3,576 articles
Pillory
A pillory is a wooden locking device that restrained an offender's neck and wrists for public humiliation, used from medieval times into the 19th century.
Pink Panthers
Pink Panthers: international Balkan jewel-theft network named after the 2003 Graff London face-cream diamond find; hundreds of audacious heists worth hundreds of millions, countered by INTERPOL's Project Pink Panthers since 2007.
Pirus
Pirus: Compton, California street gangs named after Piru Street; the original Pirus broke with the Crips and helped found the Bloods alliance in the early 1970s, spawning sets such as West Side, Tree Top, and 135 Pirus.
Pittsburgh crime family
The Pittsburgh crime family, also called the LaRocca or LaRocca/Genovese family, is the Pittsburgh-based La Cosa Nostra organization of western Pennsylvania, shaped by Prohibition, the Youngstown war with the Cleveland Mafia, and a 1990 federal racketeering conviction of nine defendants.
Playpen (website)
Playpen was a Tor hidden-service child abuse material site run by Steven Chase from August 2014, seized by the FBI in January 2015 and covertly operated under Operation Pacifier with an NIT warrant, leading to hundreds of arrests and major Rule 41 litigation.
Plea
A plea is the formal answer a defendant gives in court to criminal charges at arraignment: guilty, not guilty, or nolo contendere, in which the defendant accepts the penalty without admitting guilt.
Pleasant Valley State Prison
Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) is a California men's prison opened in 1994 in Coalinga, Fresno County, with design capacity 2,308 at custody levels I-III; known for Valley fever outbreaks and federal medical oversight.
Plötzensee Prison
Plötzensee Prison (Strafgefängnis Berlin-Plötzensee) is a Berlin prison built 1869–1879, Prussia's largest prison complex. Under the Nazis it was the largest civilian execution site, with 2,891 executions 1933–1945; part is now the Plötzensee Memorial Center.
Poh Yuan Nie
Poh Yuan Nie, also known as Pony Poh or Owen Fu, is the former Singapore tuition centre principal convicted of masterminding the 2016 O-Level exam cheating scheme, sentenced to four years' jail, now subject to an Interpol red notice.
Police brutality
Police brutality: excessive or unjustified force by police beyond lawful limits. Covers UK legal framework, use-of-force recording (866,471 reports, 2025-26), IOPC accountability, misconduct test change, US deaths data, and public health effects.
Police caution
A police caution in England and Wales has two meanings: the warning of the right to silence given before questioning, and an out-of-court sanction for admitted minor offenses.
Police corruption
Police corruption: abuse of entrusted police power for private gain, from bribery and evidence fabrication to information misuse. Covers forms, UK and US history, IOPC oversight, Met scandals, and 2025-2026 reforms.
Police misconduct
Police misconduct: breaches of police Standards of Professional Behaviour justifying discipline, and the England and Wales complaints system overseen by the IOPC, covering complaint volumes, 2025 misconduct statistics, dismissals, and 2023-2026 reforms.
Police procedural
Police procedural: crime-fiction subgenre (term coined by Anthony Boucher, 1956) whose protagonists are police detectives solving crimes through realistic investigation, evidence, and interviews; dominant detective form since the mid 1970s, spanning Ed McBain novels, Dragnet, Hill Street Blues, and NCIS.
Police use of deadly force in the United States
Police use of deadly force in the United States: lethal force by law enforcement, governed by Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner, tracked by the FBI's National Use-of-Force Data Collection, with wide policy variation and racial disparities.
Police use of firearms in the United Kingdom
UK police use of firearms: most officers are unarmed; AFOs are specially selected and trained. 17,584 firearms operations in England and Wales in 2025-26, guns fired at people in only 9 incidents.
Political prisoner
Political prisoner: person detained on politically motivated grounds; no agreed international legal definition, distinct from Amnesty's prisoner of conscience. Emerged 1865–1910; over one million worldwide by US State Department estimate.
Polygraph
Polygraph (lie detector): instrument recording respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance while examinees answer questions; invented by Larson in 1921, built on Marston's 1915 blood pressure test and Keeler's portable patented device; used for federal screening and investigations but usually inadmissible in court.
Porn Murders
The Porn Murders (Swedish: Porrmorden) were three unsolved knife murders in Stockholm in 1989, killing workers at pornographic video stores and sex shops; no suspect was ever identified.
Pornography laws by region
Pornography laws by region cover national rules on producing, sharing, and viewing sexual material, spanning US obscenity and age-verification laws, the UK Online Safety and Crime and Policing Acts, EU DSA enforcement, and French and Council of Europe standards.
Port Arthur, Tasmania
Port Arthur, Tasmania: historic former convict penal settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, founded 1830, closed 1877, renamed Carnarvon, later a World Heritage Australian Convict Site and site of the 1996 massacre.
Posse comitatus
Posse comitatus is a federal statute enacted in 1878 that criminalizes the willful deployment of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, or Space Force for law enforcement.
Posthumous execution
Posthumous execution is punishment inflicted on the already dead: Roman damnatio memoriae, Egyptian erasures, medieval burning of heretics' corpses, and England's Murder Act 1752 dissections.
Pregnancy from rape
Pregnancy from rape, or rape-related pregnancy, is conception resulting from sexual assault. Key figures: 5.0% per-rape pregnancy rate among women aged 12–45, about 32,101 US pregnancies yearly, and 1 in 20 US women affected lifetime.
Preston Lord homicide case
Preston Lord homicide case: fatal October 28, 2023 beating of 16-year-old Preston Lord in Queen Creek, Arizona; seven defendants, the Gilbert Goons investigation, MCAO indictments, and Preston's Law.
Presumption of innocence
Presumption of innocence: legal principle that an accused is treated as innocent until proved guilty, placing the burden of proof on the prosecution. Rooted in Roman and canon law, codified in the 1789 French Declaration, guaranteed by ICCPR Article 14(2), ECHR Article 6(2), and EU Directive 2016/343.
Pretty Boy Floyd
Pretty Boy Floyd, Charles Arthur Floyd (1904–1934), Depression-era American bank robber and Public Enemy No. 1; FBI-named gunman of the 1933 Kansas City Massacre, killed October 22, 1934 near East Liverpool, Ohio; distinct from the glam metal band and boxer nicknames.
Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002
Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), India's anti-money-laundering statute, Act 15 of 2003, in force 1 July 2005: defines the laundering offence, mandates FIU-IND reporting, and powers ED attachment and confiscation.
Primeiro Comando da Capital
Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC, First Command of the Capital), Brazilian criminal organization founded in 1993 in Taubaté prison, São Paulo; 20,000–30,000 members, horizontal factional command, cocaine trafficking via Santos, South American expansion, US terrorist designation.
Principi group
Principi group, also called the Belivuk–Miljković clan, formerly Janjičari, is a Serbian FK Partizan hooligan firm turned organized crime group led by Veljko Belivuk, allied with Montenegro's Kavač clan, dismantled by arrests in February 2021 and on trial for murders, torture and drug trafficking.