Jails and Public Health Service Delivery and Empirical Knowledge: The Impact of Jail Population “Flow”

Time/flow is a decisive variable when proposing public health interventions in jail populations and settings. The present paper argues that jail flow affects the types of public health interventions achievable in ways not acknowledged generally by public health/medical researchers. The paper explores how public health interventions vary among jail populations in terms of “flow” and how they are affected by a “period” effect. Interventions that will be effective and reach a substantial portion of the jail population are dependent upon the point in the jail processing process. In turn, the variables that affect the speed of population flow through the jail setting also influence who will be served by public health interventions.     

Watch for those fragments of evidence: the use of an automatic timepiece to help correlate a helicopter crash site from the Vietnam War

This case study illustrates the use of the date function on an automatic wristwatch to help identify a Vietnam War helicopter crash site. The location of a crash incident can sometimes be uncertain because of inadequate or inaccurate wartime records and the passage of time. Artifacts recovered from a prospective crash scene are regularly used to correlate the loss incident. In this case study, a recovered automatic watch displayed a date 2 days later than the reported loss incident. Although the date conflicts with the aircraft crash incident report, it is observed that a fully wound automatic watch continues to work for c. 2 days after movement of the watch ceases. Thus, the watch's date in fact correlates with the aircraft crash incident report. It is noted that automatic watches may also be used to date scenes of crime.     

Service utilization in a cohort of criminal justice-involved men: implications for case management and justice systems

In the era of re-entry, a great deal of attention has been paid to the ‘risk-need-responsivity’ model. Most attention to the utilization of services designed to meet need has focused on post-release behaviors. However, little attention has been paid to the pre-incarceration utilization of services that might influence receptivity to post-release utilization. Using constructs borrowed from health services utilization, the current paper examines the associations among CJ-involvement, social and health services utilization, and health status in a cohort of CJ-involved men living in the community. Results from the current cohort, combined with those of previous research, suggest that follow-through on services by released individuals’ remains problematic. Suggestions for future research and questions about the role of criminal justice agencies in improving follow-through are raised.     

Child protection as surveillance of African American families

The over-representation of black children in US out of home care results from racial bias in placement decisions and a political choice to address startling rates of child poverty by investigating parents instead of tackling poverty's societal roots. The impact of state disruption and supervision of African American families is intensified when it is concentrated in inner-city neighbourhoods – the system's ‘racial geography.’ A small case study of a black neighbourhood in Chicago with high rates of out of home placement found profound effects on both family and community social relationships, as well as reliance on child protective services for financial assistance, linking surveillance of black families to the neoliberal shrinking of public programmes. The surveillance of African American women by the child welfare system is also intensified by these women's disproportionate involvement in the prison system. Acknowledging racial bias in child welfare reveals the need to radically transform the system from one that relies too much on punitive disruption of families to one that generously supports them.     

Loss of Innocence in Common Law Presumptions

This review article of Stumer (The presumption of innocence: evidential and human rights perspectives. Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2010) explores the concept, normative foundations and institutional implications of the presumption of innocence in English law. Through critical engagement with Stumer’s methodological assumptions and normative arguments, it highlights the narrowness of common lawyers’ traditional conceptions of the presumption of innocence. Picking up the threads of previous work, it also contributes to on-going debates about the legitimacy of reverse onus clauses and their compatibility with European human rights law and general principles of criminal jurisprudence.     

The use of serum protein analysis in the diagnosis of fatal envenomation via Crotalus horridus (timber rattlesnake)

Deaths occurring due to rattlesnake envenomization are extremely rare and must be thoroughly investigated in the same manner as any other type of death. Our research presents the case of an adult white male who suffered a fatal timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) envenomation in northwest Florida in 2018. Blood samples were taken from the decedent's heart and vasculature of the chest and sent for serum proteomic analysis. Serum proteomic analysis was utilized in order to identify proteins from timber rattlesnake (C. horridus) found within the victim's blood. The confirmation of the presence of timber rattlesnake venom within the victim's blood allows the forensic pathologist to determine the cause of death most accurately and likewise, assists with the manner of death determination. Blood samples were separated into two groups: one with the abundant endogenous proteins depleted to facilitate detection of lower abundant proteins and one undepleted. In the depleted sample, a total of 712 proteins were identified, with 47 of the proteins (6.6%) occurring originating from timber rattlesnake (C. horridus). Likewise, a total of 742 proteins were identified in the undepleted sample, with 52 of the proteins (7.0%) occurring in timber rattlesnake (C. horridus). No timber rattlesnake (C. horridus) proteins were found in control human serum.     

Ballistic impact of hollow-point ammunition on porcine bone

Identifying failure mechanisms in skeletal tissue allows a deeper understanding of the effects of specific projectile impacts on bone. While ballistic trauma in flat bones is largely researched, knowledge of how long bones react to gunshot impacts is limited in the literature. The impacts of deforming ammunition appear to produce higher levels of fragmentation; however, these have not been studied in depth. This study compares the damage to femora bone by HP 0.357 and 9 mm projectiles constructed with both full and semi-metal jackets. Impact experiments were undertaken on a single-stage light gas gun involving the use of a high-speed video camera and full reconstruction of the bones to ascertain fracture patterns occurring in the femora. Higher degrees of fragmentation are likened to the presence of semi-jacketed HP projectiles than jacketed HP projectiles. The observations of external facing beveled edges are believed to be associated with the increased separation of the jacket and lead core of projectiles. Additionally, experimentation has shown that the amount of kinetic energy lost postimpact is likely related to the presence or the absence of a metal jacket on an HP projectile. The observed data, therefore, suggest that the composition, rather than the configuration, of a projectile affects the type and extent of the damage.     

Is Public Management Neglecting the State?

Public management is a domain of research that is now roughly three decades old. Researchers in this area have made important advances in understanding about the performance of public organizations. But questions have been raised about the scope and methods of public management research (PMR). Does it neglect important questions about the development of major institutions of the modern state? Has it focused unduly on problems of the advanced democracies? Has it made itself irrelevant to public debates about the role and design of government, and the capacity of public institutions to deal with emerging challenges? This set of eight short essays were prepared for a roundtable held at the research conference of the PMR Association at the University of Aarhus in June 2016. Contributors were asked to consider the question: Is PMR neglecting the state?