The Concealed Information Test is Susceptible to Misleading Information

An approach toward detecting hidden knowledge is the Concealed Information Test (CIT). It relies on the memory of crime‐relevant information. This study investigated whether its validity is susceptible to memory distortion by misleading information. A misleading information paradigm was employed to distort memory prior to an interrogation with a CIT. Forty‐one participants watched a video with specific crime‐related information. After a 1‐week retention interval, misleading information was introduced. Afterward, a CIT was performed, followed by a threefold memory test. When misleading information was presented, memory performance was reduced, and no physiological response differences between crime‐relevant and crime‐irrelevant information were found. Without presenting misleading information, physiological responses differed between responses to crime‐relevant and crime‐irrelevant information. However, responses in all physiological measures also differed between misleading and irrelevant information. The results indicate that the CIT is susceptible to misleading information, which reduces its validity in specific constellations.     

NEW FORMS OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW IN THE AGE OF THIRD‐PARTY GOVERNMENT

This article explores the democratic values underlying public services when they are outsourced. Building on Rosenbloom and Piotrowski's (2005a, 2005b) framework, we examine whether and how administrative law norms – that serve as central democratic governance and accountability mechanisms in the administrative state – are extended to the new (private) frontline service providers. Through a study of the regulation of the privatized welfare‐to‐work programme in Wisconsin, we find that new forms of administrative law are evolving in third‐party government. These forms differ from administrative law as it usually applies to public agencies in several important aspects. The findings highlight the active role of legislative and administrative mechanisms in the promotion of these new forms of administrative law; and they shed light on the transformations that administrative law norms undergo in the age of third‐party government.     

A Fatal Shot with a Signal Flare—A Crime Reconstruction*

Abstract: A reconstruction of an incident of a fatal wounding of a football fan with a parachute flare was performed. Physical and chemical examinations of the victim’s trousers and parts of a flare removed from the wound in his leg were performed by means of an optical microscope and a scanning electron microscope coupled with an energy dispersive X‐ray spectrometer. Signs of burning were seen on the front upper part of the trousers, including a 35–40 mm circular hole with melted and charred edges. Postblast residue present on the surface of the trousers contained strontium, magnesium, potassium, and chlorine. Also the case files—the medical reports and the witnesses’ testimonies—were thoroughly studied. It has been found that the evidence collected in the case supported the version of the victim being shot by another person from a distance.     

The Role of Forensic Anthropology in the Examination of the Daegu Subway Disaster (2003, Korea)*

Abstract: Meticulous recovery of victims in the Daegu subway disaster was possible, because charred and fragmented victims were left in situ. Because bodies were piled one over another within the train, appropriate methodology during the recovery was critical to identifying the victims. The disaster area was thoroughly documented with notes, photographs, and schematic drawings of the various locations. The recovery team, comprising two medical examiners and one forensic anthropologist, decided when charred body parts and cremated bones were linked to the same individual based on the anatomy and forensic anthropological examination. Without these recovery procedures, it would not have been possible to efficiently harvest representative DNA sample from most of the victims’ body parts. After the entire process of identification, 136 victims were positively identified, and six victims remained unidentified. This study supports the crucial role of forensic anthropologists in the recovery of victims, especially in fire scenes.     

Microscopic Age Estimation from the Anterior Cortex of the Femur in Korean Adults*

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to develop age‐predicting equations from the anterior cortex of the femur of Korean adults. Seventy‐two femoral samples (44 male and 28 female) were obtained from Korean cadavers and used to develop the equations. The thin sections (<100‐μm thick) were prepared by manual grinding; the sections were not decalcified and were stained with Villanueva bone stain reagent. Analysis of covariance showed no significant differences in age‐adjusted histomorphological variables between sexes. In stepwise regression analysis, osteon population density, average osteon area, and the most anterior cortical width were selected for an age‐predicting equation which produced a high regression correlation (R² = 0.789). The average Haversian canal area was not significantly related to age for any specimen.     

Mentally disordered criminal offenders: Legal and criminological perspectives

Legal research in Sweden has traditionally focused on a systematization of the legal rules and their practical application, while the task of studying the effects of the application of the laws has been handed over to other branches of the social sciences. In contrast, new legal theories focusing on proactive and therapeutic dimensions in law have gained increasing attention in the international arena. These approaches may be better suited for evaluating legislation governing compulsory psychiatric care. Theoretical discussions and studies of causal mechanisms underlying criminal behaviour, as well as the implementation and value of instruments for predicting behaviour, are relevant to contemporary criminological research. Criminal behaviour varies across different groups of perpetrators, and the causes can be sought in the interplay between the individual and social factors. Multi-disciplinary efforts, integrating research from forensic psychiatry, psychology, sociology, and criminology, would be beneficial in leading to a better understanding of the causes underlying criminal behaviour.     

The Long Reach of the Carceral State: The Politics of Crime, Mass Imprisonment, and Penal Reform in the United States and Abroad

This essay reviews five books as they relate to the causes and political consequences of mass imprisonment in the United States and the comparative politics of penal policy: Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007); Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen's Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (2006); Jonathan Simon's Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (2007); Michael Tonry, ed. , Crime, Punishment, and Politics in a Comparative Perspective (2007); and Bruce Western's Punishment and Inequality in America (2006).
The essay first examines the enormous and growing political repercussions of having a vast penal system embedded in a democratic polity, including the political and electoral consequences of felon disenfranchisement; increasing political, social, and economic inequality for people marked by the penal system; and the phenomenon of "governing through crime." It also analyzes emerging strategies of resistance to US penal policies and mass incarceration, why some countries are more vulnerable to hard-line penal policies than others, and what it will take to reverse the US prison boom.     

A CROSS‐CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF THE LINK BETWEEN CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND ADOLESCENT ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR*

Several studies with older children have reported a positive relationship between parental use of corporal punishment and child conduct problems. This has lead some social scientists to conclude that physical discipline fosters antisocial behavior. In an attempt to avoid the methodological difficulties that have plagued past research on this issue, the present study used a proportional measure of corporal punishment, controlled for earlier behavior problems and other dimensions of parenting, and tested for interaction and curvilinear effects. The analyses were performed using a sample of Iowa families that displayed moderate use of corporal punishment and a Taiwanese sample that demonstrated more frequent and severe use of physical discipline, especially by fathers. For both samples, level of parental warmth/control (i.e., support, monitoring, and inductive reasoning) was the strongest predictor of adolescent conduct problems. There was little evidence of a relationship between corporal punishment and conduct problems for the Iowa sample. For the Taiwanese families, corporal punishment was unrelated to conduct problems when mothers were high on warmth/control, but positively associated with conduct problems when they were low on warmtwcontrol, An interaction between corporal punishment and warmth/Wcontro1 was found for Taiwanese fathers as well. For these fathers, there was also evidence of a curvilinear relationship, with the association between corporal punishment and conduct problems becoming much stronger at extreme levels of corporal punishment. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that it is when parents engage in severe forms of corporal punishment, or administer physical discipline in the absence of parental warmth and involvement, that children feel angry and unjustly treated, defy parental authority, and engage in antisocial behavior.     

ACCès à information et reassignments personnel's: le précédent qéuébcois

Sommaire: En 1982, l'Assembly e nationals du Québec a jumele, sous me seule loi, l'acces a I information et la protection des reassignments personnel. Elle a mandate un organism nouveau, la Commission d'acces a I information (cai), pour assurer la surveillance de ce regime. Vingt ans plus tard, un premier bilan permit de saisir la faqon dont ce mandat a &b mis en muvre, tout en degageant les raisons et les circumstances de I'Clargissement des tlches assumées par la cai. Comme la plupart des assembltks legislatives du Canada ont imité le «modele» qubbkois dans ce domaine en crbant le poste de Information and Privacy Commissioners, les questions qui dkoulent de cet examen revCtent une portbe plus large. Ces questions portent notamment sur la co‐existence de plusieurs mandats et sur la responsibilities de cet organism a l'egard du sedeur privb en matiere de reassignments personnel. Elles visent aussi le sens du reattachment de cette Commission a l'Assemblee nation ale en tant que « chien de garde » de l'administration publique. Abstract: In 1982, the Quebec national assembly brought access to information and the protection of personal information together under one piece of legislation. It created then a new independent body, the “Commission d'acces a l'information (cai)” (information and privacy commission), to ensure the monitoring of this legislation. Twenty years later, a first assessment of the path taken by Quebec reveals how the cai has been fulfilling its mandate and identifies the reasons and circumstances for extending the scope of the cai's responsibilities. As most of the legislative assemblies in the rest of Canada have imitated the Quebec “model” by creating the position of information and privacy commissioner, the questions that arise from this examination have a broader scope. These questions bear mainly on the co‐existence of several mandates and on the commission's accountability to the private sector with regard to personal information. Moreover, they focus on the meaning of the relationship of this commission to the national assembly as the watchdog of the public administration.