Y-chromosomal kinship estimation for forensic familial searching: YMrCA to the rescue

The Y-chromosome can be used as an identification method to find paternally related males of the perpetrator. When a close Y-haplotype match is identified, the time to their most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) needs to be estimated to reconstruct their genealogy. To date, two mutation models and three online tMRCA calculators exist. But, they do not include individual mutation rates with multi-step changes, while ignoring hidden multiple, back or parallel modifications. To improve tMRCA estimation, we developed a user-friendly calculator, the ‘YMrCA’, including all previously mentioned mutation characteristics. Here, a case using genealogical pairs with confirmed biological kinships visualizes the good estimation performance of the YMrCA compared to the state-of-the-art. Even when genealogical pairs have equal number of mutations, the YMrCA still estimates the correct number of generations due to the inclusion of individual Y-STR mutation rates and the different mutational influencing factors.     

Schools and the prevention of petty crime: Search for a missing link

Earlier research on the relation between school features and petty crime suggests that schools can intentionally influence the crime rate of the pupils. These findings were the starting point for a Dutch study at secondary schools of the same type in Dutch towns. The study focused on effects on the delinquency of third-year low-stream pupils (aged 15–17). For the study a control theory was formulated, a conditional control theory, which, in contrast to Hirschi's social control theory, recognizes possible delinquent influences of the pupils' network. In the study a strong statistical relation between integration of pupils in school and petty crime was found. However, I found almost no influence of the studied school features on integration and petty crime. These results led to the question whether the real important feature of schools had been neglected in the study. This seems not to be the case. A multilevel analysis shows that it is unlikely that there is major impact of schools on the integration of pupils, on delinquency, or on the relationship between integration and delinquency. This can be the result of special aspects of the Dutch school system and of the neglect of theory in earlier research.     

Keeping the pieces together: comparison of mass grave excavation methodology

Mass graves are a complex and confusing mix of bodies, body parts, soils, artifacts, and other feature evidence. Forensic investigations of these complex crime scenes should attempt to maximize the collection of evidence, which includes the mortal remains, in their best possible condition as they were deposited within the graves. Two standard methods of mass grave excavation were examined with the aim of identifying the better approach. Two experienced teams using different methodologies excavated two separate but very comparable mass graves located in the same area. Single disarticulated skeletal elements not associated with a body at the time of removal from the grave were categorized and their counts analyzed to evaluate the efficiency of the differing excavation methodologies. The methodologies used were the 'pedestal' method, which focuses on the body mass, and the 'stratigraphic' method, in which the grave feature and contents are conjointly excavated. The first grave (Grave A), excavated using the 'pedestal' method, was observed to have a disproportionately larger amount of unassociated bones than did the second (Grave B), which used the 'stratigraphic' method. Chi-square (chi2) goodness-of-fit and contingency tests were performed on the total numbers of recorded elements and different categorical groups of bones, based on size and shape, in each grave. Results demonstrate that significantly greater numbers of unassociated elements resulted from the excavation of Grave A using the pedestal method, both in total number of disarticulated bones as well as within 'large' and 'medium' categories. Conversely 'small' skeletal elements were recovered at a higher rate in Grave B. The lower 'large' and 'medium' bone production rates from Grave B indicate that the stratigraphic method better maintained the provenience and articulation of remains than did Grave A, while the higher 'small' bone recovery rate may point to better recovery techniques of Grave B's excavation team.     

Criminal justice faculty and criminal justice students: A case for the missing data

This article reviews the most current criminal justice education research. It examines the interrelationship between the work of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the Joint Commission on Criminology and Criminal Justice Education and Standards, and the National Advisory Commission on Higher Education for Police, and describes and compares some of their more important findings. Discussed are types of criminal justice programs; characteristics of criminal justice faculty, particularly in terms of earned academic degrees; agency work experience; commitment to research and teaching; types of criminal justice curricula, as typified by certain educational philosophies; and criminal justice students. Although this article notes several areas with which future research might become fruitfully involved, the area in need of most immediate attention, and the area that current research has all but ignored, is the criminal justice student.     

Blockchain governance: The missing piece in the competition puzzle

Antitrust law deals with economic matters as if they were all industrial processes, that is, processes through which companies transform inputs into outputs. In this sense, we could say that antitrust law is still a Nineteenth Century law, even when it comes to platforms that transform digital data into services.For this reason, when we look at blockchains through the lenses of antitrust law, they are either framed as the result of an industrial process (the blockchain as an output) or as a means that allows the development of an industrial process (the blockchain as a tool). However, these two pieces do not complete the puzzle: they do not say much about the competitive impact of blockchains. Studying the operating mechanisms of blockchains and, in particular, their governance, one realizes that the puzzle must acquire a new piece: the information on who controls the blockchain. This piece of information reveals that even dominant blockchains, which are still nowhere to be seen, could be harmless if truly devoid of any central authority and that even strategic exchanges of information via permissioned blockchains should not trigger any antitrust liability, if blockchains’ administrators managed to allow the exchange only among non-competing participants.     

Putting together the pieces: recent proposals to fill in the genetic testing regulatory puzzle

The idea that genetic information is different from other medical information and therefore needs special protection has led to a regulatory puzzle where genetic testing is currently regulated under three separate schemes. Although genetic tests for over 2,000 diseases are available, less than 10% of these tests have been reviewed for clinical validity or utility. Recent action by some genetic testing companies has prompted the federal government to propose changes to the current regulatory scheme. This article discusses the current framework and the recent developments before examining some of the concerns and challenges that face the implementation of these proposed changes. The author evaluates the proposals and competing interests in order to suggest how genetic testing may best be regulated to meet the needs of the industry, clinicians, researchers, patients, and consumers.     

Choosing relatives for DNA identification of missing persons

DNA-based analysis is integral to missing person identification cases. When direct references are not available, indirect relative references can be used to identify missing persons by kinship analysis. Generally, more reference relatives render greater accuracy of identification. However, it is costly to type multiple references. Thus, at times, decisions may need to be made on which relatives to type. In this study, pedigrees for 37 common reference scenarios with 13 CODIS STRs were simulated to rank the information content of different combinations of relatives. The results confirm that first-order relatives (parents and fullsibs) are the most preferred relatives to identify missing persons; fullsibs are also informative. Less genetic dependence between references provides a higher on average likelihood ratio. Distant relatives may not be helpful solely by autosomal markers. But lineage-based Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers can increase the likelihood ratio or serve as filters to exclude putative relationships.     

Creating the missing link: applying collective marks to create clusters

Legal context: Collective trademarks offer an adequate institutional settingto create clusters. The legal framework provided by this formof IP right offers an enabling environment for the creationof cooperative business arrangements, as applied in clusters.In particular, they allow small- and medium-sized enterprisesto intensify their degree of interaction, so to build up networks,thus reducing costs and dependence on large firms, while atthe same time increasing systems of collaboration. Key points: While the positive externalities provided by clusters are wellresearched, the IP aspect has been largely ignored. This isobserved in theory, as well as in practice. While the businessliterature is rich on empirical and theoretical arguments onthe functioning of clusters, the role IP law takes in the creationof clusters has gone largely unnoticed. Practical significance: This article seeks to provide the missing link and explain why,how, and under which circumstances the application of collectivetrademarks is a crucial element for the creation of clusters.While the first part of this paper provides the theoreticalunderpinning, the second part offers an overview of variousempirical illustrations of the argument.     

Bayesian networks for DNA-based kinship analysis: Functionality and validation of the GENis missing person identification module

GENis is a recently published open-source multi-tier information system developed to run forensic DNA databases. It relies on a Bayesian Networks framework and it is particularly well suited to efficiently perform large-size queries against databases of missing individuals. In this contribution we present a validation of the missing person identification capabilities of GENis. To that end we introduce fbnet, a free-software package written in the R statistical language that implements the complete GENis functionality to perform kinship analysis based on DNA profiles. With the aid of fbnet, we could validate likelihood ratios against estimations draw with Familias and forrel (two well-recognized R packages for kinship quantification) for complex pedigrees provided by the Argentinian reference databank (Banco Nacional de Datos Geneticos, BNDG). We found that our methodological approach presented an excellent performance in terms of accuracy and computation times.     

Embedding employability in assessment: searching for the balance between academic learning and skills development in law: a case study

Employability related indicators and measurements are now a fact of life for UK law schools. Despite the omnipresent spectre of the employability agenda, there has been relatively little consideration given to the relationship between assessment and employability. The traditional teaching method used at law schools relies heavily on participatory small group teaching. This lends itself to developing oral communication skills. Surveys of employers show oral communication to be one of the most highly valued employability skills. Research, however, suggests that law students do not feel that oral communication skills are given enough emphasis on law programmes. Using the example of a new approach to assessment of the European Law module at the University of Bolton, which adopts an oral assessment alongside a traditional written exam, consideration is given to the benefits and practicalities of embedding employability in assessment. The extent to which this approach can be reconciled to liberal ideals is considered alongside pedagogical rationales for the assessment. In the final section, the article goes on to analyse student feedback on their perception of different assessment methods and employability. The article concludes by suggesting that, by focusing on pre-existing features of a liberal legal education, employability can be successfully embedded in assessment.     

Missing pieces: Notes on crime,poverty, and social policy

A long and impressive criminological tradition links crime to what social scientists call ‘persistent poverty’-and, in particular, to the corrosive effects of inadequate labor markets on a variety of social institutions. But few anticrime policies have seriously confronted those conditions, even at the height of the Great Society of the 1960s. With only scattered exceptions, those policies have sought to enhance the individual capacities of children and youth without substantially altering the surrounding economic institutions. An anticrime strategy for the next century that is both more effective and consistent with what we know about the roots of crime must involve measures that more directly address the labor market itself. Among other things, these measures include direct public job creation, systematic efforts to up grade wages, and greater support for labor organization. This essay is a revised version of a background paper presented at The Social Science Research Council Policy Conference on ‘Persistent Poverty’ in Washington D.C., November, 1993.     

The case of the missing victims: Gunshot woundings in the National Crime Survey

National Crime Survey (NCS) data yield an estimate that 171,000 Americans were nonfatally shot in criminal assaults, robberies, and rapes for the period 1973–1979. Comparing this estimate with the number of firearms homicides during this period suggests either that the death rate in gunshot cases is very high (over 1/3) or that the NCS estimate is low. Based on police-generated data appropriate to estimating the true death rate from gunshot wounds, it appears that the NCS estimate is low by a factor of about 3.0 compared with the number of criminal gunshot woundings known to the police. It is common knowledge that survey-based estimates of assault rates tend to be relatively unreliable, a fact that has been attributed to problems with respondents being willing and able to recall threats, fist fights, and other minor assaults. The current result indicates that the estimation problem is not limited to minor assaults. There is reason to think that the underestimate of gunshot woundings is the result of problems with the NCS sample as well as problems with respondent cooperation.     

The national crime survey and rape: The case of the missing question

Existing data on rape from the National Crime Survey (NCS) are of questionable value. These data are problematic because the survey never asks respondents directly whether they have been raped. As a result, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what the NCS is measuring. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that the NCS underestimates rape, thereby reinforcing the perception that rape is a rare occurrence. This paper also examines the redesign of the NCS and discusses the efficacy of the proposed changes in terms of their impact on the study of rape.