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Stephen Griffiths, a 40-year-old graduate student in criminology, was charged with the murder of three prostitutes from the West Yorkshire area of England. Griffiths is alleged to have killed Suzanne Blamires, Susan Rushworth, and Shelley Armitage within the city’s red light district in the past 11 months.

Griffiths was reportedly conducting research on serial killers, and told a neighbor he was “getting a PhD in murder and Jack the Ripper.”

Griffiths was caught after review of closed circuit security footage revealed him beating up a woman and then shooting her in the head with a crossbow. Later, the woman’s head and body parts were discovered in a local river.

Last week the Supreme Court ruled that “sexually dangerous” inmates could be held indefinitely in prison, or civil commitment hospital settings, after their prison terms are complete.

The case, decided with a 7-2 ruling, was raised after four men who were deemed sexually dangerous, were held after their prison sentences were over with no end date in sight. The men attempted to prove in the lower courts that indefinite imprisonment based on suspected “future crimes” was unconstitutional.

Twenty states already have laws that allow for indefinite imprisonment of sexually violent predators. This recent Supreme Court ruling supports those states’ decisions and allows other states to institute similar laws.

This topic is one of great debate, because while most people agree that the protection of the public against sex offenders is primary, the implication behind the government being allowed to impose indefinite imprisonment on someone brings up thoughts of Guantanamo Bay.

It seems a little bizarre, but the FBI has in fact developed a museum dedicated to the research of serial killers. Dubbed the “Evil Minds Research Museum,” it focuses on the private artwork, writings, correspondence, and other personal artifacts of serial killers. Located at the FBI training site in Quantico, VA, the museum is in the basement of the Behavior Science Unit (BSU) and is not open to the public. Only scholars and researchers will be allowed to view the materials to analyze and provide insight to the FBI into what makes a serial killer.

A study presented at the recent British Psychological Society Annual Conference revealed that younger jurors are more lenient and sympathetic to offenders with a mental illness than older jurors.

“The study used two groups of participants (the first aged 18 to 30 and the second 50 plus) who were shown videos of courtroom scenes depicting female defendants, either displaying overt behavioral symptoms of borderline personality disorder or not displaying any symptoms to examine whether the two age groups had different attitudes towards the defendants.”

The authors found that the participants from the older group felt that the defendant was “more guilty” than those in the younger group. In addition, they tended to recommend longer, harsher sentences than the younger participants.