Organized Retail Crime

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 25th Oct 2021

Organized Retail Crime (ORC), can affect our safety both from an individual and public perspective. If you have ever bought cheap goods online from an individual seller on an ecommerce site there is a good chance that some of them might have been stolen, as a part of ORC. Historically, Criminologists have tended to study the act of theft with little focus on how these goods are resold, however with the explosion of online selling where products can be sold anonymously, this has started to change. Where an individual shoplifter used to be geographically restricted in the sale of the...Click To Read More

Deceptive Statement Structure

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 18th Oct 2021

I have written about deception before e.g., about the changes in pronoun use that people use to distance themselves from events, and the disproportionate number of disfluencies – “Umms”, “Errs” etc. – that are present in deceitful statements. However, I have not written about the structure of deceptive statements i.e., how a person structures what they say, when engaged in deception. In this article I want to take a closer look at the structure and content of deceptive statements. The structure of deceptive statements is one of the few commonalities shared by those who attempt to engage in deception e.g.,...Click To Read More

Barefoot Training

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 11th Oct 2021

Every now and then someone will leave a comment on a video I put up making the argument that because my students and I train barefoot, that this represents unrealistic training. Often such individuals believe that unless you are practicing in the clothes you’ll be wearing when attacked, etc, then you’re not training realistically. In this article I want to explain some of the benefits of training without footwear, and how if you train this way, you will not only be able to operate when wearing shoes or sneakers/trainers, you will in fact be less constricted by what you wear...Click To Read More

Competing Outcomes

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 4th Oct 2021

There are many reasons why systems fail, whether they be physical systems (such as engineering systems) or security ones. Often, when it is security systems, failure occurs due to multiple goal conflicts e.g., an individual wants to avoid a physical confrontation, but at the same time get the other person(s) they are in conflict with to admit that they were wrong, and make an apology to them etc. Unfortunately, in the moment, many people, don’t recognize that these goals are in opposition to each other, and so continue to pursue a strategy, and use a “system” that is unable to...Click To Read More