Until recently, clandestine burial investigations relied upon witness statements to determine target search areas of soil and vegetation disturbance. Due to this, remote sensing technologies are increasingly used to detect fresh clandestine graves. However, despite the increased capabilities of remote sensing, clandestine burial searches remain resourcefully intensive as the police have little access to the technology when it is required. In contrast to this, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology is increasingly popular amongst law enforcement worldwide. As such, this paper explores the use of digital imagery collected from a low cost UAV for the aided detection of disturbed soil sites indicative of fresh clandestine graves. This is done by assessing the unaltered UAV video output using image processing tools to detect sites of disturbance, therefore highlighting previously unrecognised capabilities of police UAVs. This preliminary investigation provides a low cost rapid approach to detecting fresh clandestine graves, further supporting the use of UAV technology by UK police.

Building on comparative research in the U.K. and the U.S.A., this is the first book focused specifically on transgender experiences within policing. It examines the issues faced by the transgender community within policing and explores how gender, and the non-conformity of it, is perceived within police cultures. Moreover, it provides an on-going critique of the queer criminology movement and why it is crucial to policing studies, emphasising the specific importance of transgender issues therein. This empirical book provides qualitative data from American officers and English and Welsh constables on transgender police. The following research questions are addressed: What are the perceptions of cisgender officers towards transgender officers, and what are the consequences of these perceptions? What are the occupational experiences and perceptions of officers who identify as transgender within policing? Finally, what are the reported positive and negative administrative issues that transgender individuals face within policing? The author concludes by discussing the empirical, theoretical and policy contributions of this research and offers some final thoughts on policy recommendations and directions for future research. A strong contribution to the literature in critical criminology and queer criminology, this book will also be of interest to those in the fields of gender studies, sociology, public administration, management studies and policing studies.

Several approaches are currently being used by law enforcement to locate the remains of victims. Yet, traditional methods are invasive and time-consuming. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based remote sensing has emerged as a potential tool to support the location of human remains and clandestine graves. While offering a non-invasive and low-cost alternative, UAV-based remote sensing needs to be tested and validated for forensic case work. To assess current knowledge, a systematic review of 19 peer-reviewed articles from four databases was conducted, focusing specifically on UAV-based remote sensing for human remains and clandestine grave location. The findings indicate that different sensors (colour, thermal, and multispectral cameras), were tested across a range of burial conditions and models (human and mammalian). While UAVs with imaging sensors can locate graves and decomposition-related anomalies, experimental designs from the reviewed studies lacked robustness in terms of replication and consistency across models. Trends also highlight the potential of automated detection of anomalies over manual inspection, potentially leading to improved predictive modelling. Overall, UAV-based remote sensing shows considerable promise for enhancing the efficiency of human remains and clandestine grave location, but methodological limitations must be addressed to ensure findings are relevant to real-world forensic cases.

This article examines the motivations for American, English, and Welsh transgender motivations for entering policing. Historically and empirically, policing has been documented as a social environment where binary gendered ideologies are strictly enforced and upheld. Further, scant research on transgender perceptions of the police have highlighted fear of sexual assault, fear of arrest, heightened levels of police violence, and general uncomfortableness with interactions with the police. This article argues that instead of avoiding a perceived volatile binary gendered environment, pre-transition transgender identities seek out policing due to hyper masculine expectations of the job itself. I argue that MtF (male-to-female) and FtM (female-to-male) pre-transition transgender identities seek refuge within the hyper masculine environment of policing to ease internal conflicts as a result of gender dysphoria (i.e. pre-transition distress) prior to transition. In this study, 13 transgender police officers from America, England, and Wales were interviewed about their motivations for entering policing. This study found that a majority of male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) transgender identities chose to enter policing due to gender distress pre-transition. This research found that pre-transition people with MtF trasngender identies chose to enter policing to combat their gender dysphoria by proving their "masculinity," and people with FtM transgender identities enter policing to foster and embrace their “masculinity.”

This exploratory study examines 298 homicides of US transgender and gender non‐conforming victims from 1st January 2013–1st January 2023. Using content analysis and triangulation of data from open‐source news reports along with official data sources (i.e., government reports, police reports, post‐mortem reports, etc.) victimology and forensic themes within these homicides were identified and examined. Notably, overkill occurred in over 8% of the overall homicide sample studied with antemortem injury locations centralised to the face (79.17%). Overlapping weapon usage were as follows for studied overkill cases: stabbing wounds (n = 11); blunt force injuries (n = 10); and gunshot wounds (n = 3). The results from this study highlight unique investigative themes for forensic consideration in transgender and gender non‐conforming homicides when facial injuries are apparent.