It is a well-known fact that criminals derive an income from their illegal activities, live lavish lifestyles, flaunt their wealth for all to see and acquire luxury goods. It is also a well known fact that criminals living from the proceeds of crime do not want to not want to keep financial records of their transactions or illegitimate business for fear of being detected by the authorities and to escape being taxed. It is also a known fact that criminals do not declare income from criminal activities for income tax purposes to the revenue authorities for fear of the illegal origin of the income being made known to the investigating authorities and law enforcement. During the investigation of financial crimes, such as tax evasion and money laundering, it may be required that the amount or value of money, income or assets accrued by a subject is determined in order to determine for instance their liability to pay tax. This research project examines the Net Worth method as an indirect method to circumstantially quantify income during the investigation of financial crime. / Police Practice / M.Tech. (Forensic Investigation)

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the existing procedures that investigators in South Africa follow in utilising the information contained in the victim statement in the investigation of rape, with the intention of determining the strengths and weaknesses of the procedures and of considering how these procedures can be improved. The researcher explored how investigators internationally use information contained in the victim statement in the successful investigation of rape and read extensively on the topic in international literature sources. The researcher also evaluated the current methods that investigators within the South African Police Service (SAPS) use. The researcher made use of an empirical research design because of the limited information available on the topic of the research, and a qualitative research approach, which enabled real-life observations. Simple random sampling was used to select 20 uniform members as well as 20 investigators of rape incidents for interviewing. Purposive sampling was used to select two public prosecutors attached to the Sexual Offences Court. Data were obtained from their real-life experiences through interviewing them and data were further collected through case studies of case dockets. / Police Practice / M. Tech. (Forensic Investigation)

This project examines the safety management of civil aircraft accident investigation authorities in International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Member States, with particular emphasis on the independence of the investigations. The research aims to establish the current level of resources and methodology adopted by Member States’ accident investigation authorities. The output of this work not only identifies the current situation but informs initiatives for some of the States in the process of establishing their investigation capability. ICAO Annex 13 was analysed and found to be based on the principle of independent accident investigations. Also, a four dimensional measuring index (4DMI) has been developed to measure the independence of accident investigations in ICAO Member States. Data were collected from 45 States and are presented in the thesis. As a result of applying the 4DMI to the collected data, the States were ranked according to their scores, and divided into four categories of independence. Analysis of the four categories and the scores from the four dimensions revealed that States approach the concept of investigation independence in different ways; however, there are several practices that are common within the highest independence category and several other practices that are common within the lowest independence category. The research recommends that States should work towards improving their overall investigation independence by implementing the seven identified practices in the High-Independence category and distance themselves from the five practices identified as common in the Low-Independence category.

This project constitutes an instructional unit for honors biology that involves the use of science in the field of criminal investigation and forensics. Before beginning the unit, the learners should have mastered basic laboratory skills, including use of the microscope. They should also have an understanding of the basic structure and function of DNA and its role in heredity and protein synthesis. The standard time frame is 24 days with 70-minute periods, but can be easily adjusted to meet classroom needs. Several instructional strategies enhance student learning and make science fun. The unit is inquiry-driven and activity-based. Students are surprised by the crime, gather and analyze evidence, and work towards proposing an explanation. This real world problem involves the use of cooperative learning and a variety of assessment techniques.

D.Phil.

La surveillance épidémiologique est le recueil systématique et continu d’informations sur l’état de santé des populations, leur analyse, leur interprétation et leur diffusion à tous les décideurs ayant besoin d’être informés. Un de ses objectifs est la détection des événements inhabituels, i.e. des épidémies, nécessitant la mise en place rapide de contre-mesures. Les objectifs de ce travail de thèse sont : (i) d’évaluer les principales méthodes statistiques de détection publiées et communément employées dans différents systèmes de surveillance épidémiologique, (ii) de proposer une nouvelle approche reposant sur la combinaison optimale de méthodes de détection statistique des épidémies et (iii) de développer une nouvelle méthode statistique d’analyse étiologique d’une épidémie à partir des données de surveillance épidémiologique collectées en routine par le système.Pour atteindre ces objectifs, nous évaluons les principales méthodes statistiques de la littérature, à partir d’un jeu publié de données simulées. Puis nous proposons une approche originale pour la détection des épidémies sur le principe de la combinaison de méthodes sélectionnées lors de l’étape précédente. Les performances de cette approche sont comparées aux précédentes selon la méthodologie utiliséeà la première étape. Enfin, nous proposons une méthode d’analyse étiologique d’une épidémie à partir des données de surveillance en employant des modèles statistiques adaptés aux séries chronologiques. / Public health surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data for use in public health action to reduce morbidity and mortality of health-related events and to improve health. One of its objectives is the detection of unusualevents, i.e. outbreaks, requiring the rapid implementation of countermeasures.The objectives of this work are: (i) to evaluate the main published statistical methods for outbreak detection commonly implemented in different public health surveillance systems, (ii) to propose a new approach based on the optimal combination of statistical methods foroutbreak detection and benchmark it to other methods; and (iii) develop a new statistical method for the etiological analysis of an outbreak from public health surveillance data routinely collected by the system. To achieve these objectives, as a first step, we evaluate the main statistical methods, from a published set of simulated public health surveillance data. Statistical methods have been evaluated for an operational purpose: for all simulated time series, we used the tuning parameters recommended by their authors for each algorithm when available. We propose sensitivity and specificity metrics suitable for these tools. Then we propose an original approach for outbreak detection based on combination of methods selected in the previous step. The performance of this approach is compared to the previous ones according to the methodology implemented in the first step.Finally, we propose a method for the etiological analysis of an outbreak from surveillance data by using statistical models suitable for time series analysis

This thesis examines the issue of parent participation and cultural diversity in the Australian special education context. Previous research in the U.S. had suggested that the low participation by parents of culturally diverse backgrounds was due to cultural barriers that hindered their partnership with professionals. In reviewing and critiquing this previous research, it became clear that the key concepts of collaboration, disability and culture required reconceptualisation. The theoretical tools deployed in this reconceptualisation are drawn from sociocultural theory and ethnomethodology. Seventeen parents of Chinese and Vietnamese backgrounds and 20 professionals were interviewed regarding the provision of special education for children attending either a special school or special education unit. Follow-up interviews were carried out to probe specific issues related to the salience of culture in parent-professional communication, their understanding of disability, and barriers to parent participation. In addition, the communication books that were passed between parents and professionals on a regular basis were obtained for 7 of the children. These books provide a unique insight into the way parents and professionals accomplished the category of Child-with-a-disability during their entries regarding the mundane practicalities of school and home. In suspending judgment about parent-professional collaboration, this thesis adopts the multiple foci of sociocultural analysis to gain a critical understanding of parent-professional relationships through time and across personal, interpersonal, community and institutional settings. Within this framework, this thesis found that parents and professionals prefer and enact a 'communicating' type of parent participation. Their preferences seemed to depend on a range of circumstances such as their work commitments, financial resources, language resources and changing educational goals for the child. The approach taken in the thesis also affords the specification of diverse models of collaboration (e.g. obliging/directing, influencing/complying, respectful distancing, coordinating, collaborating), each of which may be regarded as worthwhile and acceptable in specific local circumstances. This study found that overall the parent-professional relationship was a trust-given one in which participants unproblematically regarded the professionals as experts. The professionals' reports revealed them to be doing accounting work - creating a moral view of the good parent and good professional. The emphasis on context in both sociocultural and ethnomethodological approaches reframes parental and professional discourse about disability as being context-driven. In employing Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to examine parents' and professionals' descriptions of the child in the communication book and the research interviews, positive as well as negative attributes of the child were obtained. Interpreting the findings in terms of the context of home and school reveals how negative attributes of the child became foregrounded. For example, the orientation to the child as lacking capacity to remember was an outcome of parents and professionals orienting to their (institutional) roles and responsibilities to manage the practicalities of school. The comparison of views reveals strong agreement between the parents and professionals about the child. Interpreting the data based on the task-at-hand of particular data collection settings provides one explanation. For instance, the communication book is a site where parents and professionals align with each other to co-construct a version of the child. Culture is not treated as a static set of traits and behavioural norms that accounts for the communication difficulties between Western-trained professionals and culturally-diverse parents. Rather, culture is theorised in this thesis as an evolving set of semiotic resources and repertoires of practice that participants draw upon and enact in their everyday activities. Using MCA, the ways in which participants deployed cultural categories, the social ends achieved by such deployment, and the attributes they assigned to these cultural categories, are documented. This approach takes cultural difference to be a resource that people use to account for conflicts, rather than as a determining cause of conflict. The documentation of how participants legitimised their explanations to add credibility to their accounts captures their moment-by-moment cultural categorisation work. In comparison to prior research, the significance of this approach is that it looks seriously at the parents' and professionals' mundane and enacted notions of collaboration and participation, the child with a disability, and culture. This thesis has interwoven several data sources and applied complementary analytics in order to reveal and understand some of the everyday complexity of cross-cultural parent professional interaction in the special education context. There is reason to look carefully at the daily achievements of the participants for it is where the intricacies of a phenomenon lie.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Nusikaltimo tyrimas suvokiamas kaip procesas nuosekliai atliekant visus reikiamus procesinius veiksmus (tyrimo veiksmus), tikslu išaiškinti nusikalstamos veikos aplinkybes, įkalinti kaltininkus, tinkamai pritaikyti įstatymą, kad nusikalstamą veiką padaręs asmuo būtų teisingai nubaustas ir niekas nekaltas nebūtų nuteistas. Šio darbo tikslas - išanalizuoti ikiteisminio tyrimo, susijusio su narkotikais, metodikos esmę ir aptarti tokio pobūdžio kriminalistinio nusikaltimų tyrimo tobulinimo kryptis. Darbo struktūra . Diplominį darbą sudaro įžanga, 3 skyriai, išvados, pasiūlymai, naudotos literatūros sąrašas, santrauka. Darbo apibendrinimas. Šiuolaikinė visuomenė suvokia nusikaltimą kaip neigiamą socialinį reiškinį matydama tik išorinius šio reiškinio bruožus: nukentėjusį, žalą, kaltininką, bausmę. Analizuojant nusikaltimus, susijusius su narkotinėmis medžiagomis, susiduriama su nusikaltimu kaip su sudedamųjų elementų visuma - sistema, dažnai matant tik silpniausią šios sistemos elementą, kuris yra aukojamas siekiant išsaugoti sistemos elementų branduolį. Toji silpnoji sistemos dalis - tai smulkūs narkotinių medžiagų platintojai, apie kuriuos rašo spauda, rodo televizija, demonstruojant ar kritikuojant teisėsaugos pareigūnų darbą, paliekant sistemos branduolį šešėlyje. Todėl, autoriaus manymu, didžiausias dėmesys turėtų būti skiriamas branduoliui, jo veiklai, o ne silpniausiai sistemos daliai. Dėmesys yra skiriamas, bet jo nepakanka, kadangi tokio pobūdžio problemos įveikimas... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / New legal reglamentation of different social relations and changing of system and activities of law enforcement institutions determined that, the most of further methodical recommendations don’t answer to practical demands of investigation and judicial institutions, so it isn’t implemented in such activities. The subject of the examined thesis is of great relevance because the number of crimes related to drugs increases and we need new efficient methods in order to solve this problem. The main purpose of the thesis is to examine in legal and systematic way the creation of methods of investigation of crimes related to drugs, their problems of formation and their perspectives, the impact of the legal, technical and material basis to the creation of the method of this kind of investigation. In the first chapter we have overlooked the methodological and scientific basis of the formation of method of investigation of the crimes related to drugs; in the second chapter we have presented the assumptions of the creation of the methodology of investigation of the crimes related to drugs and in the third one we have analyzed the problems and perspectives of the investigation’s method of the crimes related to drugs. By this thesis we try to present the scientific, criminal recommendations in order to make the process of investigation of the crimes related to drugs more efficient.

This project examines the safety management of civil aircraft accident investigation authorities in International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Member States, with particular emphasis on the independence of the investigations. The research aims to establish the current level of resources and methodology adopted by Member States’ accident investigation authorities. The output of this work not only identifies the current situation but informs initiatives for some of the States in the process of establishing their investigation capability. ICAO Annex 13 was analysed and found to be based on the principle of independent accident investigations. Also, a four dimensional measuring index (4DMI) has been developed to measure the independence of accident investigations in ICAO Member States. Data were collected from 45 States and are presented in the thesis. As a result of applying the 4DMI to the collected data, the States were ranked according to their scores, and divided into four categories of independence. Analysis of the four categories and the scores from the four dimensions revealed that States approach the concept of investigation independence in different ways; however, there are several practices that are common within the highest independence category and several other practices that are common within the lowest independence category. The research recommends that States should work towards improving their overall investigation independence by implementing the seven identified practices in the High-Independence category and distance themselves from the five practices identified as common in the Low-Independence category.