What does method validation look like for forensic voice comparison by a human expert?

Method validation has gained traction within forensic speech science. The community recognises the need to demonstrate that the analysis methods used are valid, but finding a way to do so has been more straightforward for some analysis methods than for others. This article addresses the issue of method validation for the Auditory Phonetic and Acoustic (AuPhA) approach to forensic voice comparison. Although it is possible to take inspiration from general regulatory guidance on method validation, it is clear that these cannot be transposed on to all forensic analysis methods with the same degree of success. Particularly with respect to an analysis method like AuPhA, and in a field of the size and characteristics of forensic speech science, a bespoke approach to method validation is required. In this article we address the discussions that have been taking place around method validation, and illustrate one possible solution to demonstrating the validity of voice comparison by a human expert using the AuPhA method. In doing so we consider the constraints placed on sole practitioners, which generally go unacknowledged.     

What does a digital forensics opinion look like? A comparative study of digital forensics and forensic science reporting practices

This study explores digital forensics (DF) reporting practices and compares the results with other forensic science disciplines. Forty reports were obtained from a quasi-experiment involving DF examiners, and a quantitative content analysis was performed to determine which conclusion types they applied and which content they included with relevance to the credibility of the reported results. A qualitative analysis was performed to examine the certainty expressions used in the conclusions. The results were compared to a study of eight forensic science disciplines performed by Bali et al. [24,26]. The results show that the DF examiners tend to present their conclusions either as Categorical conclusion or Strength of support (SoS) conclusion types and that they address source, activity, and offence level issues in their conclusions. The content analysis indicates deficiencies in DF reporting practices, and several of the challenges seem to be shared with other FS disciplines. The analysis of certainty expressions showed that a plethora of expressions was used, and that they lacked reference to an established framework. The results indicate that more research on DF evaluation and reporting practices is necessary and justifies a need for enhanced focus on quality control and peer review within the DF discipline.     

Fostering management education to deter corruption: what do students know about corruption and its legal consequences?

This article analyses the current knowledge about corruption and its legal consequences among university students. Based on data from 1,511 undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines at four major universities in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, it appears that the majority of students have difficulty identifying corrupt behaviour and its legal consequences. Law students achieve slightly better results. However, even law students demonstrate a significant lack of knowledge of corruption issues. In particular, most of the students are unaware that corruption that occurs abroad can also be prosecuted in Switzerland. The limited knowledge among students regarding corruption and its legal consequences as identified in this study suggests that the teaching and study of anti-corruption-related subjects should be better integrated into the curricula of universities and business schools.     

Tobacco: a product like any other?

Legislation in most countries regulates trade in poisons and highly addictive products, such as narcotics. The statements that (1) tobacco harms health and (2) causes addiction are established as facts in international and national law. Yet in Russia, and in many other countries, there is a contradiction between the open sale of this addictive poison and basic laws, such as those on product safety. Provisions in both the Russian constitution and the criminal code can be interpreted as making the sale of tobacco illegal, setting out severe penalties for those involved. Yet, remarkably, tobacco is treated quite differently from other products. In this paper, we describe the experience so far in seeking to enforce this legislation in Russia. Attempts to persuade the police to enforce the legislation have been unsuccessful, although they accept that there is a prima facie case for action but, in private, express fear of taking it. The case for action is currently being argued before the Russian Supreme Court but this could take many years to reach a conclusion. In the mean time, new legislation on the regulation of tobacco production has been passed by the State Duma, with the support of the tobacco industry, which implicitly assumes that tobacco is a lawful product, thereby creating legal confusion. We argue that the only way to redress this situation is to recognize that tobacco production and sales must be regulated in the same way as any other harmful and addictive substance.     

Corruption and economic growth: does the size of the government matter?

Economic Change and Restructuring - Corruption is often a source of contentious debate, covering different areas of knowledge, such as philosophy and sociology. In this paper we assess the effects...     

Protecting health information privacy in research: what's an ethics committee like yours doing in a job like this?

The Commonwealth and State legislation designed to protect the privacy of personal health information has attracted the criticism that the constraints imposed on the use of the information in research obstructs that research. A central and common feature of the legislation is the reliance upon the review by human research ethics committees of research that proposes to use personal health information for research without prior consent from those whose information it is. The origins of this reliance are explored and explained and it is suggested that this has proved to be an inappropriate policy choice. The extension of the reliance is then described and the conceptual, procedural, workload and structural consequences of requiring these voluntary committees to conform to legislative standards of review of issues of the public interest are critically examined. In recent reviews of the Commonwealth legislation, there is recognition of the underlying uncertainty as to the appropriate balance between protection of personal privacy and the promotion of beneficial research. In the further exploration of these matters that those reviews recommended, a close and critical examination of the wisdom of continuing to rely on ethics committees is needed.     

Toward a clean government in China: does the budget reform provide a hope?

Fighting corruption has proven to be a difficult task in many countries. In this paper, using China as a case study, we argue that a properly designed budgetary institution helps remove many institutional incentives and opportunities for corruption in financial management and regulatory activities of the government. As a result of recent budget reforms, China’s anticorruption effort has shifted from its earlier emphasis on exhortation and periodic crackdowns, which have been found to be ineffective, to the more fundamental issues of institutional incentives and opportunities for corruption. We propose that one consequence of the budget reform is the hope that China’s effort to create a clean government will be advanced. However, there is still a long way to go since it will take time for the new budgetary system to be institutionalized. This study is supported by Sun Yat-sen University 982–2 International Exchange Fund. The authors wish to thank Professor Ting Gong, Professor Stephen Ma, and Dr. Alfred Ho for their assistance and suggestions in editing and refining this essay. We are also grateful to Dr. Oliver M. Rui for his valuable comments. Lastly, we want to thank Dr. Andrew Wedeman for sending us his paper for reference.

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Evolving issues in police and immigrants’ relation in Finland: is it towards a structural interpretation?

The relation between police and immigrants has become a topic of scholarly fields of research as immigration has increased the number of new residents and people from a variety of countries and cultures into Finland. This new phenomenon has slowly changed the country to a multicultural society, thus requiring government agencies to adapt and adjust in the ways they provide services to the citizenry. Moreover, empirical research studies on minorities’ and immigrants’ perceptions of the police posit that certain factors are responsible for minorities’ lack of trust in the police. Little attention has been given to this issue in Finland. The aim of this study is to analyse and explore as well as add to the growing scholarly research on the perception and cooperation between immigrants and the police in Finland in order to address the factors that could possibly be responsible for immigrants’ lack of trust in the police. To address these issues, the study uses the experiences of 23 out of the 65 Africans whose ages range from 28 to 50+ who have resided in the country for five or more years. The findings indicate a depth of troublesome cross-cultural understanding between the participants and the police owing to differences in the policing styles in Finland and the respondents’ countries of origin. The concept of over-policing is analysed with a view to ensure the effective protection of the human rights of the participating immigrants within the country’s criminal justice system.     

The neurological determination of death: what does it really mean?

The recent Canadian forum's recommendations regarding "neurological determination of death" claim to have determined a "Canadian definition, criteria, and minimum testing requirements for neurological determination of death." In this review the problems with this statement are discussed. The criterion of neurological determination of death does not fulfill the definition of death, because there is continued integration of the organism as a whole. The tests for neurological determination of death do not fulfill the criterion of neurological determination of death because they do not show the irreversible loss of all critical brain functions. The forum has provided no coherent argument for why neurological determination of death should be considered death. I suggest that one cannot invoke expert opinion to clarify a criterion of death, and tests for this criterion of death, without a clear concept of what death is. The forum has clarified tests for what they call "neurological determination of death," but this is not death itself; rather, it is a neurologically devastating state. Whether this state of "neurological determination of death" is enough to justify the morality of harvesting organs prior to death is the real question. A potential solution to this question is discussed.     

Corruption and turnout in Portugal—a municipal level study

This article ventures to be one of the first studies that examines the relationship between corruption and electoral turnout on the sub-national level. Taking Portugal, a southern European country with nationally relatively high levels of corruption and relatively low levels of turnout, as a case, we examine the relationship between the two concepts across Portugal’s 304 out of 308 municipalities for the legislative elections in 2005 and 2009. Controlling for municipal level GDP per capita, unemployment, the percentage of senior citizens, and population density, as well as the closeness of the election and the district magnitude, we find corruption to be a rather strong mobilizing agent. Compared to “clean” municipalities, our results indicate that turnout is several percentage points higher in “very corrupt” municipalities.     

Justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Practicing Corruption, Practicing Resistance?

Based on empirical material collected in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this article analyses certain practices labelled as corruption as being part of broader relations of subjugation and resistance. In the first part it describes how a system of governance was instituted and maintained during colonialism and dictatorship through knowledge-power that allowed for relations of domination and exploitation to take place. Then, it analyses how in a context of democratic transformation, certain practices of corruption help unveil the complexity of multi-layered power relations mobilising discourses of knowledge as well as practices of subjugation, resistance, oppression and exploitation. The article concludes by underlining that institutional actors have a vested interest in maintaining the current system in place as they represent the nodal point of power-relations.     

Corruption in China’s economic reform: a review of recent observations and explanations

Corruption is a universal phenomenon of public institutions. It is markedly more pervasive in developing and transitional societies. China, with rapid economic growth for two decades, has been deeply troubled by the problem of official corruption at all levels in the public sector. The paper reviews the literature in the last 15 years which examines Chinese corruption from either a theoretical or empirical approach, by qualitative or quantitative methods in observation. Based on more than 30 studies with a focus on the related topic, the review covers issues of Chinese corruption data and statistics, theoretical explanations and China’s strategies of fighting corruption as well as critique.

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