criminal law (e.g. Civil law, Constitutional law). The other element of a theft is its body of an offence. It consists of an object, objective side, subject and subjective side. The object of the theft is value against which the offender's action is aimed. Theft's object is proprietary right of an owner. Objective side generally consists of a conduct, result and causality. The objective side of the theft according to subsection 1 is "appropriation of thing...

This project examines the protection methods suggested by hackers to guard against online victimization through the lens of Situation Crime Prevention. Data were collected from 85 webpages representing three categories of electronic communications: forums, blogs, and fan pages. The goal of this project was to identify which of the 25 opportunity reduction techniques the hacking community recommend most often, as well as, what level of expertise was associated with the suggested security measures. Results indicate that the technique most recommended by the hacking community was to remove targets with 27% of the total codings. From the results three themes were found: (1) most recommendations are such that implementing the strategies would serve to protect against opportunistic, low-skilled attacks; (2) most recommendations could be considered routine precautions, that when bundled, would secure most people against cyber-theft; and finally, (3) the Situational Crime Prevention framework was not fully realized because much of cyber-theft does not involve direct victim-perpetrator interactions. From these three themes policy recommendation and limitations are presented as well as avenues for future research.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-164).

Criminal justice researchers and crime geographers have long recognized the importance of understanding where crimes happen as well as to whom and by whom. Although past research often focused on violent crimes, calls for research into non-lethal white-collar crimes emerged in the 1970s. Today, identity theft is among the fastest growing white-collar crimes in the United States, although official recognition of it as a criminal act is a relatively recent development. Remaining largely unmet, the need for white-collar crime research has greatly intensified considering the escalating identity theft problem. Furthermore, many studies conclude that identity theft will continue to rise due to increasing technology-driven offenses via the Internet and widespread use of digital consumer databases. Utilizing theoretical framework established in crime geography, GIS mapping and spatial statistics are employed to produce a spatial analysis of identity theft in the U.S. from 2002-2006. Distinct regional variations, such as high rates in the western and southwestern states, and low rates in New England and the central plains states, are identified for identity theft as reported by the FTC. Significant spatial patterns of identity theft victims alongside social demographic variables are also revealed in order to better understand the regional patterns that may indicate underlying social indicators contributing to identity theft. Potential social variables, such as race/ethnicity and urban-rural populations, are shown to have similar patterns that may be directly associated with U.S. identity theft victims. To date, no in-depth geographic studies exist on the geographic patterns of identity theft, although numerous existing studies attempt basic spatial pattern recognition and propose the need for better spatial interpretation. This thesis is the first empirical study on the geographies of identity theft. It fills in a void in the literature by revealing significant geographical patterns of identity theft in the digital age, attempts at understanding the social factors driving the patterns, and examines some of the social implications of identity theft.

Thesis (D. Phil.(Krim.)--Universiteit van Pretoria, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-351).

This dissertation is a collection of three essays that study the market for consumer information. The first chapter studies the role of information intermediaries and their impact on consumer privacy. The second chapter presents an analysis of signaling in credit and insurance markets through default and repayment decisions. The third chapter studies some special topics such the manipulation of credit histories by fake borrowing or deletion of records. It also identifies a learning mechanism through which uninformed consumers can endogenously learn the link between credit market behavior and insurance market outcomes. / text

This study explores three separate, but inter-related aspects of residential break and enter. The study, located in the Capital Regional District of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, offers a unique environment for this type of research with its thirteen municipalities, four municipal and one national police force confined geographically by sea on three sides and wilderness on the fourth. The first part of this research identifies spatial and temporal patterns of residential break and enters at the regional level and the municipal level. The results showed that patterns existed at the municipal level, but changed at the regional level. There was evidence that some of the patterns at the municipal level persisted over time. Temporally, break and enter is predominately an afternoon occurrence. No other consistent pattern was found daily, monthly, nor seasonally over the course of the study period. The second part of the study examines police perceptions about the location of residential break and enters high activity areas or 'hot spots'. Police perceptions were compared to actual hot spots to determine the degree of agreement. The research also explored the concordance between police perceptions of hot spot locations. The results indicated that police hot spots did not conform to actual hot spots; furthermore, there was only limited agreement amongst police on hot spot locations. The third part of the study examined burglar's use of space. Burglars were asked a number of questions to establish their geographical knowledge of the region. Information was obtained on the location of their offences, routes taken to offence sites, method of transportation, trip start location, motivation behind the offence, and purpose of the trip. The findings indicate that offenders commit the majority of their crimes within areas they know. The subjects in the study were motivated by the need for money, mainly to purchase drugs. The majority of Offence trips were initiated with the sole purpose of committing a burglary. Most journey to crimes emanated from the offenders' residence. Travel was restricted not so much by distance, instead by their knowledge of the region or by the necessity to obtain money for drugs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.