As many as 300 U.S. inmates sentenced to death over a 30-year period were probably innocent, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The courts converted many of their death sentences to life, the study found. The U.S. judicial system, however, has actually killed innocent people.

While doubt exists in many past executions, seven people have received official pardons after their executions in prison. Read their stories below.

Joe Arridy

Executed for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Colorado girl, Joe Arridy died by lethal gas in 1939. As his last request, the 23-year-old asked for lots of ice cream and his toy train, the Denver Westward reported. With an IQ of 46, Arridy couldn't quite grasp the concept of death.

Arridy confessed to attacking Dorothy Drain and her 12-year-old sister, Barbara, with a hatchet in 1936. (Barbara survived the attack.) Decades later, overwhelming evidence proved his innocence. He wasn't in town at the time of the killing, and someone else even admitted to the crime.

Police coerced Arridy's confession, the state said when it finally pardoned him. Aside from the fact that he was innocent, imposing the death penalty on someone as intellectually disabled as Arridy would also be considered unconstitutional today.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter officially pardoned Arridy in 2011. "Pardoning Mr. Arridy cannot undo this tragic event in Colorado history," Ritter said. "It is in the interest of justice and simple decency, however, to restore his good name."

Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin

Thomas and Meeks Griffin, relatively wealthy black farmers, were electrocuted in 1915 for killing a 73-year-old white Civil War veteran named John Q. Lewis.

A prominent legal historian's recent research, however, revealed Lewis was having an affair with a much younger black woman, CNN reported. That woman and her husband may have actually committed the murder.

One hundred years after South Carolina executed the Griffin  brothers, the state issued its first posthumous pardon in a unanimous vote. The Griffins' grandnephew, nationally syndicated radio host Tom Joyner, spurred research into the case after Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. traced his family history and discovered the double-execution.

"It's good for the community. It's good for the nation. Anytime that you can repair racism in this country is a step forward," Joyner told CNN.

Lena Baker

The only woman executed in Georgia, a 44-year-old black maid named Lena Baker, died in the electric chair in 1945 for killing her employer, Ernest Knight.

At her trial, Baker told the all-white, all-male jury Knight had imprisoned her and threatened to shoot her if she tried to leave, The Guardian reported. She finally grabbed a gun and shot him when he held up a metal bar to strike her, she testified.

Baker and Knight had a sexual relationship that sparked outrage in the community, and his son had threatened her and beat her multiple times.

Sixty years after her death in 2005, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted her family an official proclamation, pardoning her. While the board didn't find her not guilty, it called the decision to refuse her clemency a "grievous error," according to The New York Times.

John Snowden

The murder of a pregnant naval officer's wife in Maryland sent John Snowden, a 29-year-old black man, to the gallows in February of 1919. He professed his innocence until the day he hanged. Even given one last chance to confess, he said, "I could not leave this world with a lie in my mouth."

Snowden had a loose connection to the victim, Lottie Brandon: He drove an ice truck in her neighborhood. Yet he endured hours of questioning and abuse from the police.

Two of the main trial witnesses eventually recanted their testimony, according to a report distributed through the Death Penalty Information Center. The jurors who convicted him even became convinced of his innocence: 11 of the 12 wrote the state government, asking it to commute Snowden's sentence.

In 2001, then-Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening finally gave John Snowden a full pardon.

"The more I looked into it, the more I said, 'Something's just not right here,'" Glendening told the Baltimore Sun.

William Jackson Marion

Four years after William Jackson Marion was hanged in 1887 for supposedly killing his railroad co-worker, James Cameron, the "murdered" man turned up alive and well.

Days before Cameron disappeared, he and Marion made a business agreement that clearly benefitted Marion. Cameron's mother also told police she suspected Marion's involvement in her son's disappearance.

About 11 years later, a dead body, wearing clothes similar to Cameron's, was found on a Native American reservation. After a mistrial, a jury eventually found Cameron guilty of the murder and sent him to the gallows.

Cameron — who showed up alive and well four years after the execution — explained to authorities he'd fled for Mexico to avoid a shotgun wedding in Kansas. On the centennial anniversary of Marion's execution in 1987, Nebraska Governor Bob Kerrey granted Marion a full posthumous pardon.

Jack Kehoe

Jack Kehoe — leader of an anti-Civil War group called the Molly Maguires — was hanged by the state of Pennsylvania in 1878 for the murder of a dissenting coal miner named Frank Langdon.

Police first charged Kehoe's group with threatening to kill Langdon, and when he turned up dead days later, they handcuffed Kehoe first.

Despite no physical evidence linking Kehoe to the scene of the crime, a mining big-wig at the time named Franklin Gowan rallied for Kehoe to be put to death.

In 1978, Kehoe's great-grandson asked for his pardon. He claimed Gowan stacked the jury, some of whom didn't even speak English, against Kehoe, among other stilted circumstances, the Beaver County Times reported.

In 1979, then-Gov. Milton J. Shapp issued a full pardon to Kehoe, proclaiming him innocent.

SEE ALSO: Why The Death Penalty In America Is Sexist

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In an exhaustive new book titled "O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It," private investigator William C. Dear details his 18-year investigation of the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Dear concludes that O.J. didn't kill his wife and her friend — but he did visit the scene of the crime shortly after it occurred — and that evidence suggests his son Jason (who was 24 at the time) did it in a rage killing.

Dear made a list of all potential suspects, visited the crime scene and other relevant places, conducted interviews, established a clear timeline of events, debunked alibis, collected evidence and generally aimed to subvert false assumptions made by the LAPD.

Dear's goal is that the information "will lead to the convening of a special grand jury, an arrest, and a conviction for these senseless murders."

To most of those who watched the famous "white Bronco" low-speed chase and trial after the killings in 1994, it will likely seem inconceivable that someone other than Simpson committed the murders, but Dear cites some compelling evidence to support his case. At the very least, it seems Jason Simpson should have been considered a suspect, which he never was.

(And if there is any conceivable explanation for OJ's bizarre behavior after the murders other than that he killed his wife, it is that he knew that his son had killed his wife and wanted to protect him.)

Importantly, this is not the first time Dear has investigated a murder. He used the same method to solve the murder of an Ohio man named Dean Milo, which resulted in 11 people (including Milo's brother) being sent to jail.

We've pulled out the biggest reasons why Dear considers OJ's son a major suspect.

Prior to the killings, OJ's son Jason was diagnosed with "intermittent rage disorder" (AKA Jekyll and Hyde syndrome) and was given the drug Depakote to control his rage and seizures

This content comes entirely from O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

Jason abused alcohol, ecstasy and cocaine as early as age 14; police reports indicate that he was arrested at least four times (including DUI, driving with a suspended license and assault with a deadly weapon) while medical records reveal at least three suicide attempts

This content comes entirely from O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

A note titled "Dear Jason" that described the writer as being three persons was identified by handwriting experts as being written by Jason Simpson; he also wrote about killing anyone who hurt his loved ones and how he felt like "Jekyll and Hyde" (in diaries obtained by Dear)

This content comes entirely from O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

Notorious criminal Sante Kimes died in her New York prison cell this week at 79, where she had been serving a 120-year sentence for two horrific murders, The New York Times reports.

In her younger years, a wealthy Kimes enjoyed stealing expensive items such as a car and a $6,500 coat simply because she enjoyed the act of theft, according to the Times. But she is most known for racking up far more serious crimes alongside her husband and son in many cities during the '80s and '90s. The heinous crimes prompted more than one law official to describe her as "evil."

In 1985, she and her husband served five years and three years, respectively, in Mexican prisons for allegedly keeping maids as slaves in their household.

Sante Kimes and her son, Kenneth Kimes Jr., were convicted in 1998 of killing 82-year-old socialite Irene Silverman in a conspiracy to steal her $10 million Manhattan townhouse.

The mother and son taped Silverman’s phone conversations, forged a deed to her home, stole a credit card, and used other forms of deception, in addition to guns, plastic handcuffs, and masks. Silverman’s strangled body, hidden in garbage bags, has never been found.

In 2004, Kimes was convicted in California for the 1998 murder of friend and businessman David Kazdin, according to The Washington Post. Her son said Kimes sent him to shoot Kazdin in the head because he discovered she forged his signature to take out a $280,000 loan. 

Kimes has also been suspected of committing arson at homes she owned and playing a role in the disappearance of a banker in the Bahamas, according to The New York Times. 

When she was arrested for the Silverman murder in 1998, a law enforcement official called Kimes an “ingenious evil con artist,” while the judge during the Kazdin murder trial said she was “one of the most evil individuals” she’d ever met.

SEE ALSO: How This 'Most Wanted' Fugitive Managed To Escape From Prison — Twice

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A wide-ranging new report from the National Research Council on mass incarceration in the United States finds that lengthy prison sentences are not the best way to deter crime.

From 1972 to 2012, the U.S. incarceration rate quadrupled as America's courts began handing out longer sentences (particularly for drug crimes), according to the report, which was commissioned by the Justice Department.

Drawing from past research, the report argues that more severe sentences don't effectively deter crime, pointing to these past studies:

• An analysis of a federal program in Virginia that imposed more severe punishments for gun crimes found that "the threat of enhanced sentences had no apparent deterrent effect," the report said.
• Studies found that teens didn't commit significantly fewer crimes after they turned 18, even though the severity of punishments increased. One analysis reported "an immediate decline in crime, as predicted, but it was very small and not statistically significant," according to the National Research Council report. 
• A California law requiring minimum prison sentences of 25 years for three-strike offenders had only a minimal deterrent effect, studies showed. One study found the law created a 2% reduction in the felony crime rate at most, limited only to people with two strikes. Another report did find that the law was a deterrent, but concluded that it wasn't enough to justify increased costs of incarceration.

"Evidence is limited on the crime prevention effects of most of the policies that contributed to the post-1973 increase in incarceration rates. Nevertheless, the evidence base demonstrates that lengthy prison sentences are ineffective as a crime control measure," the report noted.

Instead, the report argues that the certainty and imminence of punishment are more likely to deter crime than length. In a Hawaii program, for example, offenders on probation who faced the certain, but brief, punishment of one to two days of confinement for failing drug tests had far fewer positive tests than offenders who didn't face that punishment.

Overall, the report recommends that federal and state officials alter criminal justice policies to reduce nationwide incarceration rates "[g]iven the small crime prevention effects of long prison sentences and the possibly high financial, social, and human costs of incarceration." 

Specifically, the report urges federal and state governments to reconsider mandatory minimum sentencing policies and long sentences. Additionally, the report calls for more research on the relationship between sentence lengths and deterrence.

SEE ALSO: How California Prisons Got To Be So Insanely Overcrowded

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For the fifth year in a row, the Honda Accord is the most stolen car in America, according to LoJack's annual Vehicle Theft Recovery Report.

According to data gathered by the vehicle tracking firm in 2013, the Accord is followed by the Honda Civic and Toyota Camry. Even though the Ford F150 is the best-selling truck in the America, its larger sibling, the F350, is more often stolen.

In fact, GM's F150 competitor, the Chevy Silverado pickup, is not only the most stolen truck, but also the most stolen domestic branded vehicle on the LoJack's top 10. 

Perhaps the most intriguing entry on LoJack's list is the sixth-place Acura Integra. While the majority of the list consists of top sellers, the Integra has not been sold in the U.S. since 2001. Its popularity among thieves may be be explained by the car's popularity with aftermarket tuners, which drives demand for its parts and engines. 

According to LoJack, the most expensive car the company recovered in 2013 was a $103,400 Porsche Panamera, while the oldest car recovered was a 1963 Cadillac Convertible. The latest report also highlighted the increasing popularity of hybrid and electric vehicles, as recoveries of Toyota's Prius hybrid increased by 70% in 2013. 

Here is LoJack's 10 Most Stolen Vehicles in America:

1. Honda Accord
2. Honda Civic
3. Toyota Camry 
4. Toyota Corolla
5. Chevrolet Silverado
6. Acura Integra
7. Cadillac Escalade
8. Ford F350
9. Nissan Altima
10. Chevrolet Tahoe

SEE ALSO: Honda Is Getting Into The Private Jet Business With An Innovative Engine

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On a frigid Wisconsin evening this past January, a 41-year-old man named Salah Salahadyn allegedly tased Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) concertmaster Frank Almond and stole Almond's $5 million Stradivarius violin.

But as VICE News reported, the tiny ID tags that are dispersed like confetti every time a Taser is fired led police straight to the man who bought the weapon, a 36-year-old Milwaukee barber named Universal Knowledge Allah.

His decision to tell a customer all about the crime further implicated him and Salahadyn — the customer went straight to police, quite possibly after hearing about the $100,000 reward offered by the MSO. Hammering the nail further into the alleged perpetrators' coffin was Salahadyn’s ID, which was found alongside the violin when police recovered it. In addition, experts told us that for various reasons, a Strad loses almost all of its value the moment it's stolen.

In other words, it was not a well-thought-out crime.

Though authorities didn't explain why at the time, a woman named LaToya Atlas who was allegedly Salahadyn's getaway driver — and his on-again, off-again girlfriend and the mother of his child — was arrested, but then released without being charged. Allah initially pleaded not guilty, then entered a guilty plea on May 28; he's due to be sentenced in late July. That leaves Salahadyn, who is due back in court June 30. Thus far, he's pled not guilty to one count of felony robbery.

A couple of weeks after my original VICE News story about the crime ran, my phone rang. It was Salahadyn. His lawyer had no idea he was speaking to me, but Salahadyn said he didn’t care. He took exception to the way I had portrayed him in the original story, and he wanted to clarify things.

He told me about an Asian crime syndicate that supposedly coerced him into committing the crime, about his longtime admiration for Almond, and about his decision to make certain that Atlas — whom he often referred to as "that woman"— wouldn't go to prison so that she could care for their child.

Also, he really does know a lot about violins.

VICE News: It’s extremely unusual for someone charged with a felony to speak to the media before his case is decided. Why are you getting in touch?
Salah Salahadyn: You called me an idiot, bumbling, whatever, but that’s not a proper characterization at all of me, and I’d like to try and rectify that. If I had been a white guy, people would’ve been calling me Billy the Kid.

Won’t you get a chance to tell your story in court?

Right now, the public defender is wanting me to take a plea deal without any fight, without any trial. I don’t want to do that, I want to go to trial, I want people to see this case laid out, from beginning to end. But I’m being told that if I don’t take the deal, my exposure to prison would more than double, from 10 years to 25.

That’s my life gone. So, it looks like this is the only opportunity I’m gonna have. I’m not denying I didn’t do nothing, but there’s more to it. I was a pawn — this is bigger than Salah.

So you're taking the plea deal?
Even with 10 years, I’m losing everything. My family, my woman, my children, I won’t be able to be at my daughter’s college graduation.

I was advised to make some arrangements because I was trying to get [Atlas] out [of going to prison]. I didn’t expect to be looking at this kind of time, but I am because they don’t fully believe me that it was organized crime that ordered and planned this.

Look at my arrest record — there’s nothing violent, no assaults, no robberies, no drugs, I have no connection to violence. The fact that this would require some physical contact [with Almond] didn’t sit right with me.

I’ve seen him play. He’s an extraordinary human being — even now, he doesn’t have a bad thing to say. I don’t want him or any other musician to have to walk around with apprehension. I don’t want to be responsible for taking away somebody’s sense of security.

The FBI agent who assisted Milwaukee police on this case told me you mentioned something about a Chinese gang?
I never said "Chinese," and I never said "gang."

Then who were they?
They were Asians, and a specific kind of Asians. But I’m not going to say which kind, because I still have to live out here.

They wanted me to get the [violin] to them in Chicago. I was in a position, because I knew that if it left Milwaukee, it would never be seen again, and [I] could possibly never be seen again if I went to meet these guys in Chicago.

Couldn’t you have just turned down the job?
It was coercion. These people cultivated a relationship with me; they stroked my ego, if you will.

They gave me resources.

Certain things I did for them over the years that I didn’t discuss with the feds, that I’m not going to discuss with you, allowed me to stave off the job, which I didn’t want to do.

Could I have just backed out of it and no harm would’ve come to me? Maybe. But the pressure that was placed upon my person to acquire this piece for the people who wanted it was very intense.

I was at a point where I procrastinated until I couldn’t procrastinate anymore. It wasn’t any kind of big, exciting thing where me and my woman made love in a bed and then went out and did this. It was completely anti-climactic.

I’ll ask you the same question the FBI posed to me: If the Asian crime syndicate exists, why would they have picked you to do this job?
There were other people that were being considered, but these people were brutes — talking about home invasion, knocking him out. Just brutish. I was like, dude, I don’t wanna see harm come to this man.

The robbery occurred January 27, and you were arrested a week later. What was going on during those seven days?
The first thing I had to do was make sure the piece didn’t leave the city in the first place. I was in damage-control mode, I basically sat and thought how I could clean this mess up that I had gotten myself into. I could have had that piece in Asia, Russia — Interpol has no jurisdiction in Russia. 

[That isn't really true.] No other person from my demographic would think to do such a thing. Once something of that nature has gotten overseas and into a different country where people have a very strong interest and desire for it — a Russian billionaire, a Chinese millionaire — they don't care how it was acquired.

They don’t care that it was took in Milwaukee if they can show it off and brag to their friends.

I knew that at some point they would be coming. They were at my door that Monday morning. Super Bowl Sunday, me and that woman [meaning Atlas] split, we were back to that not-liking-each-other stage. The very next morning, the police were knocking at my door, right after I said my prayers. They knocked for about 15 minutes before they kicked in the door, they put me on the floor, not aggressive really, but a few hours later, they had that woman and Universal.

You were caught before you had a chance to deliver the Strad to the crime syndicate you say ordered the robbery. Has there been any subsequent threat to you from them for not coming through?
They have chosen not to do any harm to me, no retribution. They haven’t really lost anything other than that this buyer over there didn’t get it, and they didn’t get the money that was coming to them.

Had I been willing to throw somebody under the bus to save myself, I could have. But I don’t do that. At least I do have my life, which could have possibly been lost in this situation. The cops said, "We don’t believe you, the feds don’t believe you," but I wasn’t willing to wear a wire and essentially be a snitch against these people. I’m old-school, I believe in having some integrity and honor.

There still has to be some rules, some honor somewhere, and I know that’s kinda ironic coming from somebody who is alleged to have committed this crime, but that’s who Salah is.

You eventually led police to an acquaintance’s home, where the violin was hidden inside a suitcase. What was that like?
For two days, [the police and I] basically just danced around — I wasn’t giving them anything. That woman wasn’t giving any statement whatsoever, Universal gave a statement at some point, but he had already told a client what happened, who had went to police.

Those days in that city jail in that cell wondering how this happened, how did it come to this, and being faced with the idea of me and the mother of my children being sent to prison for a long time was utterly devastating.

I had to make some decisions; most of us who came up without fathers are relatively okay for it, but no one who comes up without a mom turns out right. You’ve got to fall on your sword if you have to, but you’ve got to get her up out of here. I basically told them that look, I want to tell y’all what occurred, but I need some assurances.

They came and got me in my cell and took me out of the city jail, and I directed them to where it was. I was in a car with the detectives, the attorney, and the investigator attached to the attorney.

We went to the house — the guy wasn’t home at the time, and they wouldn’t let me call him prior to — but I knew the guy kept his door unlocked. So, they let me reach with my cuffed hands to open the doorknob, and we went in. I guess they got the warrant afterwards. They retrieved it, it came back without a scratch. It was wrapped in the baby blanket that my son came home in. They were very happy about its condition; that was a good feeling that I was able to have.

The $5 million violin and the telltale taser: inside an epically stupid crime. Read more here.

When I got back to jail, it took a few hours, but they walked me up near the front to see LaToya. She was sitting there handcuffed, agents sitting around, she looked like someone who’d been in jail for a couple days. I said, "I’m sorry I got you in this. You’re free to go home." She just kind of looked at me.

I said, "I talked to the District Attorney, I made a deal, they reduced my charge down, and you’re leaving here now with no charges." She just started crying. They took the cuffs off so I could give her a hug, and when I walked back to that cell, I felt 10 feet tall. I was resolved. It was a wonderful feeling, even though I was still in jail myself. Then I was walked over and arraigned for robbery. And that’s when I first saw the police report.

So that's when you learned that Allah talked to a customer about the robbery, and that the customer then went to police. How did you feel when you realized what had happened?
When I saw that Universal talking to his client was the whole reason we were caught, it took all the wind out of me. When they took us over from county, [Universal and I] actually had a chance to talk for a few hours, we were on the same pod.

One thing he did say to me when we were sitting there — and I’ll never forget it, I still have very much love for this individual — but I looked at him, and I’m trying to stay strong, and I said, "Everything’s gonna be all right, we’re gonna get through this." And he had tears in his eyes. He realized he had done an irreparable blow to my life, and here I am telling him everything’s gonna be okay.

Even with what he did, I want that dude to just get out of this shit; the dude has never even been finger printed before. I have a track record, but that dude, he just don’t deserve to be in this mess.

What happened to the guy who lived in the house where the violin was hidden?
When his attorney brought him in, he was made to believe that [police] wanted him, and he was encouraged to give a statement. He actually contacted me and told me what he told police, but his attorney ill-advised him, if you will. Now he could be called to testify against me, which is something he does not wish to do.

It seemed like a… serious oversight to have left your own ID in a suitcase alongside a stolen Stradivarius. How did that happen?
The suitcase was packed to go to Chicago, where the Asians would secure me a passport and get me out of there. It had ID in there obviously, had passport photos in there. The underwear, the socks, the family photo album — mention all of that, and then there’s a different perception. That someone was leaving, so maybe he's not such an idiot after all.

Who grabs something for this amount of money, with this kind of planning, then just lets it sit? Is this a guy who was extremely intelligent and then suddenly became stupid, or was there a crisis of conscience?

Crisis of conscience?
I grew up around art and culture, music — I played the flute as a child, I played the violin as a child. I know instruments. When I first got out of prison 10 years ago, a friend gave me this movie, The Red Violin.

It ended with this black gentleman played by Samuel Jackson stealing the violin out of this auction house and calling his daughter and saying he had something special for her.

The Lipinski is the real red violin. It is not simply a Stradivarius, it is one of the best Stradivariuses in the world. That thing has a soul of its own, it has its own spirit. I couldn’t let it go out of [Milwaukee], it would’ve never been seen again.

There are Stradivariuses that have been stolen and never been seen again; this would’ve been among those and I just could not let that be, I would not let that be. People may not want to believe that, but look at the facts — I have a car, I have resources, I could’ve got on a plane. But I didn’t do that.

I just wanted to do the right thing. And I guess I did.

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In an exhaustive new book titled "O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It," private investigator William C. Dear details his 18-year investigation of the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Dear concludes that O.J. didn't kill his wife and her friend — but he did visit the scene of the crime shortly after it occurred — and that evidence suggests his son Jason (who was 24 at the time) did it in a rage killing.

Dear made a list of all potential suspects, visited the crime scene and other relevant places, conducted interviews, established a clear timeline of events, debunked alibis, collected evidence and generally aimed to subvert false assumptions made by the LAPD.

Dear's goal is that the information "will lead to the convening of a special grand jury, an arrest, and a conviction for these senseless murders."

To most of those who watched the famous "white Bronco" low-speed chase and trial after the killings in 1994, it will likely seem inconceivable that someone other than Simpson committed the murders, but Dear cites some compelling evidence to support his case. At the very least, it seems Jason Simpson should have been considered a suspect, which he never was.

(And if there is any conceivable explanation for OJ's bizarre behavior after the murders other than that he killed his wife, it is that he knew that his son had killed his wife and wanted to protect him.)

Importantly, this is not the first time Dear has investigated a murder. He used the same method to solve the murder of an Ohio man named Dean Milo, which resulted in 11 people (including Milo's brother) being sent to jail.

We've pulled out the biggest reasons why Dear considers OJ's son a major suspect.

Prior to the killings, OJ's son Jason was diagnosed with "intermittent rage disorder" (AKA Jekyll and Hyde syndrome) and was given the drug Depakote to control his rage and seizures

This content comes entirely from O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

Jason abused alcohol, ecstasy and cocaine as early as age 14; police reports indicate that he was arrested at least four times (including DUI, driving with a suspended license and assault with a deadly weapon) while medical records reveal at least three suicide attempts

This content comes entirely from O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

A note titled "Dear Jason" that described the writer as being three persons was identified by handwriting experts as being written by Jason Simpson; he also wrote about killing anyone who hurt his loved ones and how he felt like "Jekyll and Hyde" (in diaries obtained by Dear)

This content comes entirely from O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

In an exhaustive book, "O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It," private investigator William C. Dear details his 18-year investigation of the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Dear concludes that O.J. didn't kill his ex-wife and her friend — but he did visit the scene of the crime shortly after it occurred — and that evidence suggests his son Jason (who was 24 at the time) did it in a rage killing.

Dear made a list of all potential suspects, visited the crime scene and other relevant places, conducted interviews, established a clear timeline of events, debunked alibis, collected evidence and generally aimed to subvert false assumptions made by the LAPD.

Dear's goal is that the information "will lead to the convening of a special grand jury, an arrest, and a conviction for these senseless murders."

To most of those who watched the famous "white Bronco" low-speed chase and trial after the killings in 1994, it will likely seem inconceivable that someone other than Simpson committed the murders, but Dear cites some compelling evidence to support his case. At the very least, it seems Jason Simpson should have been considered a suspect, which he never was.

(And if there is any conceivable explanation for O.J. Simpson's bizarre behavior after the murders other than that he killed his ex-wife, it is that he knew that his son had killed Nicole Brown Simpson and wanted to protect him.)

Importantly, this is not the first time Dear has investigated a murder. He used the same method to solve the murder of an Ohio man named Dean Milo, which resulted in 11 people (including Milo's brother) being sent to jail.

We've pulled out the biggest reasons why Dear considers OJ's son a major suspect.

Prior to the killings, O.J.'s son Jason was diagnosed with "intermittent rage disorder" (AKA Jekyll and Hyde syndrome) and was given the drug Depakote to control his rage and seizures.

This content comes entirely from "O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It" and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

Jason abused alcohol, ecstasy, and cocaine as early as age 14. Police reports indicate that he was arrested at least four times (including DUI, driving with a suspended license, and assault with a deadly weapon) while medical records reveal at least three suicide attempts.

This content comes entirely from "O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It" and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

A note titled "Dear Jason" that described the writer as being three persons was identified by handwriting experts as being written by Jason Simpson; he also wrote about killing anyone who hurt his loved ones and how he felt like "Jekyll and Hyde" (in diaries obtained by Dear).

This content comes entirely from "O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It" and is published with permission from author William Dear. Business Insider cannot confirm his claims.

A staggering humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border has left federal officials scrambling to provide basic human necessities to thousands of undocumented immigrants — most of them unaccompanied children — who have flowed over the divide. 

The office of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who represents the district including the southern border town of Laredo, provided Business Insider with photos showing just how bad the conditions are at one federal facility where some of these immigrants are being held.

Cuellar's office said the photos were taken recently in a Customs and Border Protection facility in south Texas. The congressman's office declined to identify the exact source or location of the photos to protect the source's identity.

Overall, the pictures show some of the stark challenges facing immigrants as well as federal officials attempting to address the flood of people streaming over the border. In many cases, the undocumented immigrants are crammed into rooms with nowhere to sleep or even sit. And in at least one case (the first photo below), one of the immigrants has rashes that Cuellar's office said were reported to be either scabies or chickenpox.

The situation is rapidly becoming a "humanitarian crisis," in the words of President Barack Obama.

Every day, hundreds of children cross the border, mostly making their way from violence-stricken areas in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The causes for the influx are many, but a large portion are children fleeing increased drug and gang violence. 

They have overwhelmed Border Patrol resources in the Rio Grande area, causing many migrants to be sent to processing facilities in Texas and Arizona. However, most of these detention facilities are not designed for long-term residency, which creates a nightmare situation for officials trying to relieve the backlog and, of course, for the immigrants who find themselves living in facilities like the one depicted in these photos.

Several immigration reform advocacy organizations have lodged complaints with the Department of Homeland Security over Border Patrol agents' alleged mistreatment of the undocumented immigrants. Multiple Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, have blamed Obama's policies for attracting greater numbers of immigrants.

Cuellar has said the influx of immigrants shows the need for Congress to pass legislation that comprehensively overhauls the nation's immigration system. He toured the Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, on Saturday, when he spoke with the agents there, as well as the adults and unaccompanied children in the facility.

"In speaking to Border Patrol today, they commented to me that we cannot enforce ourselves out of this problem," Cuellar said in a statement of his facility tour. "Bringing more officers or paying for overtime is not the way to address this influx of migrants — we need a change of policy and we need to find long-term solutions."

Here are the photos:

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Drunk driving is a known hazard, but what about driving while stoned? Until now, cops could only identify stoned drivers using saliva, blood, and urine samples. But they had trouble making DUI convictions, since traces of THC can remain in the bloodstream for days after marijuana use. But now, a pair of Canadian scientists have developed the “Cannabix breathalyzer” that detects pot use only within the last few hours. It could soon help cops catch stoned drivers on the road.

The dangers of driving high remain subject to debate. One study found that pot doesn’t statistically increase the risk of an accident. And its difficult to compare stoned driving to drunk driving, since drunk drivers tend to drive faster, and overestimate their skill, while high drivers have the opposite tendency.

For all these reasons, police have, up until now, been pretty casual towards marijuana use while driving.

But the creators of the breathalyzer Kal Malhi, former officer of the Royal Canadian Mountain Police, and radiologist Dr. Raj Attariwala say that stoned driving is a growing issue. “People are becoming very afraid to drink and drive nowadays because they feel that they will get caught and charged, but they’re not afraid to drug and drive because they don’t feel that law enforcement will do anything about it,” Malhi said.

They are are in the process of presenting the breathalyzer to relevant Canadian authorities. As restrictions on marijuana use loosen in the US, it’s likely we’ll be seeing some version of the breathalyzer migrate south, soon.

SEE ALSO: Hillary Clinton: I Never Smoked Pot

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More than two decades after five teenagers confessed to raping and brutally beating a Central Park jogger, they've agreed to a settlement awarding them $40 million from New York City, The New York Times reports.

The proposed settlement is awaiting approval by the city comptroller, followed by a federal judge.

Despite their original confessions, the five were ultimately exonerated and later sued New York City for $50 million each.

More than a decade later, they've finally agreed to a proposed settlement with the city's Law Department awarding each of them around $1 million for each year they were imprisoned, according to The Times. Four of the five plaintiffs — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Yusef Salaam — served approximately seven years in prison. But since the fifth man, Kharey Wise, served 13 years, the approved settlement would mean the city will pay him more money than it has in all other wrongful conviction cases.

The long history of their notorious case, known as the Central Park Five, has raised questions about why people make false confessions and who's to blame for them.

Convictions Overturned

On the night of April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old white woman was viciously raped and beaten to the brink of death while jogging in Central Park. The five Hispanic and black teenagers were convicted and sentenced to prison based on videotaped confessions.

The convicted teens served between five and 13 years in prison. But then in 2002, a man named Matias Reyes admitted to committing the crime alone. His DNA was linked to the crime scene. In the early 2000s, a judge dismissed the five convictions based on recommendations in a court filing written by Assistant District Attorney Nancy Ryan.

Ryan wrote in that filing that the original confessions were deeply flawed: “A comparison of the statements reveals troubling discrepancies ... the accounts given by the five defendants differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime.”

In 2003, the five freed men filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging police had forced their confessions and seeking $50 million each in damages. The plaintiffs’ attorney has said the city was happy letting that case drag on for a decade because it did not want to admit detectives and prosecutors didn’t do their jobs. “If, in fact these five young men were innocent, no one wants to explain how they were made to confess to a crime they did not commit,” Attorney Jonathan Moore told The Huffington Post in 2009.

Why Confess?

In 2012, The Guardian’s Jill Filipovic gave this explanation for why five boys would confess to a crime none of them had committed:

"The Central Park Five all took back their confessions upon being formally arrested. They were kids who had been kept awake for nearly two days and interrogated without attorneys present; they were told if they confessed, they could go home. The stories they told in their confessions were inconsistent with each other and with the physical evidence. Several of the boys said they stabbed the victim, but there were no knife wounds. Their stories varied on the location of the crime, the description of the victim and the timeline of the crime itself. There was little physical evidence tying them to the rape and beating." 

One detective, Tom McKenna, admitted lying to one of the teens by telling him police found his fingerprints on the jogger's clothes, which wasn't true. "We are allowed, by law, to use guile and ruse, and we do," McKenna said, reported by New York Magazine. "People only give things up when you tell 'em you got 'em." However, deceitful interrogation, including one method known as the "Reid Technique," has been criticized in the past for its tendency to produce false confessions.

Ken Burns has directed a new documentary, "The Central Park Five," which argues the coercive and manipulative interrogations did indeed cause false confessions. In a short video on the documentary's PBS Web page, one of the five said detectives asked endless questions and deprived him of food, drink, and sleep. "It just kept going on and on and on," Kevin Richardson recalled. "We stopped a few times because I was crying. I had no protection, my father didn't do anything. I was scared." 

"What happened over the next day or so was just merciless interrogation by the city's most dedicated professionals," Ken Burns said in the same video. "They worked these kids and it was kind of a circular firing squad. They said, 'Look, we know you didn't do it but another guy that you've never heard of is saying you did it, so if you tell us that he did it then we'll let you go.'"

That video also featured social psychologist Saul Kassin, who commented on the effects the lengthy interrogation, lasting 14 to 30 hours, had on the 14- to 16-year-old boys. "When you are stressed, when you are tired, when you are a juvenile and not fully mature and developed, you're thinking, 'Right now, I just want this to stop.'"

According to the Innocence Project, approximately 25% of DNA exoneration cases involve innocent defendants who originally made false confessions or statements, or even pleaded guilty. The Innocence Project said false confessions are a result of many factors, such as:

• Exhaustion from lengthy interrogations.
• The misguided belief that they will be released after confessing, so they'll have time to prove their innocence later.
• Some are told they'll be convicted even without a confession, but a confession would mean a lesser sentence.
• Interrogators tell some suspects that a confession is their only way to avoid execution.
• In the case of juveniles, they may have less awareness of the situation and are more easily manipulated.

But what about suspects who give detailed false confessions that match real occurrences at the crime scene, even if they were never there? The Innocence Project's answer for that is a phenomenon it calls confession contamination, where interrogators reveal specific facts about the crime to their suspect during the course of the investigation. That allows an innocent suspect to make a false yet detailed confession by simply repeating the account given to him by the interrogator.

Lingering Questions

Despite this proposed settlement, two doctors who tended to the victim Patricia Meili after the brutal attack told The Wall Street Journal recently that some of her physical wounds indicated Reyes may not have acted alone.

They noticed some wounds didn't appear to be caused by a blunt weapon Reyes said he used in the attack, but rather sharp ones like a knife or blade. "There had to be another individual or a group who inflicted injuries with a sharp-edged instrument if he only used a blunt object," Dr. Robert Kurtz told The Wall Street Journal.

The victim also had several sets of handprints imprinted on her legs after the attack, according to Dr. Jane Haher, who examined Meili after the incident. That suggests "people held her legs down while somebody did this horrible act," she told WSJ.

Their claims do not necessarily reflect on the Central Park Five's innocence or guilt, but the doctors say their observations do raise a legitimate question of whether Reyes truly acted alone.

SEE ALSO: How A Cop Accidentally Coerced An Innocent Woman Into Confessing To Murder

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A 102-year-old woman accused of killing her 100-year-old roommate in a nursing home nearly five years ago is facing a second-degree murder charge.

Laura Lundquist - the oldest murder defendant in Massachusetts history - was 98 when she was charged in 2009 on allegations that she strangled Elizabeth Barrow, who was found with a plastic bag tied around her head in her bed at the Brandon Woods nursing home in Dartmouth.

Lundquist had a longstanding diagnosis of dementia and was ruled incompetent to stand trial. Since her indictment, she has been held at a state psychiatric hospital.

Barrow's son, Scott, said he realises Lundquist will likely never stand trial in his mother's death.

"It would be like prosecuting a two-year-old," he said. "It's just an awful thing that happened. How could she be held accountable for this when she's not in her right mind?"

After Lundquist was indicted in 2009, Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter said prosecutors pursued a second-degree murder charge because they didn't believe Lundquist had the cognitive ability to form premeditation, which must be proven in a first-degree murder case.

Mr Sutter's spokesman, Gregg Miliote, said the case remains open.

Scott Barrow is hoping a lawsuit he filed against the nursing home, its owners and operators will eventually be heard by a jury. In 2012, an arbitrator ruled in favor of the nursing home and found no negligence.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court heard arguments in the case in April and is expected to rule soon on whether the case can go to trial.

After Lundquist was indicted, Sutter said she suffered from paranoia and thought Barrow "was taking over the room" they shared at the nursing home. Sutter also said Lundquist had told Barrow she would soon get her bed by the window because she would outlive her.

Scott Barrow said he had asked nursing home staff to separate his mother and Lundquist, but they assured him the two were getting along. He said his mother did not want to leave the room because she and her husband had lived in the room together before he died in 2007.

Lundquist's lawyer, Carl Levin, declined to comment on Lundquist or her health, citing the ongoing criminal case and health care privacy laws.

After Lundquist was charged, Scott Picone, then the nursing home's chief of operations, said the two women had been offered room changes twice in the months before Barrow's death in September 2009 but both declined. He said the two women were friendly toward one another and often told each other "goodnight" and "I love you."

Picone did not immediately return a call seeking comment Friday. Peter Knight, a lawyer representing Picone and other nursing home officials in Barrow's lawsuit, also did not immediately return a call.

SEE ALSO: An 89-Year-Old Philadelphian Has Been Charged With Helping Murder 216,000 Jews During The Holocaust

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Donald Trump attacked the city of New York in an op-ed Saturday for offering a large cash settlement to the Central Park 5, young men who were jailed as teens for a brutal rape they didn't commit.

"My opinion on the settlement of the Central Park Jogger case is that it’s a disgrace," Trump wrote in a New York Daily News op-ed that also called the deal "ridiculous."

The $40 million settlement was a long time coming for the five men, who were pressured to confess to the notorious 1989 rape and vicious beating of the so-called Central Park Jogger. The convicted men spent between five and 13 years behind bars before an unrelated man named Matias Reyes confessed in 2002 that he was the rapist and that he acted alone. Reyes' DNA was linked to the crime scene.

In his op-ed, Trump implies that the Central Park 5 somehow had a false conviction coming to them and had pulled a fast one on the city.

"Forty million dollars is a lot of money for the taxpayers of New York to pay when we are already the highest taxed city and state in the country. The recipients must be laughing out loud at the stupidity of the city," he wrote. "Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels."

The young men he's talking about were all black and Hispanic and only between 14 and 16 years old when they were interrogated. One detective admitted lying to one of the boys by saying they'd found his fingerprints on the rape victim's clothes. The five boys were still convicted, even though their accounts of the rape were wildly inconsistent and they recanted their confessions.

The city's settlement gives the men $1 million for each year they served in prison. Four of the five men — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Yusef Salaam — served approximately seven years in prison. But since the fifth man, Kharey Wise, served 13 years. The approved settlement would mean the city will pay Wise more money than it has in all other wrongful conviction cases.

The New York Times had an editorial today praising Mayor Bill de Blasio for moving to settle the case after his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, spent so many years fighting the suit.

Additional reporting by Corey Adwar. 

SEE ALSO: 5 Men Who Were Pressured To Confess To New York's Most Notorious Rape Could Get Millions

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Pope Francis journeyed Saturday to the heart of Italy’s biggest crime syndicate and declared that all mobsters are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

During his one-day pilgrimage to the southern region of Calabria — the power base of the ‘ndrangheta, a global drug trafficking syndicate that enriches itself by extorting businesses and infiltrating public works contracts there — the pope made the stark announcement.

“Those who go down the evil path, as the Mafiosi do, are not in communion with God. They are excommunicated,” he warned during his homily at an outdoor Mass.

In addition Francis denounced the ‘ndrangheta for what he called its “adoration of evil and contempt for the common good.”

Also during the trip the pope comforted the jailed father of Nicola Campolongo, a 3-year-old boy slain in the region’s drug war several months ago.

In January the boy was shot, along with one of his grandfathers and the grandfather’s girlfriend, in an attack blamed on drug turf wars in the nearby town of Cassano all’Jonio. The attackers torched the car with all three victims inside.

The boy’s father and mother already were in jail at the time on drug trafficking charges. The pope had expressed his horror following the attack and promised to visit the town.

Francis embraced the man in the courtyard of a prison in the town of Castrovillari. He asked the pope to pray for the boy’s mother, who was permitted to leave prison following her son’s slaying and remains under house arrest. The pope also met two of the boy’s grandmothers.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Francis told the father: “May children never again have to suffer in this way.”

“The two grandmothers were weeping like fountains,” Benedettini added.

Francis greeted about 200 other prisoners during his visit there.

SEE ALSO: Pope Says Nope To Dope

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The future scares a lot of people. Climate change, a growing population, and fewer natural resources will certainly pose new challenges for the human race in the next few decades.

But when you consider ongoing social and economic progress and all of the coming innovations in science and technology, there's plenty of room for optimism.

We've pulled out some of our favorite ideas about the future of our world.

Child mortality rates will be vastly lower.

During the 20th century, the sharpest declined in mortality involved deaths of children under 5 years old, according to the assessment on human health from the Copenhagen Consensus on Human Challenge. "However, the pace of decline has been rapid in low and middle-income countries, especially since 1950," that report said.

Between 1990 and 2012, the number of under-5 child deaths went from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births to 48 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to a 2013 report from UNICEF.

The Copenhagen report found these trends are likely to continue, with the rate dropping to 31 per 1,000 live births in 2050 and even more dramatic declines in regions like Africa.

The factors behind this decline include prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, immunization against diseases, insecticide-treated nets to control diseases like malaria, and micronutrients for children to prevent life-threatening deficiencies.

We'll have vaccines and cures for many diseases.

While we can't know what will threaten our bodies in the future, cures and vaccines for current diseases and illnesses will surely improve by 2050.

Researchers are confident that within 20 years they can design a vaccine to stop the spread of HIV, which currently kills anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million people per year. That's according to Martin Wiselka, consultant in infectious diseases at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, as reported in The Daily Mirror.

To be sure, we've had troubles coming up with a traditional vaccine to prevent HIV in the past. However, scientists are making big strides in understanding how our immune system interacts with the virus.

While treatment already exists for malaria, which kills 1 million people a year, many organizations are working to eradicate the disease entirely. Some remain hopeful for a vaccine, while others go to the source by genetically engineering mosquitoes carrying the parasite to self-destruct.

A better understanding of the processes behind Alzheimer's bring us closer and closer to a cure.

A U.S. vaccine already exists for meningitis, which other countries will soon adopt.

As for cancer, we're making progress in treating some types. A rheumatoid arthritis drug recently cured a young child's leukemia. A modified measles vaccine put another woman's cancer into remission. Nanoparticles could even attack cancer stem cells, which cause tumors to form. Others are trying to teach the body to attack cancer directly, by training the immune system with "cancer vaccines."

Humans could be live forever as computerized brains.

In the coming decades, some scientists hope to upload the contents of human brains into computers, allowing people to live forever inside a robotic body or even as a hologram.

Neuroscientist Randal Koene and Russian financial-backer Dmitry Itskov are trying to transfer human consciousness and brain functions to an artificial body by 2045 by "mapping the brain, reducing its activity to computations, and reproducing those computations in code,"according to Popular Science.

Koene said his work isn't just about achieving immortality. It's about giving people the ability to go places and do things that are impossible in our own bodies, like traveling close to the sun.

Even if we don't meet that goal by 2050, people alive today may still have their brains uploaded in the future. That's because other scientists are working on preserving human brains and all their contents indefinitely through immersion in chemical solutions.

"If we could put the brain into a state in which it does not decay, then the second step could be done 100 years later, and everyone could experience mind uploading first hand," scientist Kenneth Hayworth, of the Brain Preservation Foundation, told Popular Science. Hayworth believes scientists may discover how to preserve a mouse brain by 2015.

The Los Angeles Police Department, like many urban police forces today, is both heavily armed and thoroughly computerized. The Real-Time Analysis and Critical Response Division in downtown LA is its central processor. Rows of crime analysts and technologists sit before a wall covered in video screens stretching more than 10 metres wide. Multiple news broadcasts are playing simultaneously, and a real-time earthquake map is tracking the region’s seismic activity. Half-a-dozen security cameras are focused on the Hollywood sign, the city’s icon. In the centre of this video menagerie is an oversized satellite map showing some of the most recent arrests made across the city – a couple of burglaries, a few assaults, a shooting.

On a slightly smaller screen the division’s top official, Captain John Romero, mans the keyboard and zooms in on a comparably micro-scale section of LA. It represents just 500 feet by 500 feet. Over the past six months, this sub-block section of the city has seen three vehicle burglaries and two property burglaries – an atypical concentration. And, according to a new algorithm crunching crime numbers in LA and dozens of other cities worldwide, it’s a sign that yet more crime is likely to occur right here in this tiny pocket of the city.

The algorithm at play is performing what’s commonly referred to as predictive policing. Using years – and sometimes decades – worth of crime reports, the algorithm analyses the data to identify areas with high probabilities for certain types of crime, placing little red boxes on maps of the city that are streamed into patrol cars. “Burglars tend to be territorial, so once they find a neighborhood where they get good stuff, they come back again and again,” Romero says. “And that assists the algorithm in placing the boxes.”

Romero likens the process to an amateur fisherman using a fish finder device to help identify where fish are in a lake. An experienced fisherman would probably know where to look simply by the fish species, time of day, and so on. “Similarly, a really good officer would be able to go out and find these boxes. This kind of makes the average guys' ability to find the crime a little bit better.”

Predictive policing is just one tool in this new, tech-enhanced and data-fortified era of fighting and preventing crime. As the ability to collect, store and analyze data becomes cheaper and easier, law enforcement agencies all over the world are adopting techniques that harness the potential of technology to provide more and better information. But while these new tools have been welcomed by law enforcement agencies, they’re raising concerns about privacy, surveillance and how much power should be given over to computer algorithms.

P Jeffrey Brantingham is a professor of anthropology at UCLA who helped develop the predictive policing system that is now licensed to dozens of police departments under the brand name PredPol. “This is not Minority Report,” he’s quick to say, referring to the science-fiction story often associated with PredPol’s technique and proprietary algorithm. “Minority Report is about predicting who will commit a crime before they commit it. This is about predicting where and when crime is most likely to occur, not who will commit it.”

PredPol is now being used in a third of the LA Police Department’s 21 geographic policing divisions, and officers on patrol are equipped with maps sprinkled with a dozen or more red boxes indicating high probabilities of criminal activity. For now, the LAPD is focusing on burglary, vehicle break-ins and car theft – three types of crime that last year made up more than half of the roughly 104,000 crimes recorded in LA.

Dozens of other cities across the US and beyond are using the PredPol software to predict a handful of other crimes, including gang activity, drug crimes and shootings. Police in Atlanta use PredPol to predict robberies. Seattle police are using it to target gun violence. In England, Kent police have used PredPol to predict drug crimes and robberies. Brantingham notes that Kent police are taking a more proactive approach by not only concentrating officers in prediction areas, but also civilian public safety volunteers and drug intervention workers.

The prediction algorithm is constantly reacting to crime reports in these cities, and a red box predicting crime can move at any moment. But although officers in the divisions using PredPol are required to spend a certain amount of time in those red boxes every patrol, they’re not just blindly following the orders of the crime map. “The officer still has a lot of discretion. It’s not just the algorithm,” Romero says. “The officer still has to know the area well enough to know when to adjust and go back into manual.”

Clicking on a few of the boxes for more detail, Romero brings up Google Street View images of the predicted crime areas. Two are centred on the car parks of big box stores, not particularly surprising places for car break-ins and thefts, says Romero. But Brantingham contends that the algorithm is doing much more than just telling cops what they already know.

“Crime hotspots are incredibly dynamic,” he says. “Yes, there are bad sides of town and good sides of town, but within those broad distinctions crime hotspots pop up and spread and disappear and pop up again in really complicated ways that are just very, very difficult, if not impossible, for the individual to intuit.”

Not that they don’t try. Beginning in the mid-1990s, police in the New York City Police Department began to run statistical analyses of the city’s crime reports, arrests and other police activity known as Compstat. Law-enforcement agencies around the world have since implemented their own data-driven approaches to tracking and adapting to crime trends. Though police have long mapped out crime hotspots, Brantingham says the increased attention to data and analytics has been a major step up. He calls predictive policing the next iteration of that advancement.

“It’s using much larger collections of data, and processing it in a much more sophisticated mathematical way that allows you to produce significant boosts over just hotspot mapping alone,” Brantingham says. A 21-month single-blind randomized control trial in three LAPD divisions found PredPol to accurately predict twice as much crime as existing best practices, according to Brantingham. However critics have argued that a larger study of multiple cities would be needed to more accurately test its effectiveness.

“Predictive policing is at the cutting edge of policing today. The problem is that, historically, the cutting edge of policing is dull,” says John Eck, a professor of criminology at the University of Cincinnati. He is skeptical about what predictive policing can do to actually prevent crime in the long term. “If crime at locations is highly predictable over long periods, there is often something fundamentally wrong with how the place is managed by its owner that makes it a crime hotspot. And it is the owner who has the responsibility to correct things. We do not have to stop a lot of innocent people and intrude in their lives.

“[Predictive policing] fosters a whack-a-mole policing mentality,” Eck says. “Not that whacking moles doesn’t work – but it is unnecessarily intrusive in people’s lives, which erodes their limited confidence in the police, and undermines something fundamental to our ideals of democracy.”

Widespread data collection efforts have faced scrutiny in recent years, especially since information about the surveillance tactics of the US National Security Agency was leaked by Edward Snowden last June. And though much of that data collection focuses on digital communications, a growing amount of information is being gathered in the physical world.

Police departments across the US are considering using drones to assist in policing and surveillance. The LAPD has access to more than 1,000 closed-circuit security cameras. Number-plate readers have been installed on police cars in a number of cities, including Los Angeles. The LA County Sheriff’s Department recently tested out an airplane-mounted system that recorded real-time activity in the entire city of Compton. And by this summer, the FBI plans to have a fully operational face recognition system that will eventually contain upwards of 52 million records.

According to documents released by the FBI as a result of a lawsuit filed by civil liberties organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the database will include not only criminal mugshots but also millions of photos taken for non-criminal reasons such as employment background checks. That lawsuit was filed by Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the EFF, who says that the FBI’s facial recognition database is hardly the only one. Law enforcement agencies in San Diego County and in Maricopa County, Arizona, have contracts with private firms to build their own local facial recognition databases, while the New York Police Department has partnered with Microsoft to create a “Domain Awareness System” capable of accessing more than 3,000 surveillance cameras as well as a trove of crime data, 911 calls, number-plate readers and even radiation detectors.

Law enforcement agencies now have access to hundreds of millions of records, many of non-criminal members of the general public. While these tools have been useful for police, they are not failsafe. A California woman recently won a civil rights lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department after a number-plate reader misidentified hers as a stolen car and she was held at gunpoint by officers, forced to her knees and detained for 20 minutes.

In Los Angeles, Lynch and the EFF have partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California on a lawsuit seeking information from the LAPD and the LA County Sheriff about how exactly they collect number plate data. “The law enforcement agencies have not even been willing to talk to us about that,” Lynch says. “And I think that’s really problematic. If we can’t get information on how they’re using this data and what kind of surveillance they’re doing, I don’t see why we should accept the fact that they’re doing it."

Lynch worries that there’s too much submissive acceptance of these technologies by the public, without consideration of exactly how this data is collected and used. She says that predictive policing, with its claims of reducing crime, will be given something of a free pass.

“What starts to happen is people think the results that come out of that must be accurate because there’s technology involved,” Lynch says. “But what we forget is that the information that went in may have been the subject of bias, may have been based on inaccurate assumptions about people, may have been collected in certain communities more than other communities. The problem is technology legitimizes somehow the problematic policing that was the origination of the data to begin with.”

Brantingham says that because PredPol only concerns itself with the spatial and temporal aspects of crime, it wouldn’t be skewed by social factors. And Romero says the LAPD has been conscientious about how it collects and uses the increasing amount of data in its storage drives.

“We’re pretty careful about what people do here,” Romero says. “I care about civil liberties and freedom. And I know that our constitution was not written to protect us from gang members and thieves and thugs; it was written to protect us from the government and overreach of the government.”

But concerns persist. Gary T Marx, professor emeritus of sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says technology such as predictive policing creates “categorical suspicion" of people in predicted crime areas, which can lead to unnecessary questioning or excessive stopping-and-searching. And as data-driven policing expands, Marx worries that analysis and decision-making by machine will lead to what he calls “the tyranny of the algorithm”.

“The Soviet Union had remarkably little street crime when they were at their worst of their totalitarian, authoritarian controls,” Marx says. “But, my god, at what price?”

• Designing out crime in Scandinavia

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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PARIS (Reuters) - Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation by magistrates in Paris on Wednesday morning on suspicion of influence peddling and other crimes in connection with a campaign leaks probe, the prosecutor's office said.

It was the second time the former president, who was defeated by Socialist Francois Hollande in 2012, was placed under such a judicial probe since he lost his legal immunity after leaving office. Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing.

Under French law, being placed under formal investigation indicates there exists "serious or consistent evidence" pointing to probable implication of a suspect in a crime.

The case relates to suspicions he used his influence to get information on an investigation into funding irregularities in his victorious 2007 election campaign

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

SEE ALSO: It's Bad In France

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Doctors have said one of the two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who allegedly stabbed her friend to please the fictional internet character Slender Man is mentally incompetent to stand trial, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Two doctors concluded the girl's medical evaluations showed she was mentally incompetent to proceed in her defense, her lawyers said.

The court still has to decide whether the girl can stand trial. Judge Michael Bohren ordered another competency hearing for the girl on August 1. He also ordered an examination that would focus on her mental state at the time of the alleged stabbing, her defense attorney Anthony Cotton said, according to wire reported cited in the Chicago Tribune.

Cotton said he thinks the case should be moved to juvenile courts, away from media attention. 

In the state of Wisconsin, all attempted homicide cases involving suspects who are at least 10 years old must start in adult courts. Then, lawyers can ask for the case to be moved to a juvenile court. If convicted for attempted homicide as adults, the girls face up to 60 years; if convicted as juveniles, they could be put in jail until they're 25.

The other girl charged in the stabbing case appeared in court on Wednesday, and her case was set for August 1 as well.

According to their peers, the girls were both good friends with their victim, and planned the murder attempt for many months. They reportedly told investigators they planned to go live in a Wisconsin forest with Slender Man after the stabbing.

SEE ALSO: Released 911 Call In Grisly 'Slender Man Stabbing' Reveals 12-Year-Old Victim's Struggle

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Earlier this week, a California resident was driving down the 10 Freeway, near La Brea Avenue, when he noticed something truly shocking: a California Highway Patrol officer repeatedly punching a black woman he had pinned down.

Unfortunately for the CHP, most drivers nowadays have cellphones with recording devices: the whole incident was caught on camera, uploaded onto YouTube, and sent to various press agencies. 

Fair warning: the video is hard to watch. It shows a woman being caught and held down on the ground along the side of the freeway, while a large officer punches her,repeatedly, in the face. She appears to try holding up her hands to shield herself. It was filmed by a passing driver, David Diaz, early Tuesday evening, in L.A.

According to the AP, Diaz got to the scene as the woman was walking off the road, only turning around when the officer yelled at her. 

“He just pounded her,” Diaz said to CBS Los Angeles. “If you look at the video, there are 15 hits. To the head, and not just simple jabs. These are blows to the head. Blows. Really serious blows. And this is ridiculous to me.”

“He agitated the situation more than helped it,” he added.

In response, the CHP has said it’ll investigate the incident, though they were quick to point out that it would be “premature” to conclude anything without knowing the full context. (Though what could merit bashing a woman’s face over ten times has been left up to the public’s imagination.) In the meantime, at least, the punch-happy officer has been put on administrative leave. Said the CHP in a statement on Thursday:

The California Highway Patrol (CHP) is aware of the video and we are looking into the incident. As a matter of policy, every time there is a use of force by our officers, there is a review conducted to determine whether the use of force was appropriate. That will be done in this case, however, since there is an ongoing investigation, it would be premature to comment on this specific video segment without reviewing the entire incident.

According to CHP Assistant Chief Chris O’Quinn, the officer in question was simply responding to a report of a woman roaming on the freeway; when he got to her, she was making her way down an off-ramp and wandering between lanes. The woman, who remains unidentified, is unharmed — they say — but undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.

Of course, this is far from the first incident of police brutality to take place in the U.S., and not even the first to be caught on film. Some police forces are more extreme than others — the Albuquerque police, for example, have a “pattern of use of excessive force, including deadly force,” according to the DOJ —  but individual cases of police violence are far from rare. In fact, according to the Center for Research on Globalization, ”500 innocent Americans are murdered by police every year (USDOJ).”

Just a quick look at Tuesday’s video, or the responses to the New York Police Department’s misguided Twitter campaign (#MyNYPD), brings that reality painfully home. 

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Imagine an American city with 2.2 million people, making it the fourth largest in the nation behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Now imagine that city is a place where residents suffer routine violence and cruelty at rates unlike anywhere else in the country, where they are raped and beaten with alarming frequency by their neighbors and even the city officials who are paid to keep them safe.

Now imagine that we, as a nation, didn’t consider the vast majority of that violence to be criminal or even worth recording. That is, in effect, the state of the U.S. correctional system today.

Each year, the federal government releases two major snapshots of crime in America: The Uniform Crime Reports, written by the FBI, and theNational Crime Victimization Survey, compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As part of the former, the FBI tallies a year’s worth of crime as reported by police departments around the country. The latter estimates the same by surveying a sample of the American public.

The two reports provide the best available data on crime in America and together are used as something of a proxy for how successful our justice system is at curbing crime around the country. According to both, America has become significantly safer over the past two decades, with today’s violent crime rate nearly half of what it was at the start of the 1990s. Neither report, however, takes into account what happens inside U.S. prisons, where countless crimes go unreported and the relatively few that are recorded end up largely ignored.

If we had a clearer sense of what happens behind bars, we’d likely see that we are reducing our violent crime rate, at least in part, with a statistical sleight of hand—by redefining what crime is and shifting where it happens. “The violence is still there,” says Lovisa Stannow, the executive director of Just Detention International, a human rights organization dedicated to ending sexual abuse and violence in prisons and jails. “It’s just been moved from our communities to our jails and prisons where it’s much more hidden.”

It counts as an assault when one drug dealer beats up a second on the streets of Chicago, why shouldn’t it count as sexual assault when one of them is raped after he is sent to prison? It is a crime when someone beats his wife, so why shouldn’t it be a crime when that same person attacks a prison guard?

America’s correctional system houses 2.2 million people. That would make it the fourth largest city in the nation.

Technically, of course, they are crimes — only the likelihood that someone will be investigated, charged, and prosecuted for them are vanishingly small. Indeed, the assault — especially if it’s between inmates — is likely to never be officially noted. The Department of Justice chooses to exclude the bulk of violence committed inside its correctional facilities from the national crime surveys. These wholesale omissions make it impossible to paint a complete picture of life behind bars in America, but there are nonetheless bits and pieces of the puzzle that we can pull together from what little is available.

The FBI, for example, counts aggravated assaults, while the Bureau of Prisons tracks inmate violations for assault on fellow prisoners and guards. The BJS self-reported survey lumps rapes and sexual assaults together, but the National Inmate Survey uses a “sexual victimization” catchall. What might get you arrested outside of prison won’t necessarily earn you a violation inside one, and vice versa.

Because as much as we may want to believe that putting more people in prison has made our country a less violent one, the numbers we have suggest that that violence itself doesn’t disappear, it is simply relegated to a place the public can barely see. Regardless of whether you believe that’s a fair trade-off, it stands to reason that the brutality occurring behind bars deserves a fuller accounting — particularly given that we know there are innocent men and women serving sentences they don’t deserve.

So, again, imagine this correctional metropolis, and those to whom it is home. First the good news, which may come as a surprise: Someone living there is less likely to be murdered than they would be elsewhere in America. That, however, is where the good news ends.

The bad news, of which there is plenty, is that the life he faces is so brutal that he is more likely to commit suicide than if he were free, and his chances of being raped and beaten, possibly repeatedly, appear exponentially greater.

All told, there are likely at least hundreds of thousands of violent acts that occur in this city every year that could be counted as a crime if they occurred on the other side of the fence. For comparison, there were 1.2 million violent crimes reported to the FBI by police departments across the country in 2012, and a little more than 5.8 million self-reported by inmates that same year, according to the BJS survey.

With the exception of fatalities — which, after all, pretty much count themselves — the Justice Department statisticians go to the greatest trouble to tally rapes and sexual assaults inside prisons, or at least they have since Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003 mandating for the first time that they go through the trouble of estimating the crisis.

The most recent numbers are staggering. In a 2012 survey, a full 4 percent of the nation’s prisoners and 3.2 percent of jail inmates reported being sexually victimized in the previous 12 months, more than half of which said the alleged incident involved a prison guard or other staff member. When you account for inmate turnover that figure represents roughly 200,000 possible victims a year, according to BJS. Because the survey tallies victims and not incidents, an inmate who is raped repeatedly in a given year counts as a single entry.

It’s realistic to believe that the true number of incidents is a multiple many times that 200,000 figure. “Rape is not part of the penalty,” says Stannow. “It’s enormously important that we have a detailed picture of what’s happening because that’s the data that we need to solve the problem.” In the rest of the country, meanwhile, the self-reported total of rapes and sexual assaults in 2012 was 346,830, representing a rate of 1.3 per 1,000 people 12 years of age or older, or 0.13 percent.*

While rapes have garnered the most attention since the government first began surveying inmates in 2004, it is the near-constant physical abuse — again, at the hands of both inmates and guards—that goes almost entirely unquestioned. The numbers here, too, are imperfect and somewhat dated, but a self-reported survey from 2004 found that 16% of state inmates said they had been injured in a fight since they began doing time.

Administrative prison records offer another data point: In 2000, inmates were given 52,307 violations for assaulting fellow prisoners or guards, for a rate of 4,260 violations per 100,000 prisoners. Outside prison walls, meanwhile, the FBI tallied 911,706 aggravated assaults that same year, for a rate of 324 for every 100,000 people.

The number of people incarcerated in the United States quadrupled during the past four decades before plateauing (and then slightly receding) in the past five years. The inmate population grew so fast during the boom that states were unable to build prisons fast enough to keep up: At last count, more than half of the state prison systems, as well as the federal one, were operating at or above 100% capacity. If we choose to continue to lock people up at a rate unparalleled in the world, we should at least be honest and acknowledge that doing so is aimed at eliminating violence from our streets, not necessarily our country.

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