Childhood Maltreatment Experiences and Child Abuse Potential: Temperamental Sensitivity as Moderator?

This study aimed to examine the relationship between negative experiences in childhood (physical-, sexual-, and emotional abuse and emotional neglect) and the risk for an individual to become a perpetrator of child maltreatment in adulthood. Participants were 337 female college students who completed self-report measures of childhood trauma and temperament. Risk for child abuse was assessed with the Child Abuse Potential Inventory. Results showed experiences of emotional neglect significantly predicted higher child abuse potential. Additionally it was shown that experiences of physical abuse significantly predicted higher child abuse potential but only in those individuals with high temperamental orienting sensitivity. These results underline the potentially damaging long-term effects of emotional neglect in childhood and indicate temperamental sensitivity may moderate the relationship between being abused as a child and being at risk for maltreating one’s own offspring.     

Are the misinformed more punitive? Beliefs and misconceptions in forensic psychology

Misconceptions about psycho-legal issues are widespread and threaten the fabric of our legal system. The present study examines how misconception endorsement is related to tough-on-crime beliefs and sentencing decisions. Two hundred and fifty-six students completed a 50-item questionnaire assessing misconceptions related to forensic psychology and determined sentences in four mock-jury scenarios at the beginning and end of an introductory forensic psychology course. Misconception endorsement decreased significantly from 32% to 21%, with every subscale (police and interrogations, service provision, mental illness, memory and cognition, tough on crime) experiencing a significant decrease from pre-test to post-test. This drop in endorsement is meaningful, as misconceptions and beliefs are typically very difficult to change. Additionally, misconception endorsement was positively correlated with tough-on-crime beliefs and punitive (mock) sentencing. This study provides a valuable resource for endorsement rates of psycho-legal misconceptions and the propensity of individual misconceptions to change. It also makes a strong argument for the usefulness of psychology and law courses in reducing potentially harmful misconceptions and tough-on-crime beliefs.     

Lak?a?�� as Inference

This paper questions a few assumptions of Ga?ge?a Up??dhy??ya??s theory of ordinary verbal cognition (laukika-???bdabodha). The meaning relation (v?tti) is of two kinds: ?akti (which gives us the primary referent of a word) and lak?a??? (which yields the secondary referent). For Ga?ge?a, the ground (b??ja) of lak?a??? is a sort of inexplicability (anupapatti) pertaining to the composition (anvaya) of word-meanings. In this connection, one notices that the case of lak?a??? is quite similar to that of one variety of postulation, namely, ?rut??rt??th??patti, where the subject hears only a part of a sentence and immediately grasps the words that are needed to render the sentential meaning complete. Unless he does that, sentential meaning, i.e., the composition (anvaya) of word-meanings shall suffer from the same inexplicability that characterizes instances of lak?a???. In fact, in the ???aktiv??da?? section of Tattvacint??ma?i, Ga?ge?a himself draws a parallel between the cognition of sentential meaning in a ?rut??rth??patti-like case and the cognition of sentential meaning in an instance of lak?a???. However, Ga?gesa himself treats ?rut??rth??patti as a piece of inferential cognition. If there is no fundamental difference between cases of ?rut??rth??patti and cases of lak?a???, then the cognition of sentential meaning in instances of lak?a??? must also be inferential in essence. In that case, we must admit, against Ga?ge?a??s view, that such cognition of sentential meaning cannot be accommodated within the framework of verbal cognition (???bdabodha). Therefore, I conclude that some revision is needed in Ga?ge?a??s theory of verbal cognition with respect to lak?a???.     

Young People as Objects of Police Control in a Nordic Context: Who Are the Socially Visible Targets?

In Finland, more than one in four young females and almost one in three young males experienced some type of adversarial police contact in a year. The high prevalence of adversarial police contact among contemporary youth highlights the need to study the nature of the contacts and labelling theory’s hypothesis of control bias. Consequently, we develop the theory’s concept of social visibility to examine differential selection. We draw on a nationally representative youth survey to explore police contacts among youths aged 15 to 16 (N?=?5826). The open-ended responses suggested that police interventions typically focus on traffic situations or use of alcohol in public places. Also, we used multivariate logistic regression to examine which factors increase the likelihood of adversarial police contact. We found that a variety of delinquency and heavy alcohol use emerge as strong triggers of getting caught by the police. In addition, male gender, living in a city, having a single father, and low educational aspirations increases the likelihood of police contact, controlling for delinquency, and socio-demographic variables. Our findings seem to be consistent with mixed-model hypothesis, which highlights that both, differential involvement and selection, might operate together. We suggest that even in the Nordic conditions, which is characterised by high social equality, social biases seem to exist and some youth are more socially visible to formal social control than others.     

When Is a Regime Not a Legal System? Alexy on Moral Correctness and Social Efficacy

Robert Alexy defines law as including a claim to moral correctness and demonstrating social efficacy. This paper argues that law's social efficacy is not merely an observable fact but is undergirded by moral commitments by rulers that it is possible for their subjects to follow the rules, that the rulers and others will also follow the rules, that subjects will be protected from violence if they act in accordance with the rules, and that subjects will be entitled to legal redress if others act violently towards them otherwise than in accordance with the rules. Alexy is correct in his conclusion that a system of norms that is not by and large socially efficacious is not a valid legal system, but wrong insofar as he follows legal positivism in distinguishing this aspect of law's validity from law's claim to moral correctness.     

To marry a thief? Crime type as a deterrent to cohabitation

Objectives

Using a vignette study, we investigated the relative attractiveness as cohabitation partners of five different types of offenders, male as well as female.

Methods

Respondents advised a hypothetical person whether he or she should start cohabiting with his or her partner who had offended once. Gender and type of offence were systematically varied.

Results

Our findings suggest that violent offenders are equally attractive as serious property offenders. Against expectation, perpetrators of relational violence are not rated as less attractive than other violent offenders, even if they are male, and also when females are the raters. Male violent offenders are rated as less attractive cohabitation partners than female violent offenders. Sex offenders are the least attractive cohabitation partners, particularly those who had offended against a child.

Conclusions

Crime type matters: sex offending impacted consistently negatively on cohabitation advice. This effect may be partly due to the fact that many regard sex offenders as incurable and ‘deviant.’ Violent offending did not elicit markedly negative advice. Perhaps it was considered less of a risk because of the message in the vignette that the prospective cohabitants had a good relationship. It may also be that many young people have been in a fight or have slapped someone in their lives, and, therefore, downplay the seriousness of this offence.

     

Public Charitable Collections: Are they a Worthwhile Cause?

This article examines one of the most long-established methods of fund-raising for charitable causes in the UK – public charitable collections – and looks at changing patterns in this method of fund-raising in recent years. There have been changes both in the method of collection, which now extends beyond cash donations collected by unpaid volunteers to direct debits and credit card donations collected by paid collectors, and also in the chosen locations for collections, with a preference for supermarkets and other off-street sites. These changes have brought with them difficulties in the regulation of such collections. The article gives a brief overview of current legislative provisions in the UK and the proposed new measures for England and Wales. It examines some of the practical problems involved with the implementation of legislative provisions, and considers some alternative ways of combating potential fraud.     

Applicability of Cranial Models in Urethane Resin and Foam as a Substitute for Bone: Are Synthetic Materials Reliable?

As literature is poor in functional synthetic cranial models, in this study, synthetic handmade models of cranial vaults were produced in two different materials (a urethane resin and a self‐hardening foam), from multiple bone specimens (eight original cranial vaults: four human and four swine), in order to test their resemblance to bone structure in behavior, during fracture formation. All the vaults were mechanically tested with a 2‐kg impact weight and filmed with a high‐speed camera. Fracture patterns were homogeneous in all swine vaults and heterogeneous in human vaults, with resin fractures more similar to bone fractures. Mean fracture latency time extrapolated by videos were of 0.75 msec (bone), 1.5 msec (resin), 5.12 msec (foam) for human vaults and of 0.625 msec (bone), 1.87 msec (resin), 3.75 msec (foam) for swine vaults. These data showed that resin models are more similar to bone than foam reproductions, but that synthetic material may behave quite differently from bone as concerns fracture latency times.     

Are insurance companies liable under the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Federal courts have split on the question of the applicability of the Americans with Disabilities Act to insurance coverage decisions that insurance companies make on the basis of disability; they have similarly split on other issues pertaining to the scope of that Act's application. In deciding whether to read the Act as prohibiting discrimination in insurance decisions that are often crucial in the lives of people with disabilities, courts have faced two problems. First, where it prohibits discrimination in the equal enjoyment of the goods and services of places of public accommodation, the Act's area of concern may be limited to the ability of people with disabilities to gain physical access to facilities; or that area may extend to all forms of disability-based discrimination in the provision of goods and services. This Comment argues that the language and legislative history of the Act are consistent only with the latter view. Second, the provision limiting the Act's applicability to insurance may create an exemption for all insurance decisions; or it may protect only the ability of an insurance company to make an insurance decision to the disadvantage of an insured with a disability where actuarial data support the decision. This comment argues that the ambiguous language of the limiting provision should be resolved in favor of the latter view. Legislative history and the broader background of the history of insurance discrimination law support this resolution. Consequently, the Act should be interpreted as prohibiting disability-based discrimination by insurance companies in selling insurance policies and as defining discrimination as making disability-based insurance decisions without the support of actuarial data. By accepting this interpretation, courts can help stop the pattern of judicial narrowing of the Act's application through inappropriately restrictive statutory construction.     

When can a DNA profile be regarded as unique?

The probability that a defendant's DNA profile is unique in a population of untyped individuals is shown to be bounded below by one minus twice the sum of the match probabilities over the population. This bound assumes that the possibility of laboratory or handling error can be neglected, and applies only when there is no non-DNA evidence in favour of the defendant. There cannot be a completely general lower bound: if there is overwhelming non-DNA evidence that the defendant is not the source of the crime stain, then that is also overwhelming evidence of non-uniqueness. Application to k-locus short tandem repeat (STR) profiles is discussed, and illustrated with calculations based on the 6-STR-locus system used in current UK casework. However, because of the problem of the non-DNA evidence, there seems to be no satisfactory way for an expert witness to address the question of uniqueness in court.     

“Ought to” as a Chinese Legal Performative?

The article discusses the legal performatives as used in Chinese legislative language consisting of bixu (shall), yingdang (should or ought to), keyi (may) and bude (shall not) with the illocutionary force of imposing obligations, conferring rights and permission, and prohibition (bude). It postulates that the use of bixu and yingdang is traceable to the influence of the ancient Chinese cultural and legal philosophy of li and fa. It argues that Chinese language is a carrier of messages with built-in Chinese cultural codes and to be able to understand Chinese law, the wider cultural and linguistic contexts must be considered. It also proposes that speech act theory needs to address the interlingual and intercultural variables in the construction of meaning.     

Are there environmental factors influencing the choice of death by drowning as a means of suicide in the Geneva canton?

123 out of 850 suicides that occurred in the Canton of Geneva between 1980 and 1989 were suicides by submersion. 75 women and 48 men committed this kind of suicide. 89 victims (57 women and 32 men) were older than 40 years. In all cases the spatial distance between the residence of the suicides and the nearest river or lake was determined; a correlation with the tendency to commit suicide by drowning was not evident. More than geographical factors, the psychological influences have to be considered.     

Do a Law’s Policy Implications Affect Beliefs About Its Constitutionality? An Experimental Test

Although a substantial empirical literature has found associations between judges' political orientation and their judicial decisions, the nature of the relationship between policy preferences and constitutional reasoning remains unclear. In this experimental study, law students were asked to determine the constitutionality of a hypothetical law, where the policy implications of the law were manipulated while holding all legal evidence constant. The data indicate that, even with an incentive to select the ruling best supported by the legal evidence, liberal participants were more likely to overturn laws that decreased taxes than laws that increased taxes. The opposite pattern held for conservatives. The experimental manipulation significantly affected even those participants who believed their policy preferences had no influence on their constitutional decisions.     

Does residency matter? Local residency as a predictor of arrest

Prior studies show that a number of offender characteristics impact police officer use of discretion. Although there are exceptions, characteristics such as race and gender have been shown to influence decisions made by police officers with racial/ethnic minorities and men more likely to be arrested than their counterparts. Yet, much less is known about the impact of morphology, an important component from Black’s Behavior of Law, on enforcement decisions. Using 2014 state-wide data on Class ‘B’ arrests in Idaho, we examine the role of morphology, as operationalized by offender residency in the community in which the violation occurred, on the odds of a police officer affecting an arrest as opposed to writing a citation for the violation. Results of logistic regression models show that local residents are significantly less likely to experience an arrest than non-residents. Theoretical explanations and implications for these findings are offered.     

Politicising EU Lawmaking? The Spitzenkandidaten Experiment as a Cautionary Tale

The Spitzenkandidaten experiment has elicited much interest in academic and political circles as a move towards further politicisation of important aspects of EU lawmaking. This article puts forward a sobering account of the normative and instrumental reasons that explain why these expectations were grounded on shaky premises and the experiment could not have delivered its promises. In particular, the article stresses (1) the failure in creating a channel for political opposition through the indirect election of the President of the Commission; (2) the adoption of a formal understanding of the institutions involved in the process, that is, a conception detached from their social basis and (3) the choice of the wrong institution for the purpose of politicisation. The article concludes with a modest proposal for the consolidation of the channels for political action already available at the level of the Member States.     

Dragon's Blood incense: misbranded as a drug of abuse?

An unknown red substance was being sold and used with other drugs of abuse in Virginia (often being used in conjunction with marihuana). The red substance was identified as Dragon's Blood incense from Daemonorops draco. In bioassays, Dragon's Blood incense exhibited a low, but measurable cytotoxicity in in vitro cell lines. Dragon's Blood incense or Volatilized Dragon's Blood had no adverse effect on mouse motor performance based on the inclined screen and rotorod tests. delta(9)-Tetrahydrocannibinol (THC) produced a dose-related decline in mouse performance on the rotorod test. The combination of Dragon's Blood incense or Volatilized Dragon's Blood with delta(9)-THC did not contribute further to the impairment of the mice on the rotorod. This data suggests that the abuse potential for Dragon's Blood incense alone or in combination with marihuana is minimal.