Banking on Social Change: Grameen Bank Lending to Women

The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has become an international model for microcredit as a poverty alleviation strategy. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to evaluate the Grameen Bank as a strategy for empowering and improving the socioeconomic status of women in Bangladesh, and to identify lessons from the Grameen Bank experience that can inform development policy more generally. Arguments for and against Grameen Bank are evaluated in the light of evidence from studies of the Bank and knowledge of women and development. The conclusions that are drawn from this evaluation are that Grameen Bank is not a panacea for poverty alleviation and improving women's lives, that it has increased the income of borrowers, has led to improvements in specific aspects of their lives, and that it has potential if used in conjunction with other progressive social and economic policies to contribute to long-term, sustainable, progressive social change.     

The double-design dilemma: political science,parliamentary crisis and disciplinary justifications

Two separate, but inter-linked, dilemmas have highlighted the importance of design-led thinking. First, the crumbling physical fabric of the Palace of Westminster has prompted a multi-billion rebuilding project, which will require the parliamentary studies specialism to engage with questions of design, space, and architecture. Separately, political science more generally has been challenged to utilize the insights of design-thinking and design-practice: a challenge to which it is culturally and methodological ill-equipped. This article considers what a design-led approach to political science looks like in theory, and in practice, in the case study of the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster. This represents a first attempt at how such a fusion could be beneficial for both politics as theory and politics as practice. The main conclusion is that although design-orientated political science is not a panacea for the challenges of modern democratic governance – in intellectual or practical terms – it does appear to offer significant potential in terms of theoretically-informed but solution focused research.     

Multimethod Resolution of a Small‐Scale Case of Commingling

This study highlights the use of multiple methods for resolving a case of commingled human remains. Skeletal remains were located in a marijuana field in rural northern California by law enforcement. Although initially buried in shallow graves, the remains of two decedents were disturbed by large carnivores and scattered over a wide area. The remains were submitted by law enforcement for forensic anthropological analysis and resolution of commingling. To segregate the remains of the two individuals, a number of methods were employed, including: (i) physical matching of fragmented remains; (ii) articulation to evaluate joint congruence; (iii) visual pair‐matching of bilateral elements; (iv) osteometric pair‐matching; (v) evaluation of taphonomic patterns; (vi) DNA analysis; and (vii) portable X‐ray spectrometry (pXRF). This multimethod approach resulted in accurate resolution of the commingling and facilitated reconstruction of the biological profiles, taphonomic patterns, and trauma analysis for each individual.     

The Optimized Summed Scored Attributes Method for the Classification of U.S. Blacks and Whites: A Validation Study

Recently, Hefner and Ousley (2014) introduced the optimized summed scored attributes (OSSA) method that maximizes between‐group differences in U.S. black and white populations by dichotomizing six cranial morphoscopic trait scores. This study tests OSSA using an independent skeletal sample (Hamann‐Todd, n = 208) and positively identified forensic cases (Mercyhurst University, n = 28, and New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, n = 38). An evaluation of trait frequencies suggests shifting the heuristically selected sectioning point separating U.S. black and white populations from ≤ 3 to ≤ 4. We found a total correct classification of 73.0% (B = 50.9%, W = 89.2%) using the originally suggested sectioning point of ≤3, while the total correct classification increases to 79.2% (B = 80.2%, W = 78.5%) with a modified sectioning point of ≤4. With the increased total correct classification and reduced classification bias between ancestry groups, we suggest the modified sectioning point of ≤4 be used when assessing ancestry in forensic unknowns.     

Illicit pharmaceutical networks in Europe: organising the illicit medicine market in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands

It has been widely suggested that the global market in counterfeit, falsified and illegally traded medicines has expanded at a tremendous rate in recent years, offering lucrative opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs with little legal risk. However, with a few exceptions, there has been little criminological research conducted on the trade’s actors and organisation. Of the few studies that are available, most position the supply of these products in the context of ‘transnational organised crime’, often presupposing the overwhelming presence of large-scale, hierarchical structures in the trade. This article, based on two extensive research projects in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, offers an account of the illicit supply of medicines in two European jurisdictions. The research outlines the nature and dynamics of the trade including the roles played by each national context as nodes in the global supply chain. The focus then shifts to the modus operandi, actors, online trade and social organisation in both countries. In contradistinction to the ‘transnational organised crime’ narrative, the empirical data outlined in this paper demonstrates that actors and networks involved in the trade are highly flexible and complex structures that straddle the categories of licit and illicit, online and offline, and global and local. This suggests that operations supplying illicit medicines vary largely in terms of size, reach, organisation and legality.     

Sexual Slavery: Do We Need This Crime in Addition to Enslavement?

The article focusses on the crime of sexual slavery in the ICC Statute. It examines the legal definition of enslavement in Article 7 (2) (c) ICC Statute and the Elements of Crimes (EOC) of enslavement and sexual slavery as well as the jurisprudence of the SCSL which was the first to deal with the application of the EOC of sexual slavery to a concrete situation (so-called ‘forced marriage’ phenomenon). The author questions whether there is a necessity to have two crimes against humanity of enslavement and sexual slavery but on the other hand, no war crime of enslavement. Further, she rejects the interpretation that human trafficking has become part of the definition of slavery/enslavement as the footnote in the EOC seems to suggest. The author argues vigorously that the phenomenon of ‘forced marriage’ should be prosecuted as sexual slavery and not under the residual offence of inhumane acts as a ‘new’ international crime.     

The High Court's lost chance in medical negligence: Tabet v Gett (2010) 240 CLR 537

In 2010 the High Court of Australia in Tabet v Gett (2010) 240 CLR 537 determined an appeal in a medical negligence case concerning a six-year-old girl who had presented to a major paediatric hospital with symptoms over several weeks of headaches and vomiting after a recent history of chicken pox. The differential diagnosis was varicella, meningitis or encephalitis and two days later, after she deteriorated neurologically, she received a lumbar puncture. Three days later she suffered a seizure and irreversible brain damage. A CT scan performed at that point showed a brain tumour. As Australia does not have a no-fault system providing compensation to cover the long-term care required for such a condition, the girl (through her parents and lawyers) sued her treating physician. She alleged that, because a cerebral CT scan was not performed when clinically indicated after the diagnosis of meningitis or encephalitis and before the lumbar puncture, she had "lost the chance" to have her brain tumour treated before she sustained permanent brain damage. She succeeded at first instance, but lost on appeal. The High Court also rejected her claim, holding unanimously that there were no policy reasons to allow recovery of damages based on possible (less than 50%) "loss of a chance" of a better medical outcome. The court held that the law of torts in Australia required "all or nothing" proof that physical injury was caused or contributed to by a negligent party. The High Court, however, did not exclude loss of chance as forming the substance of a probable (greater than 50%) claim in medical negligence in some future case. In the meantime, patients injured in Australia as a result of possible medical negligence (particularly in the intractable difficult instances of late diagnosis) must face the injustice of the significant day-to-day care needs of victims being carried by family members and the taxpayer-funded public hospital system. The High Court in Tabet v Gett again provides evidence that, as currently constituted, it remains deaf to the injustice caused by State legislation excessively restricting the access to reasonable compensation by victims of medical negligence.     

Sudden Death After Myocardial Infarction in a High‐School Athlete

Abstract: This is an unusual case of ischemic heart disease occurring in a young female athlete, aged 14 years, in whom almost the entire posterior wall of the left ventricle was affected. The patient collapsed and died suddenly after a vigorous physical activity while resting at home. The ischemic lesion was apparently owing to right orifice stenosis in association with a small hypoplastic right coronary artery.