History of childhood abuse and neglect and suicidal behavior at hospital admission

Suicide is a major public health problem. Preventive measures have been sought by identifying risk factors. This study evaluates the association of childhood abuse and neglect with suicidal behavior at the time of psychiatric hospital admission. A total of 120 subjects (72 females; mean age 42.5 +/- 15.6 years old) admitted from August 2006 to July 2007 completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess severity of exposure to childhood maltreatment. Thereof 62 (51.6%) patients presented with suicidal behavior at admission. Patients who had attempted suicide had significantly higher CTQ scores. Regression analysis indicated that shorter illness duration and severity of childhood maltreatment were predictors of suicidal behavior at admission. The study showed that inpatients of a psychiatric unit of a general hospital who experienced severe childhood abuse or neglect were significantly more likely to present with suicidal behavior. History of childhood maltreatment should be evaluated as an associated risk factor of suicidal behavior at admission of psychiatric inpatients.     

Ideational Origins of Progressive Judicial Activism: The Colombian Constitutional Court and the Right to Health

Why do some constitutional transitions trigger the emergence of progressive judicial activism? This article addresses this question through an analysis of the creation of the Colombian Constitutional Court and its subsequent activism toward rights in general and the right to health in particular. This research suggests that ideational variables are crucial to explain this outcome. On the one hand, the Constitutional Court's behavior reflects the dominance of the institutional conception that it is the judiciary's role to help fulfill the promises of the constitutional text. On the other, programmatic beliefs about the relationship between the rule of law and market‐driven economic growth led powerholders to create the court and appoint judges with this orientation. The emergence of progressive judicial activism in Colombia, this analysis suggests, was the unexpected outcome of purposeful political choices made by proponents of neoliberal economics.     

The Good,the Bad and the Ugly: Do Attractive Politicians Get a ‘Break’ When They are Involved in Scandals?

Political Behavior - In general, politicians involved in scandals of various natures are punished by voters. Good-looking politicians, on the contrary, are rewarded by voters. Almost fifty years of...     

The Macquarie Laws of War Corpus (MQLWC): Design,Construction and Use

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - This paper discusses the creation and use of the new Macquarie Laws of War Corpus (MQLWC). The...     

Speaking the language of security: the Commonwealth,the Francophonie and the CPLP in conflict management in Africa

The last decade has seen an unprecedented increase in conflict management activities in Africa by international organisations. This has been accompanied by a flurry of academic publications and of policy reports that stress the comparative advantages at the legal and operational levels of regional and other intergovernmental organisations. The article assesses this dominant favourable view by examining the role of the Commonwealth, the Francophonie and the CPLP in Africa. Traditionally regarded as cultural organisations, they have gradually extended their profile to include a security mandate. Drawing from fieldwork and an extensive review of the literature, the article presents the first comparative study of the conflict management activities of these organisations in Africa.     

The Legal Image’s Forgotten Aesthetics

Aesthetics and communications theories are often applied to art, media and popular culture but not within legal empirical (audiovisual) material—despite the fact that a judicial and legal process comprises a palpable utilisation of the visual as evidence of an historical reality. Based on four distinct Swedish cases, this study analyses the court’s reasoning, interpretation and use of (audio)visual evidence. Inspired by an embodied film theory, Benjamin’s thoughts on the technical-dramaturgical components of the camera and the later Barthes’ notion of the ‘punctum’, the article discusses how (audio)visual evidence cannot be disconnected from affective and aesthetic significances that ultimately can be taken to affect the perception of truth and (the crime’s) reality. The gap between theory and practice is debated and argued as beginning to co-exist; instead of seeing (visual) theory and (judicial) practice as a dichotomy, an attempt should be made for a conversation between seemingly different but in practice related areas of knowledge. The author’s aim is to suggest that photographic and filmic evidence has a particular significance in itself, which means that the relation between (judicial) interpretation and outcome should be considered within an affective and aesthetic dimension, rather than being placed and/or theorized outside of it.     

Morphometry of latent palmprints as a function of time

In many crimes, the elapsed time between production and collecting fingermark traces is crucial. and a method able to detect the aging of latent prints would represent an improvement in forensic procedures. Considering that as the latent print gets older, substantial changes in the relative proportion of individual components secreted by skin glands could affect the morphology of ridges, morphometry could be a potential tool to assess the aging of latent fingermarks. Then, considering the very limited research in the field, the present work aims to evaluate the morphometry of latent palmprint ridges, as a function of time, in order to identify an aging pattern. The latent marks were deposited by 20 donors on glass microscope slides considering pressure and contact angle, and then were maintained under controlled environmental conditions. The morphometric study was conducted on marks developed with magnetic powder in 7 different time intervals after deposition (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 days); 60 ridges were evaluated for each developed mark. The results showed that: 1) the method for the replacement and mixing of skin secretions on the palm was appropriate to ensure reproducibility of latent prints, and 2) considering the studied group, there was a time-dependent reduction in the width of ridges and on the percentage of visible ridges over 30 days. Results suggest the possibility of using the morphometric method to determine an aging profile of latent palmprints on glass surface, aiming for forensic purposes.     

Gated communities and the poor in Santiago,Chile: Functional and symbolic integration in a context of aggressive capitalist colonization of lower‐class areas

Abstract

In Santiago, Chile, the number of gated communities has increased significantly during the past few years. Although these communities are aimed at the elite, they are often located on the fringes of low‐income neighborhoods and thus change traditional segregation patterns in the city.

In many cases, gated housing communities for the upper classes are accompanied by nonresidential development, such as shopping centers and office complexes, which bring jobs into the neighborhood. We analyze case studies of lower‐class neighborhoods located near upper‐class gated communities to study the effect on the poor. We find that the spatial dispersion of real estate developments for the elite promotes some forms of social integration and provides advantages to poorer residents by bringing jobs into the neighborhood, triggering improved public services, and even sparking a renewed sense of pride among lower‐class residents.