‘Look into my eyes’: can an instruction to maintain eye contact facilitate lie detection?

Abstract

Traditionally, research on offender profiling has investigated the relationships between offender behaviour and offender characteristics. However, evidence about offender behaviour is not the only evidence available at a crime scene. This study extends previous collaborative research between forensic scientists and psychologists (e.g. Bond & Sheridan, Journal of Forensic Science, 52, 1122–1128, 2007) to investigate how forensic science can assist in the psychological process of offender profiling. Specifically, the potential utility of footwear impression evidence in the task of offender profiling is investigated. Using 155 domestic burglaries, the consistency and homology assumptions underlying offender profiling were tested. Evidence supportive of both assumptions is reported. A multiple regression analysis identified significant relationships between cost of footwear and employment status, age of offender, and the relative deprivation of his/her residence.     

Audience Measurement and Media Policy: Audience Economics,the Diversity Principle,and the Local People Meter

Professor Gerald Gunther famously declared strict scrutiny to be “‘strict’ in theory and fatal in fact” in 1972. Although Professor Gunther's pithy and influential slogan may have been a reasonably accurate characterization at that time, strict scrutiny in the realm of the First Amendment is now much less fatal to government regulation of expression. This article explores the beginnings of the strict scrutiny test and the underpinnings of its subsequent dilution. The article examines the multiple ways courts can avoid applying strict scrutiny and argues that compelling state interests are proliferating in a manner that is harmful to robust speech protection. It also critiques the lack of precision in narrow tailoring analysis. The article concludes that First Amendment strict scrutiny has serious weaknesses that threaten to undermine vigorous protection for expression and offers suggestions for increasing the rigor and precision of the doctrine.     

Factors associated with contact child sexual abuse in a sample of indecent image offenders

Abstract

This study explored a sample of 244 UK adult male offenders convicted of offences involving indecent images of children (IIOC): 120 had a previous contact child sexual offence (defined as dual offenders) and 124 had no evidence of an offence against a child (defined as non-contact offenders). Offender groups were compared regarding their socio-demographic characteristics, previous convictions and IIOC possession. Key discriminatory factors that differentiated dual offenders were: access to children, previous offence history, sexual grooming and possession of IIOC that depicts similar-aged victims. In contrast, non-contact offenders could be identified from their greater amount and wider range of IIOC possession. The results suggest a homology between Internet behaviours, IIOC possession and victim selection. Implications for law enforcement agencies are discussed in terms of assisting investigative prioritisation by identifying those most at risk of committing sexual abuse against children.     

Explaining Final Term Changes in US Congressional Foreign Travel

Recent scholarship demonstrates US legislators acquire human capital (that is, contacts, knowledge, and skills) in Congress that maximises post-elective earnings because they anticipate re-entering the labour market after leaving office. This literature has not, however, addressed how legislators’ expectations of entering specific professions affect their in-office activities. This article examines this question within the context of final term, employment-particular changes in House members’ foreign travel. Representatives entering the private sector are predicted to travel more in the last period to augment their human capital in foreign affairs and signal their expertise to prospective employers, while retiring legislators are expected to travel less because they lack incentives to maintain productivity levels. Analysis supports the former but not the latter prediction.     

The changing geography of metropolitan opportunity: The segregation of the poor in U.S. metropolitan areas, 1970 to 1990

Abstract

This analysis uses census tract data to measure the segregation of the poor in U.S. metropolitan areas in 1970, 1980, and 1990. Two measures of segregation are used: the indices of dissimilarity and isolation.

In 1990 the mean dissimilarity of the poor in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas was 36.1, which is substantial but below the 60.6 dissimilarity of blacks. The 1990 isolation of the poor was 21.0. From 1970 to 1990, the dissimilarity of the poor increased by 11 percent, and the isolation of the poor rose by 9 percent; in contrast, racial segregation declined. Exploratory regression analyses reveal that income segregation in metropolitan areas was significantly greater in 1990 and increased more from 1970 to 1990 in the Northeast than in the South and West. Midwest areas generally were not significantly different from Northeast areas in 1990 segregation levels or in changes from 1970 to 1990.     

New economy housing markets: Fast and furious—but different?

Abstract

This article explores the effects of metropolitan industrial structure on housing market outcomes. Housing prices in new economy metropolitan areas are found to be higher, peakier, and more volatile than in old economy markets. Homeownership rates are found to be lower in new economy metropolitan areas, while crowding is higher. Although the distribution of housing values, costs, and rents was more equal in new economy markets, the cause would seem to be differences in area income levels, with poorer metropolitan statistical areas having greater inequalities.

Regression analysis is used to identify the contribution of traditional supply and demand factors, such as job growth, income, and residential construction, as well as new economy indicators, to housing market outcomes. Rather than being fundamentally different, new economy housing markets are found to be faster and more extreme versions of traditional housing markets.     

From state paternalism to neoliberalism in Australian rural policy: Perspectives from the Western Australian wheatbelt

For much of this century, the rural policies of Australian governments were directed at providing a viable social and economic base for rural communities and country towns. Policies which provided the conditions for stable growth in the agricultural economy, together with equitable levels of access to services such as schools, hospitals and public housing, were seen as instrumental in the development of stable rural communities. More recently, however, the process of global economic restructuring, agricultural adjustment, farm amalgamation and rapid technological change, have contributed to the declining socio‐economic viability of many rural areas. This pattern of decline has been compounded over recent years by the emergence of state and federal government policies based upon the principles of ‘neoliberalism’. The emergence of this approach to rural policy has meant that state and federal governments have, increasingly, withdrawn from effective regional development strategies, rationalised the levels of public service provision, and devolved much of the responsibility for community well‐being to the local level. This paper critically reviews the changing governmental approaches to rural development, and reflects upon some of the outcomes of these policy changes in the wheatbelt of Western Australia.     

Analyzing Forensic Evidence Based on Density with Magnetic Levitation

This paper describes a method for determining the density of contact trace objects with magnetic levitation (MagLev). MagLev measurements accurately determine the density (±0.0002 g/cm³) of a diamagnetic object and are compatible with objects that are nonuniform in shape and size. The MagLev device (composed of two permanent magnets with like poles facing) and the method described provide a means of accurately determining the density of trace objects. This method is inexpensive, rapid, and verifiable and provides numerical values—independent of the specific apparatus or analyst—that correspond to the absolute density of the sample that may be entered into a searchable database. We discuss the feasibility of MagLev as a possible means of characterizing forensic‐related evidence and demonstrate the ability of MagLev to (i) determine the density of samples of glitter and gunpowder, (ii) separate glitter particles of different densities, and (iii) determine the density of a glitter sample that was removed from a complex sample matrix.     

The Negotiability of Promissory Notes and Bills of Exchange in the Time of Chief Justice Holt

This paper explores the development of bills of exchange and promissory notes in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It will be argued that the early law of negotiability was founded on a principled interpretation of the common law and that parliament's eventual rejection of this law resulted in a half-century of confusion. This time period, however, was fundamental in the development of the modern principle of negotiability as the courts struggled to create a workable framework for the transfer of written instruments. This paper examines the early conceptual difficulty of transferring written instruments and studies why bills of exchange were capable of transfer, despite the common law's bar on the assignment of choses in action, whereas promissory notes were not considered transferable at common law prior to the eighteenth century. The most important figure for the development of this area was Chief Justice Holt, whose legal interpretation of the transferability of bills of exchange was based on clearly defined and long-standing principles of common law. This interpretation of the common law was viewed as a hindrance to trade, and in response to Holt CJ's decisions, parliament passed the Statute of Anne 1704, allowing promissory notes to be transferable in the same manner as bills of exchange. This began to collapse the distinction between bills of exchange and promissory notes, which created numerous conceptual difficulties in the law of negotiable instruments. It was not until the case of Grant v Vaughan, heard in 1764, that the courts fully developed a new framework for the negotiability of written instruments. This early law displays the difficulty that courts had in developing the underlying principles of the assignment of written instruments, and deciphering its development is fundamental in understanding the modern principle of negotiability.     

Failed Arbitrations before the Court of Common Pleas: Cases Relating to London and Londoners, 1400–1468

This article uses data gathered by the University of London, Centre for Metropolitan History's recent project ‘Londoners and the Law: Pleadings in the Court of Common Pleas’, which sampled London-related cases pleaded before the fifteenth-century court of Common Pleas, to analyze the use of arbitration by sub-gentry and mercantile class disputants. It examines the relationship between arbitration and litigation at common law, the volume of London-related cases pleaded at common law which cited a prior failed arbitration, and in what types of disputes arbitration was employed. It presents the hypothesis that the use of arbitration by sub-gentry and mercantile class disputants in cases relating to London and Londoners may have declined between 1400 and 1468, and that arbitration was most widely used in certain types of multifaceted and exceptional disputes. This article tentatively suggests that developments in disputants' use of common law remedies may have related to changes in the frequency with which arbitration was employed, calling for further study.