3,576 articles
Immigration and crime
Immigration and crime is a field of research examining how immigration affects criminal offending, finding that immigrants commit crimes at rates similar to or lower than native-born populations.
Immunity from prosecution (international law)
Immunity from prosecution in international law shields state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction: personal immunity for heads of state and foreign ministers while in office, functional immunity for official acts, with contested exceptions for international crimes under ILC draft Article 7.
Immurement
Immurement (Medieval Latin immurare, "to wall in") is sealing a person alive in an enclosure to die, used as execution, human sacrifice, or voluntary ascetic practice; known from Roman Vestal punishment and medieval religious enclosure.
Impalement
Impalement: execution by driving a stake through the body, Old Persian uzmayāpati kar. Attested in Neo-Assyrian warfare and law, Achaemenid Persia (Bisotun), and Vlad III Dracula's 15th-century Wallachia; forensics also uses the term for perforating rod injuries.
Imprisonment of Imran Khan
Imprisonment of Imran Khan: detention of Pakistan's ex-PM Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi at Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, since 2023, after Toshakhana, cipher, graft and marriage convictions, several later overturned, with UN findings of arbitrary detention.
Imprisonment of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Imprisonment of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: the former Brazilian president's 2018–2019 detention in Curitiba after Car Wash corruption convictions, his release, and the 2021 annulment of the cases.
In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood is Truman Capote's 1966 nonfiction novel about the 1959 Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kansas, researched with Harper Lee, serialized in The New Yorker, and regarded as foundational to modern true crime.
Inagawa-kai (稲川会)
Inagawa-kai (稲川会), a Tokyo-based Japanese designated boryokudan founded around 1949 by Seijo Inagawa in Atami; one of Japan's three largest yakuza syndicates with the Yamaguchi-gumi and Sumiyoshi-kai, once described as second-largest at over 8,600 members.
Incarceration in the United States
Incarceration in the United States is the confinement of people in federal and state prisons and locally run jails, with probation and parole serving as community supervision.
Inchoate offense
Inchoate offense: also called inchoate crime or unfinished crime, a criminal offense punishing conduct before a target crime is completed, chiefly attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation, with renunciation defenses and double inchoate extensions in some jurisdictions.
Incitement
Incitement: inchoate criminal liability for urging or persuading another to commit an offence, also called solicitation in the US. Covers common law elements, codified tests, and the US Brandenburg imminent lawless action standard.
Indecent exposure
Indecent exposure is the crime of publicly exposing one's genitals in a way likely to offend or alarm others, usually a misdemeanor in most U.S. states.
Indian indenture system
Indian indenture system: state-regulated contract labor scheme moving about 1.3–1.6 million Indians to plantation colonies (Mauritius, Caribbean, Fiji, Natal, Assam) from 1834 to 1917 after British slavery abolition, enforced by penal sanctions and debated as a 'new system of slavery.'
Indian Penal Code
Indian Penal Code (IPC), Act No. 45 of 1860, India's principal criminal code drafted under Macaulay, 511 sections, in force 1861 to 2024, replaced by Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
Indictable offence
Indictable offence: a criminal offence triable on indictment in a higher court, contrasted with summary offences. Covers England and Wales categories, Canadian hybrid offences, Australian Crimes Act thresholds, and US grand-jury usage.
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet: the 1998 London detention of the former Chilean dictator on a Spanish warrant from Judge Baltasar Garzón, the House of Lords immunity rulings, and his 2000 release after 503 days.
Indictments against Donald Trump
Indictments against Donald Trump: four 2023 criminal indictments (New York hush money, federal classified documents, federal election interference, Georgia RICO), 91 charges, one conviction, later dismissals.
Indrani Mukerjea
Indrani Mukerjea, also known as Pori Bora, is a former Indian media executive accused of murdering her daughter Sheena Bora, arrested in 2015 and granted bail in 2022.
Inés Coronel Barreras
Inés Coronel Barreras (born 1968, Canelas, Durango), Mexican Sinaloa Cartel figure, father of El Chapo's wife Emma Coronel Aispuro; OFAC-sanctioned 2013, arrested in Agua Prieta, sentenced to 10 years in 2017.
Infanticide
Infanticide is the killing of an infant, typically by a mother, also called neonaticide in the first day of life. A distinct offense under acts in about two dozen countries, notably England's 1922/1938 Infanticide Acts; the US has none.
Informant
Informant: a person supplying criminal information to law enforcement, also called a confidential informant (CI) or FBI confidential human source (CHS). Distinguished from tipsters by personal gain; governed by DOJ guidelines, with documented oversight failures.
Innocence Project
The Innocence Project, founded 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld at Cardozo School of Law, is a national litigation and policy nonprofit using DNA testing to exonerate the wrongfully convicted; 205 DNA exonerations of clients and leader of the 70-member Innocence Network.
Inquisitorial system
Inquisitorial system: judge-led criminal procedure model of civil-law and Islamic-law countries, also called processus per inquisitionem, in which a judicial officer investigates, gathers evidence, and questions witnesses, contrasting with the adversarial common-law model.
Insanity
Insanity is a legal construct for assessing criminal responsibility. The insanity defense, from M'Naghten (1843) through Durham, the Model Penal Code, and Kahler v. Kansas, excuses defendants whose mental disease negated culpability.
Insanity defense
Insanity defense: criminal law plea that mental illness at the time of the offense negates criminal responsibility. Tests include M'Naghten, irresistible impulse, Durham, and MPC; narrowed after Hinckley's 1982 acquittal; abolished in four states.
Inside Man
Inside Man (2006) is Spike Lee's heist thriller starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster, written by first-timer Russell Gewirtz, produced by Brian Grazer, grossing $88.5M in the US.
Insurance fraud
Insurance fraud is deliberate deception by insurers, agents, adjusters, or consumers to obtain illegitimate gains, spanning hard and soft fraud, staged accidents, and application lies; it costs U.S. consumers an estimated $308.6 billion a year.
IntelBroker
IntelBroker: online handle of alleged data-breach broker Kai Logan West, a/k/a Kyle Northern, a 25-year-old British national arrested in France in February 2025 and indicted in the U.S. Southern District of New York for selling stolen data on BreachForums.
Intention (criminal law)
Intention (criminal law), or mens rea, is the mental state of aiming at a prohibited result or knowing it is virtually certain. Covers direct and oblique intent, Woollin, the Model Penal Code, dolus eventualis, and Rome Statute Article 30.
Internal affairs (law enforcement)
Internal affairs (also professional standards department) is the police unit that investigates misconduct, brutality, and corruption within its own agency and recommends discipline, operating under external oversight bodies such as the UK IOPC.