Trauma and violence research: taking stock in the 21st century

Thirty years after the first national estimates of intimate partner violence were published, the field has reached such a level of maturity that complex questions can be posed and sophisticated research studies can be designed to answer them. Out of this body of research, one of the most important things that researchers have learned is that violence and trauma are experienced in different ways by different individuals and as a result, require different types of prevention and intervention approaches. With this greater understanding of the problems of violence and trauma, together with a commitment to inclusive and practical research, the field is poised to move forward toward the ultimate goal of violence prevention.     

On non-invasive 2D and 3D Chromatic White Light image sensors for age determination of latent fingerprints

The feasibility of 2D-intensity and 3D-topography images from a non-invasive Chromatic White Light (CWL) sensor for the age determination of latent fingerprints is investigated. The proposed method might provide the means to solve the so far unresolved issue of determining a fingerprints age in forensics. Conducting numerous experiments for an indoor crime scene using selected surfaces, different influences on the aging of fingerprints are investigated and the resulting aging variability is determined in terms of inter-person, intra-person, inter-finger and intra-finger variation. Main influence factors are shown to be the sweat composition, temperature, humidity, wind, UV-radiation, surface type, contamination of the finger with water-containing substances, resolution and measured area size, whereas contact time, contact pressure and smearing of the print seem to be of minor importance. Such influences lead to a certain experimental variability in inter-person and intra-person variation, which is higher than the inter-finger and intra-finger variation. Comparing the aging behavior of 17 different features using 1490 time series with a total of 41,520 fingerprint images, the great potential of the CWL technique in combination with the binary pixel feature from prior work is shown. Performing three different experiments for the classification of fingerprints into the two time classes [0, 5h] and [5, 24h], a maximum classification performance of 79.29% (kappa=0.46) is achieved for a general case, which is further improved for special cases. The statistical significance of the two best-performing features (both binary pixel versions based on 2D-intensity images) is manually shown and a feature fusion is performed, highlighting the strong dependency of the features on each other. It is concluded that such method might be combined with additional capturing devices, such as microscopes or spectroscopes, to a very promising age estimation scheme.     

Teenagers’ Experiences of Pregnancy and the Parents’ and Partners’ Reactions: A Malaysian Perspective

This study focuses on the experiences of unwed teenage mothers in Malaysia in respect to the reactions of their parents and the fathers of their babies and how the reactions from significant others influence these unwed teenage mothers. The investigation was based on content analysis of interviews with 17 unwed teenage mothers, aged 12 to 18 years, during their probation or placement in shelter houses. The results show that most unwed teenage mothers became pregnant as a result of rape or statutory rape, and thus were at risk of developing mental health problems. Three themes were developed: secrecy, repression, and rejection. Four additional themes—feeling detached, trapped, unworthy, and ambiguous—were developed to describe the teenagers’ experiences of pregnancy.     

A novel chitosan/tripolyphosphate/L‐lysine conjugates for latent fingerprints detection and enhancement

Most chemical and physical methods employed in visualizing latent marks have shown detrimental effects on human health and, therefore, some research groups have directed their attention to the utilization of various (bio)polymers with the aforementioned purpose. Although chitosan is widely used in medicine, pharmacy, food, and drug delivery systems, there are very few studies that address this biopolymer utilization in forensic applications, such as the detection of latent fingerprints. We used chitosan crosslinked with sodium tripolyphosphate and conjugated with L‐lysine to enhance the visualization of latent fingerprints, due to its ability to interact with fingerprint sweat residues. These conjugates were prepared using different (w/w) amounts of chitosan and tripolyphosphate (6/1; 4/1; 1/1; 1/4; and 1/6), and those with the most promising results (i.e., 6/1 formulation) were investigated in detail. Fourier transform infrared (FT‐IR) spectroscopy confirmed interactions between components of the systems. Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis showed that prepared powder formulations were uniform in size and confirmed that chitosan/tripolyphosphate/lysine conjugates bind easily to the sweat and lipid residues present in the latent fingerprints. The testing of prepared conjugates demonstrated the potential of these systems as bio‐based powder substitution for commercially available powders.     

Bacterial Cross‐contamination Potential Associated with Contaminated Currency

Previous studies have shown a significant amount of contaminants on paper currencies. It is important to study the transfer of microorganisms between paper currencies to determine whether it meets the level of a human health threat. This cross‐contamination potential was analyzed by seeding new US 1‐dollar bills with Bacillus thuringiensis, and pressing or rubbing them against clean currency to determine the amount of bacteria transfer to the unseeded currency. The transferred amount of bacteria was recovered, plated, incubated, and the colony‐forming units were quantified. Among the recovery methods tested, the most efficient method, vortexing for 10 min with a recovery efficiency of 40 ± 8.1%, was used in this analysis. The resulting transfer rates were 4.8%, 8.6%, and 14.3% when pressed for 24 h, 72 h, and rubbed together, respectively. These transferred amounts of bacteria are significant and have the potential to spread infectious diseases.     

Vertical Lip Position and Thickness in Facial Reconstruction: A Validation of Commonly Used Methods for Predicting the Position and Size of Lips

This study examined several methods used to estimate oral fissure position, lip margin position, and lip thickness recommended by Angel, George, Lebedinskaya, Taylor, Wilkinson et al., Balueva and Veselovskaya. A sample of 86 lateral head cephalograms of adult subjects from central Europe were measured and the actual and predicted dimensions were compared. The best estimation for oral fissure position was “opposite the lower ¾ mark of maxillary incisors” (error of 1.3 mm). Upper lip margin was predicted best by “upper ¼ mark of maxillary incisors” (error of 1.7 mm), and lower lip margin by “cementum‐enamel junction of mandibular incisors” (error of 2.3 mm). The regression equations of Wilkinson et al. displayed least error (1.3 mm and 1.8 mm, respectively) for upper and lower lip thickness, and method of George (error of 3.4 mm) for total lip thickness.     

The organizational structure of international drug smuggling

While most group offending is not well organized, it is generally assumed that high levels of organization can be found in group offending that generates revenue, such as white-collar crime, drug sales, and smuggling drugs or humans. The organizational structure of international drug smuggling has typically been viewed as highly rational and formally structured. Employing interviews with thirty-four federal prisoners convicted of smuggling large volumes of cocaine into the United States, this study explored the organizational structure of high level international drug smuggling. The subjects described a general lack of formal structure and depicted the drug smuggling operations as composed of isolated work groups without formal connections among each other. These findings bring into question the idea that these groups are rationally organized around pursuing efficiency and support recent research that suggests network security or minimizing risk are key organizing principles of drug trading organizations.     

Interviewing serious offenders: Ms. Egghead meets Mr. Gumshoe

Organised crime, due to its intricate nature, is a very challenging as well as less accessible research field. Although difficult to conduct a methodical research on this topic, organised crime, nevertheless, offers a unique opportunity to utilise an interdisciplinary research methodology. This paper describes (multiple) triangulation as an appropriate method for researching the role of culture in the advancement of ethnic Albanian organised crime groups in Europe. Triangulation, for the purpose of the described project, has been used to obtain confirmation of findings through convergence of different perspectives. Interviewing offenders is one of the research methods more thoroughly explained in this paper. The paper too explores some advantages of snowball technique used for interviewing less accessible research subjects. It also discusses various dilemmas, security-related or not, researchers are faced with when intending to interview serious offenders.