3,576 articles
Sebastián Marroquín
Sebastián Marroquín, born Juan Pablo Escobar (1977), is Pablo Escobar's only son, an Argentine-based architect, writer, and speaker who asks forgiveness for his father's victims, wrote Pablo Escobar: My Father, and campaigns against glamorized drug-trade portrayals.
Sebastián Marset
Sebastián Marset, also known as "Dor," is an alleged Uruguayan drug trafficker and leader of the First Uruguayan Cartel. He was captured in Bolivia in 2026.
Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
The Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR (ICCPR-OP2), adopted by UN General Assembly resolution 44/128 on 15 December 1989, commits states parties to abolish the death penalty, with a single wartime reservation allowed; 92 parties as of 2026.
Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code
Section 309 IPC criminalised attempted suicide in India, punishable by up to one year's simple imprisonment or fine; upheld in Gian Kaur (1996), neutralised by the Mental Healthcare Act 2017, and omitted by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023.
Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code
Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 punished cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, up to seven years plus fine; replaced by BNS Section 318(4) from 1 July 2024.
Securities fraud
Securities fraud: deception in buying or selling securities, covering insider trading, Ponzi and pump-and-dump schemes, and misrepresentation. Governed by the 1933/1934 Acts and Rule 10b-5; enforced by the SEC and DOJ.
Security hacker
A security hacker is a person who explores computer systems and networks, either to find and fix weaknesses (white hat) or to gain unauthorized access maliciously (black hat).
Sef Gonzales
Sef Gonzales, Filipino Australian triple murderer, killed his parents Teddy and Mary and sister Clodine at North Ryde, Sydney on 10 July 2001, staging a fake hate crime, and received three concurrent life sentences in 2004; a sentence appeal was referred in 2025.
Self-defense
Self-defense (legitimate defense) is the legal justification for using reasonable force against an imminent unlawful attack in criminal, tort, and international law. Distinguished by duty-to-retreat versus stand-your-ground rules, the castle doctrine, and imminence, necessity, and proportionality requirements.
Self-incrimination
Self-incrimination: the privilege against being compelled to be a witness against oneself, grounded in the Fifth Amendment, nemo tenetur maxim, Miranda warnings, Salinas invocation rules, and Canadian and ECHR counterparts.
Self-report study
Self-report study: a criminological survey method asking respondents whether and how often they committed delinquent or criminal acts; pioneered by Porterfield in 1940, refined by Short and Nye, and used to measure hidden crime beyond official statistics.
Semion Mogilevich (Семён Юдкович Могилевич)
Semion Mogilevich (Семён Юдкович Могилевич), born 1946 in Kyiv, alleged Eastern European organized-crime figure, YBM Magnex $150 million securities fraud, US-indicted, $5 million reward, never convicted, believed in Moscow.
Sentence (law)
Sentence (law): the penalty a court imposes after a criminal conviction, including probation, fines, restitution, or imprisonment. Covers statutory sentencing purposes, proportionality, judicial discretion, and US, English, and Australian sentencing frameworks.
September 11th Victim Compensation Fund
The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund is a no-fault program administered by the U.S. Department of Justice to compensate those harmed by the 9/11 attacks.
Serbian mafia
Serbian mafia: organized crime groups based in Serbia, also called Balkan cartel groups, dominant in cocaine and arms trafficking, hierarchically structured, with documented state security ties since the 1990s Yugoslav collapse.
Sergei Mavrodi (Сергей Пантелеевич Мавроди)
Sergei Mavrodi (Сергей Пантелеевич Мавроди), founder of the MMM pyramid scheme, defrauded millions of Russians in 1994, served in the Duma, was convicted of fraud in 2007, relaunched MMM-2011 and Bitcoin-based schemes, and died in 2018.
Serhiy Tkach
Serhiy Tkach (Сергій Ткач, 1952–2018), the "Polohy maniac", was a former Soviet police criminalist who raped and murdered girls and young women across Ukraine from 1980 to 2005; convicted of 37 murders, sentenced to life, while nine innocent people were wrongly convicted for his crimes.
Serial (podcast)
Serial is an American investigative podcast from This American Life, created by Julie Snyder, Ira Glass, and host Sarah Koenig. Season One (2014), on the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and Adnan Syed's conviction, was the first podcast to reach five million downloads and to win a Peabody Award.
Serial killer
Serial killer: a person who unlawfully kills two or more victims in separate events, per the FBI's 2005 definition. Formerly required three or more killings with a cooling-off period; term coined amid 1970s FBI research; rare, under one percent of murders.
Servant Girl Annihilator
Servant Girl Annihilator, also called the Austin Axe Murderer, is the unidentified serial killer who murdered eight people in Austin, Texas, between December 1884 and Christmas Eve 1885, predating Jack the Ripper; the case was never solved.
Setagaya family murder
Unsolved December 30–31, 2000 quadruple murder of the Miyazawa family in Kamisoshigaya, Setagaya, Tokyo; the killer left DNA, fingerprints, clothing and a broken sashimi knife, but no match; no statute of limitations since 2010.
Sex and the law
Sex and the law: the legal regulation of sexual conduct, consent, expression, and health across criminal, family, and communications law, covering consent standards, sexual offences, sex work, decriminalization, and 2025 deepfake and age-verification laws.
Sex differences in crime
Sex differences in crime: the universal pattern that women offend less than men, with men about 90% of US murderers and 98.4% of Albanian prisoners; covers socialization, feminist, and biosocial explanations.
Sex offender
Sex offender: a person convicted of a sex offense, defined for U.S. federal purposes by SORNA (34 U.S.C. 20901). Covers registries from the 1994 Wetterling Act and 1996 Megan's Law to the 2006 Adam Walsh Act, recidivism rates, risk assessment tools, and treatment research.
Sex offender registries in the United States
Sex offender registries in the United States: state and federal databases of convicted sex offenders, established federally by the Jacob Wetterling Act (1994), Megan's Law (1996), and SORNA (2006). Research shows little effect on recidivism.
Sex offender registry
Sex offender registry: government databases of people convicted of designated sex offenses, also called SORN systems. U.S. framework runs from the 1994 Wetterling Act and Megan's Law to SORNA (Adam Walsh Act, 2006), with tiered registration durations and public websites.
Sex tourism
Sex tourism is travel planned primarily for purchasing sexual services, often to destinations with permissive sex work laws or enforcement. Rooted in colonialism and military presence; distinct from, though overlapping with, sex trafficking; child sex tourism is criminalized extraterritorially.
Sex trafficking
Sex trafficking: forcing someone into commercial sex through coercion, fraud, or abuse of vulnerability, as defined by the 2000 Palermo Protocol; distinct from consensual sex work, though conflation, unreliable online-ad indicators, and weak prevalence data complicate identification.
Sex trafficking in Dubai
Sex trafficking in Dubai: exploitation of migrant women and girls for commercial sex in the UAE's largest city. Victims come from Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Eastern Europe; US Tier 2 rating; Federal Law 24 of 2023 governs; ICIJ and State Department document recruitment fraud, debt bondage, and shelter gaps.
Sex trafficking in the United States
Sex trafficking in the United States: commercial sex induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or involving minors, under the TVPA of 2000; covers the 3P framework, T visas, Polaris hotline typology, prevalence-data limits, and myths like the Super Bowl claim.