UPHOLDING STUDENTS’ DUE PROCESS RIGHTS: WHY STUDENTS ARE IN NEED OF BETTER REPRESENTATION AT,AND ALTERNATIVES TO,SCHOOL SUSPENSION HEARINGS

Suspension is the most common form of discipline in our schools. In some cases students facing suspension are removed from school for an extended period of time or referred for expulsion based on the findings made at the student's suspension hearing. Nevertheless, students have no legal right to have counsel participate in, or advocate at, suspension hearings. Additionally, schools for the most part do not offer students alternatives to suspension, such as mediation sessions or other programs designed to allow students to complete school or community work while on suspension. This Note discusses the problems associated with school suspension and suspension hearings. It also explains why providing students with legal advocates at suspension hearings will help promote due process and facilitate better decision making on the part of the student. Finally, it advocates for mediation as an alternative to suspension and suspension hearings, as research suggests that mediation would reduce suspension rates and the costs associated therewith.     

Fetal Age Determination Through Biparietal Diameter: A Simple Method of Cranial Reconstruction Using Multipurpose Silicone

In forensic medicine, gestational age of fetal remains is a crucial information in several contests, but the classic methods are inadequate when early gestational age needs to be assessed. In the author's experience, the measurement of the biparietal diameter provides more accurate information for this purpose. The status of the fetal head is therefore critical. This work describes an easy technique that allows to reconstruct the cranial volume of the fetus using multipurpose silicone given both the flexibility of the fetal head structure and the inorganic nature of the silicone itself. In conclusion, the determination of the biparietal diameter achieved through the above‐described technique permitted a more accurate estimation of the dating of pregnancy in judicial cases where the fetal remains were incomplete and disrupted.     

Rising start-up costs of voting: political inequality among first-time voters

Abstract

Research on voting behaviour stresses that whether citizens become habitual voters depends on the very first elections in their adult life. This article focuses on the increasing participation gap of first-time voters with low and high levels of resources. Looking first at 14 European countries and second at long-term dynamics in Germany, the turnout rate of first-time and older voters over time is compared. It is shown that the turnout gap has increased substantially since the 1980s. In contrast, educational differences in electoral turnout among older citizens are still comparatively small. It is argued and shown that the turnout gap among the young is due to rising ‘start-up’ costs of voting, which affect mainly those who are resource poor.     

Prisoners with psychosis in England and Wales: diversion to psychiatric inpatient services?

The prevalence of psychosis among prisoners in England and Wales is ten times that in the household population and UK government policy is that prisoners should receive equivalent care to those in the community. This study investigated the implications of policy to divert more from the criminal justice system for psychiatric treatment. Psychotic prisoners were compared with psychotic persons in households and with other prisoners in two surveys of psychiatric morbidity in representative samples of the UK population. Psychotic prisoners were younger, more from ethnic minorities, with comorbid anxiety, substance misuse, ASPD, and childhood behavioural problems compared to psychotic persons in households. Less than a third had received previous inpatient treatment. Psychotic prisoners had similar criminal histories and higher psychopathy scores than non-psychopathic prisoners. Diversion is unfeasible without improved screening for psychosis and increasing bed numbers at higher levels of security to accommodate more patients who would pose high risk to the public. Future research should investigate why UK psychiatric services fail to identify psychotic prisoners and provide aftercare.     

The database search problem: A question of rational decision making

This paper applies probability and decision theory in the graphical interface of an influence diagram to study the formal requirements of rationality which justify the individualization of a person found through a database search. The decision-theoretic part of the analysis studies the parameters that a rational decision maker would use to individualize the selected person. The modeling part (in the form of an influence diagram) clarifies the relationships between this decision and the ingredients that make up the database search problem, i.e., the results of the database search and the different pairs of propositions describing whether an individual is at the source of the crime stain. These analyses evaluate the desirability associated with the decision of 'individualizing' (and 'not individualizing'). They point out that this decision is a function of (i) the probability that the individual in question is, in fact, at the source of the crime stain (i.e., the state of nature), and (ii) the decision maker's preferences among the possible consequences of the decision (i.e., the decision maker's loss function). We discuss the relevance and argumentative implications of these insights with respect to recent comments in specialized literature, which suggest points of view that are opposed to the results of our study.     

Bayesian networks and the value of the evidence for the forensic two-trace transfer problem*

Forensic scientists face increasingly complex inference problems for evaluating likelihood ratios (LRs) for an appropriate pair of propositions. Up to now, scientists and statisticians have derived LR formulae using an algebraic approach. However, this approach reaches its limits when addressing cases with an increasing number of variables and dependence relationships between these variables. In this study, we suggest using a graphical approach, based on the construction of Bayesian networks (BNs). We first construct a BN that captures the problem, and then deduce the expression for calculating the LR from this model to compare it with existing LR formulae. We illustrate this idea by applying it to the evaluation of an activity level LR in the context of the two-trace transfer problem. Our approach allows us to relax assumptions made in previous LR developments, produce a new LR formula for the two-trace transfer problem and generalize this scenario to n traces.