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This Department has charge of the ‘classical’ core of law-enforcement — detecting
and investigating crime and fraud, exposing the perpetrators and bringing them to
trial, and forensic science, with all its super-sophisticated techniques and technologies
of evidence gathering. Other responsibilities are dealing with youth crime, giving
assistance to the victims of crime, and conducting searches for missing persons.
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Contents of this Section
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BASIC CRIME TRENDS
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Over recent years the tide of crime has been rising,
a trend that has manifested itself in a number of ways:
Criminals have become more sophisticated: most areas of criminality — drugs, large-scale
fraud, computer crime, financial crime, and the vehicle theft and recycling ‘industry’
— are not only being conducted by more sophisticated methods but are benefiting
from the investment of huge resources in them.
Collaboration is expanding between criminals from the Palestinian Authority and
from Israel.
Israelis are more and more involved in international crime, particularly drug trafficking
and its related offenses (assault, murder, robbery, money laundering), and the I.P.
has had to expand its response and the sophistication of its methodology accordingly.
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INVESTIGATIONS & PROSECUTIONS DIVISION
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This Division is chiefly responsible for directing and
supervising the work of all I.P. investigators and prosecutors, including specialist
Youth Crime and Domestic Violence investigators. Additional responsibilities are:
missing persons, criminal records, staff-work for Investigations & Prosecutions
policy-making, providing expert opinion on subjects under investigation, and applications
to the Ministry of Justice with respect to postponements of judicial proceedings,
appeals, and pardons.
The Investigations Branch comprises more than two thousand investigators at District,
Sub-District, and station level, investigating all forms and categories of crime
from murder and attempted murder to drug trafficking, large-scale fraud, computer
crime, financial crime, and vehicle theft. The branch has recently been reinforced
by hundreds of new investigating officers, specially trained to work in the fields
of youth crime and domestic violence — reflecting the I.P.’s determination that
both prevention and investigation in these two sensitive fields will be of high
quality and attract all required I.P. resources.
The I.P.’s 150 and more prosecutors (the great majority trained lawyers), working
from eleven Prosecution Bureaus around the country, are responsible for compiling,
submitting and prosecuting thousands of indictments each year in the courts.
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MISSING PERSONS
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The Missing Persons Bureau (located in National Headquarters)
gives direction, advice and support to field units, publishes requests for information
about Missing Persons in the media, and links up with its counterparts overseas
to find Israelis missing abroad.
Over 99% of all missing persons return home of their own accord or are located within
a year of their disappearance. Between 1948, when the state was founded, and 1997
no more than some five hundred persons have not been found. Special attention is
paid to missing persons whose safety or lives are endangered (the sick, elderly,
children, and those who cannot help themselves).
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YOUTH CRIME
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The I.P. distinguishes between young offenders (minors
aged 12-18) for whom offending is their way of life and first-time, ‘one-off’ offenders,
who need to be removed from criminal influences as quickly as possible. Every police
station has a Youth Section, staffed by specially trained investigators. The twin
foundations for the Youth Investigators’ work are the legislation on adolescent
criminality and the internal I.P. procedures devised for working with adolescents,
both laws and procedures based on the assumption that these offenders’ youth gives
them a good chance of rehabilitation.
In addition to their investigation duties, the investigators also undertake preventive
measures (mainly informational and educational work in schools), search for young
people gone missing, advise agencies dealing with young people, and exercise oversight
over places of entertainment for the young.
The commonest crime in this age group is property crime, but recent years have seen
an increase in drug abuse and trafficking, and in the use of physical and verbal
violence. The number of youth investigators has been recently greatly expanded in
order to respond adequately to rising crime rates in this age group.
The I.P.’s Youth Investigators work in cooperation and collaboration with the Probation
Service, the Ministry of Education, and all public agencies involved in youth work
— a liaison that helps locate adolescents involved in crimes and conduct joint crime
prevention projects.
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ASSISTANCE TO THE VICTIMS OF CRIME
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In response to public concern that the victims of crime
be given adequate priority and care, the I.P. has set up a special unit for aid
to victims of spousal abuse, which also provides assistance to other groups of crime
victims — the old, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the victims of sexual offenses.
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CRIMINAL RECORDS & COMPUTERIZATION
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By the Criminal Register and Rehabilitation of Offenders
Act, 1981, the I.P. is legally bound to maintain a computerized and up-to-date criminal
record register and supply data from it to authorized persons. Among the Criminal
Records Branch’s other duties is handling inquiries from the public and issuing
‘No Criminal Record’ Certificates to persons entitled to them.
Many elements of I.P. the operations and support network are now computerized, among
them the finger-print file, all investigations files, stolen vehicles and other
stolen property, detentions, arrests, and persons sought for interrogation.
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IDENTIFICATION & FORENSICS
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for the DIFS annual report - click here
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This Division is responsible for the scientific and technical side of criminal investigation,
that is, for extracting ‘material’ evidence from a scene of crime, to complement
the evidence of witnesses, plaintiffs, and suspects. Material evidence can tie a
person to a crime, when investigators have no suspect or an inconclusive case against
a suspect, but can also free a suspect of suspicion, by proving that the ‘material’
from the scene of crime is not his.
Other means of identification are supplied by the Division’s databanks — of fingerprints
and palm-prints, of photographs of offenders, of DNA (containing the individual
human genetic code), of tools used in crimes (e.g. weapons, burglary tools).
To provide conclusive material evidence of identification, the Division is usually
called upon to identify tiny, even microscopic quantities of an infinite range of
substances (e.g. drugs or explosives) or to examine larger objects, such as forged
banknotes or other documents. This identification work is divided between scene-of-crime
officers, using mobile laboratories and portable detection and identification kits
(for forged vehicle registration-number identification, bloodstains, explosives,
bullet holes etc., — many designed and developed by the Division itself ), and the
Central Laboratories at National Headquarters. The importance of scene-of-crime
evidence gathering and processing is that it avoids losing fragile or unstable evidence.
Scene-of-crime officers can compare fingerprints from the scene with the prints
of known criminals; compile a file of all the prints from the scene; compose an
indentikit portrait of a suspect; or maintain a register of criminal ‘mug-shots’.
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The Central Laboratories include the chemistry laboratory (for identifying and comparing
drugs, poisons, explosives, metals, glass, paint, etc.) and another for identifying
samples of biological material. Other laboratories deal with ballistics and the
markings on metal tools, with document and handwriting analysis, with finger- and
palm-prints, or withelectronics and computers. There are also a Photography Laboratory,
the central registers of criminals’ photos and of stolen property, and a Logistics
Unit for handling exhibits and equipment.
The Investigative Psychology Section deals with a wide range of topics derived from the field of behavioral sciences and psychology. The section provides services such as Polygraph examinations, Cognitive interviews (for memory enhancement), advising and assisting with psychological aspects to investigation teams, including offender profiling.
The National Unit For Identifying the Victims of Mass-Casualty Disasters is on constant
stand-by.
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NATIONAL SERIOUS & INTERNATIONAL CRIMES
UNIT
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The function of this unit is to detect and investigate
serious crime and crime with international ramifications, to conduct inquires of
especial public importance, to respond to letters of inquiry from overseas courts
of law and accord other investigative assistance to overseas agencies, and to conduct
special inquiries at the request of the Commissioner of Police or the Head of the
Investigations Division.
The Unit has two arms, detection (the larger) which uses intelligence work to build
a case against selected targets, and which processes and analyzes intelligence material.
The results of its work are then passed to the Unit’s investigation arm or to other
external investigative bodies for action.
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NATIONAL FRAUD UNIT
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The National Fraud Unit is charged with detecting and investigating
corruption in the senior ranks of the civil and public service, financial crime,
and sophisticated fraud requiring special investigative skills (e.g. computer skills)
or which has international ramifications. It also conducts inquiries of particular
public sensitivity at the request of the Commissioner of Police, the Head of the
Investigations Division, or the Attorney-General. The Unit operates nationwide,
with offices in the north, south and center of the country. It comprises several
investigations sections and an intelligence section. Recently it has added a financial
crime section to deal with large-scale economic criminal activity. Most of the Unit’s
staff are experts in the relevant fields — accountancy, computers, economics, and
public administration.
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