Crime and the FBI Categorization of Crime - By: Stuart Owens

As we all know the world today is surrounded by crime. One topic that can never escape our news papers today is about death, injuries, loss of property and so on. Various crimes can be prevented with the help of security cameras, ADT security systems, an alarm system installed in our home or at our work place. In fact many small businesses are acquiring security systems to protect their property. However, in spite of all these systems in place, at the time of crime a kind of feeling that haunts our mind, sense of helplessness, the anxiety that fills in within us and turns into anger and frustration leads to a loss. If the loss is huge then that leads to a disaster where the victims of the crime generally have a clash with the ideas of the people surrounding them.

They start experiencing financial crisis and most of the time is wasted chasing legal, insurance and personal problems. This tends to disturb their daily routines and as a result being blamed by their friends and relatives for not being careful. It doesn’t end there, the trauma continues for the victim, gets them confused by the court systems and thereby ignored by the law enforcement. Today, 5% of the US population is considered to be victims of crime and out of these one and half million people are victim’s violent crimes.

To help these victims from spies, terrorists, mobsters, gang leaders and serial killers the Federal Bureau of investigation comes into picture. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency. Today, it serves as a mission in United States to protect, defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and to enforce the criminal laws of the United States. Today, it has a jurisdiction to protect against violation of more than two hundred categories of crimes under federal law.

The FBI has today prioritized to have 3 categories under National security priorities and 5 in Criminal priorities. Under the National security the three can be classified as Terrorism, Counter intelligence and Cyber Crime. The Criminal categories are Public Corruption, Civil Rights, Organized Crime, White Collar crime and violent crime and major thefts.

‘Terrorism’ as we all know is a major threat to national security. This is classified as international terrorism, domestic terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Counter intelligence has counter espionage, counter proliferation and Economic Espionage. The last is the cyber crime which a normal person faces in his day to day life. It has categories like computer intrusions, online predators, piracy/intellectual property theft, internet fraud and identity theft. All these can also be a threat to a nation as a whole as well.

As mentioned above criminal priorities have 5 categories. The first one is Public corruption which includes government fraud, election fraud, and foreign corrupt practices. Civil rights have categories like hate crime, human trafficking, and color of law and freedom of access to clinic. The next category is called organized crime. This is a special category as it happens according to the name. Under this we have Italian Mafia/LCN, Eurasian, Balkan, Middle Eastern, Asian, African, Sports Bribery.

The White collar crimes are generally related to business and have categories like Antitrust, bankruptcy fraud, corporate/securities fraud, health care fraud, insurance, mass marketing, money laundering, mortgage fraud and the list goes on as per the type of business. Violent Crime and Major Thefts can be art theft, bank robbery, cargo theft, crimes against children, cruise ship crime, gangs, Indian country crime, jewelry and gem theft, retail theft and vehicle theft. Each of these has sub- categories under them and the list goes on.

About the Author

Stuart is a freelance writer and likes to highlight on crime and how FBI categorizes these crimes. He also writes about how simple measures could have been taken by people to protect their homes and small businesses by using security systems like the one offered by ADT Security Systems.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Stuart-Owens/207270

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