Discussions on Crime
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It's been a while since I contributed any significant data to this base - and I came across an area I'd like to work on but there are probably some schema considerations to consider first. I came across a database of people wrongfully convicted (as opposed to wrongfully accused):
http://forejustice.org/search_idb.htm
that contains more than just names. It would be pretty simple for me to just type these people as wrongfully accused but that does little to express the majority of them who were subsequently exonerated or pardoned. We have many of the needed properties and types for crimes, jail times but I don't see a way to express a reversal of fortune (sometimes posthumously) for those wrongfully convicted. Here is their info on our one wrongfully accused topic, Lindy Chamberlain:
http://forejustice.org/db/Chamberlain--Lindy.html
Any ideas on how to model exoneration, pardon, etc.- with an NB to those who don't already know that I'm not a data modeler so I'd be looking for others expertise on that. Rather, I'm pretty good at finding the data to fill in the blanks once properly modeled. Thoughts?
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ah geat database`. agree. this one is tough. and i dont know how to model it.
you're an admin on this base, so feel free to play around/
conviction type does (sort of) suport Appeals umm so we can do this
but that's lousy... i'll make something that better supports this kind of thing .. maybe 'overturned conviction of x' needs to be a topic each time....
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Good problem, jon - I'd suggest an "exonerated person" type.
I propose properties as so:
- "conviction overturned on" expecting a date/time.
- "appeal case" expecting an "Appeal"
- "Pardoned by" expecting a type of "Pardoning body" (as where I live the Sheikh often grants pardons to prisoners on special days - so no appeal case, just the decision of one guy and perhaps a government department)
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+1 on "exonerated person" - that seems like the right model
didn't realize 'convicted' is only for criminal cases - is there no shared word between criminal and civil cases? But I also wonder if you're 'exonerated' if the case was a civil case? does that happen? -
ya freebase has no support for civil cases really. skud did this but i dont think its meant to be general. it'd be great to begin this schema, and you're both admins on this base.
i dont think exonerated makes sense for civil trials.
ok, i've made this, which i think, is the best we can do short of un-cvt-ing 'conviction'.
so we need 'exoneration of ...' topics for each instance, and its connected to the conviction by the 'appeal' property, which allows data about why the case was overturned etc. the 'overturned conviction' type doesnt have a 'wrongfully convicted person' yet, but i think it should probably delegate from the 'conviction' cvt, which is maybe impossible? i dont know.
if we want to allow pardons without a trial (crazy!) maybe we can un-cotype 'appeal' manually. i doubt we will have many examples of this.
forejustice.org doesnt have any data on a 'exoneration ceremony' or anything, so i doubt we need that stuff either...
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Hmm, what if your sentence is 6 months?
Poor Janine, at least Sandra Bullock gets the kids for a while ;)
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+1 for months making more sense
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i will change this is it is favoured....
but really? i mean, for the few people we will map with sentences
http://www.freebase.com/view/base/crime/views/jail_time
this would make such a mess, and make people do some sort of needless multiplcation during data entry....
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Well, you could just have a 'From' and 'To' property then? Let others do the hard work and it prevents needless multiplication... I'm all for that.
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You could then build a timeline view.
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'from' and 'to' property sounds good, but there's the issue of delayed sentences. And also early release/parole meaning that the time served is different from sentence given.
Is the criminal conviction type for the sentence given or the sentence served?
I notice a hidden /crime/criminal_conviction/imprisonment property which is a CVT within a CVT. I assume that this was meant to be the sentence served, and that criminal conviction is for sentence given?
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//Is the criminal conviction type for the sentence given or the sentence served?
ya, good point, sentence givin. Imprisonmentdoes the other one.
//I notice a hidden /crime/criminal_conviction/imprisonment property ...
ya, we tried connecting conviction to imprisonment and bumped heads. too bad about that cvt to cvt thing....
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How about a property on date apprehended? We already have it at /killers/serial_killer but we were thinking that it is more appropriate at the crime base.
E.g. http://www.freebase.com/view/en/william_macdonald
Thanks!
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hey anne. ya, definetly agree.
apprehended means arrested i think, and we haven't modelled that stuff at all yet. hmm.
so i put a 'Date arrested' on conviction. hopefully thats enough about the arrest event, so we dont need to make it a topic, ie. 'arrest of william macdonald'. wanna be an admin?
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Thanks! It looks great! :)
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how about a type for crime scene? or is that data collected womewhere else in the schema that I haven't found yet?
j
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....hmm
i like the idea. right now it is being mapped by event's 'location' .
on that thought, i tried making a view with this but that property isnt reciprocated- so this is a bigger freebase problem
http://www.freebase.com/discuss/threads/location/location?domain=/location#threadlist
jon, you're a staff member, you should be able to remedy this...
reciprocatereciprocatereciprocatereciprocate!
a crime scene view would be great~
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How about a type for "stolen item" - with reciprocal links back to Robbery? Stolen Item should probably have a "Stolen From" and a "Thief" property too.
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(where "Stolen From" points to a Crime Victim, and "Thief" points to a new type, "Criminal" (not sure if it should be a "convicted criminal" or not?)
The schema probably needs to account for things that are stolen multiple times...
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ahh great idea. done. also, i hereby knight you alecf admin of crime. i need helphelphelp here on this base, its hugehugehuge-
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i think 'stolen from' works with 'crime victim' already, as robbery is cotyped with crime. maybe this could recip into some sort of general 'ownership' type. check out Frankfurt art theft which maps this with 'art owner'
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spencermountain, I'd noticed that you had been discussing an issue you had with modelling sentences and cvt within cvt. (Complex Value Type)
Perhaps criminal conviction should be a cvt, but the sentence should be an ordinary type. e.g. '10 years incarceration' is a seperate topic with a type of criminal sentence.
It's not elegant, but would work as a hack until there is a better way to show it in the UI.
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any smart way of describing # of years jailtime?
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somehow it should link to prisoner too probably?
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I thought I would start a new discussion thread, to keep it seperate from the unrelated Dams.
I don't know much about criminal law, but it seems a massive and very complex area to model. I will try to help as much as I can with the schema.
You have made a good effort here - each crime modelled as a seperate topic is the best way of going about this. Your concern over large numbers of crime topics is probably nothing to worry about, but if it is a problem then only notable crimes should be listed against a criminal.
My main point is that there is big difference between someone being accused of a crime and being convicted. (and even then, judgements can be appealed and overturned)
My thoughts on this are as follows:
A person can be accused of a crime, a suspect - they might have done it, but they might also be entirely innocent so cannot be called a criminal. The accusation might be made by a police force, or by the media or joe publicbased on some wild conspiracy theory. These could be listed as an accuser.
I have decided on a criminal defendant type to note a suspect who went to trial. Here we can link to a topic about the legal case. (I noticed a legal case type already in skud's Law base - I'm not sure if it is suitable for criminal cases but have used it anyway). As people can be involved in multiple cases, I have used a CVT for each appearance in court.
If the defendant is convicted, only then can they be tagged as a convicted criminal. If an appeal later overturns this convicted status, the person is then detyped as a convicted criminal, but should still be typed as a criminal defendant (with a link to the appeal case noted in the court case property).
I have made a start, but it is a huge task!
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this is really good iain,
i totally forgot people can be found innocent. ~duh.
one thing that feels awkward is how a convicted criminal is also listed as a crime suspect -like Kim Dae-han
i get how its part of the other types. though things would feel smoother in the convicted criminal type, and also the crime type if convicted criminals are no longer crime suspects - a suspect is someone who has not had a trial maybe. im not sure how this would play out.
I'd make an 'acquitted person' type for our innocent suspects. you know? but i get how other types are sort of pushing for seperating a person's criminal information into pre-verdict and post-verdict types. but It feels goofy, to say if they were convicted of arsonthat they were a suspect of arson.
the accuser type works really well with the witch trials but for 99% of crimes its really just 'the police' or whatever. i say we drop it, or shift it to like a gossip or 'mob rule' type maybe. i may misunderstand it.
wikipedia has little structured data on this subject. we are truly in the unknown.
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convincted criminal and crime suspect feels a bit awkward for Kim Dae-han for sure. For other criminals such as Al Capone who was only convicted for tax evasion, and not for any of his other criminal involvement for which he can only ever be described as a suspect; it makes more sense.
My thought on the criminal suspect type was that it will always remain, no matter if the case ever goes to court, or the outcome of the court, or if it goes to an appeals court, or the outcome of the appeals court, or a re-trial, or a presidential pardon etc. etc.. Whatever happens after the accusation the person will always be noted as a suspect or former suspect.
For the accuser type I was thinking more on the lines of witnesses and informants, such as John Dean, who implicate others, Nixon, in a crime. Even listing the police is useful, as we can link to a particular state's police department, or the FBI or the CIA, Britain's Scotland Yard , French Gendarmerie etc. etc.
The acquitted person type sounds interesting - I look forward to seeing what you come up for it. The unknown makes it all the more fun!
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i'd like to see al capone with type convicted criminal for tax evasion and type acquitted criminal for the valentines massacre crime. im gonna give this a try. apologies in advance if it is disastrous.
lets be strong then on what it means to accuse. when the cia accuses(lets maybe change the term) they have a warrant for arrest, but not the guy on the radio.
come to think of it, maybe we mean 'who arrested' (wpediaarrest) isntead of 'acused'. if someone's testimony is relevant in the arrest, or john dean, who was a witness in the trial (after the arrest) should be listed there as part of the investgation, or trial whatever.The only people whos accusation can lead to a criminal trial is a police dept etc, afaik.
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hey so ive done a bunch of work, changed alot, put in a bunch of data.
what do you think?
what do you do in dubai?
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Most of the properties of an unsolved crime are already covered by the crime type, which I have as an included type. I'm not sure if there are any properties that an unsolved crime could have that are unique?
e.g. Both a crime and an unsolved crime can have fugitives - a fugitive being person who is evading the authorities or slavery.
An unsolved crime can also have convictions, which may or may not be correct. And this can be quite controversial - a lot of convicted criminals appeal their conviction, and in their and their supporters eyes the crime is unsolved - but to the prosecutors it is solved. And vice versa for suspects found not guilty.
I vote we should get rid of this type - as I see no unique properties, and it will just cause a lot of controversy and headache in the future.
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hey, does it make sense to do this?
i dont have permissions to equiv-link it to yours,
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spencermountain
I notice though you have created a flood type in a disaster2 base - is this what you are referring to?
The flood type is good, I will update the 'led to flooding disaster' property of the 'Dam failure' type to point to the 'flood' type. (don't have the time to migrate the data at the moment, but will get round to it in the next few days).
I've made some changes to Dam Failure - it is now a topic itself (rather than a CVT) and is a specific event, which leads onto a flooding disaster event.
See South Fork Dam which had the South Fork Dam Failure event andthat leads onto the Johnstown flood.
Note how I have slightly changed the meaning of your 'Flood Cause' type - rather than being assigned to generic terms, such as 'rain' or 'dam failure', it is now pointing to a specific topic of dam failure, in this case the 'South Fork Dam Failure'.
Similarly instead of having 'rain' as a cause of a flood, it would be better to link it to a specific weather event e.g. Hurricane Katrina.
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hey cool, terrific job iain. In response to your moves here i am rethinking my http://crime.freebase.com/type/schema/base/crime/crime crime topic- which i could really use some help with now aswell.
same issue as dams- though maybe less clean a solution. Ive made a clever cvs type that links specific crimes, criminals, and crime types -but doing it this way requires a topic for every crime a person commits, like a topic for every dam failure, but if someone has a large criminal record we would need a topic for every crime they've commited, which is crazy. is there a way to make the specific crime topic optional here do you think? im stuck. i added you as admin to the crime base This has the potential to be a really complex, though valuable type.
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