Teaching "street law" to the criminally insane

A course in "Street Law" was taught to forensic patients by law students, following a format used by Georgetown University Law Center. Although the course has been taught to high school students and inmates of correctional facilities, this was the first time it has been extended to mental patients found not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity. An outstanding feature of the course was marked enthusiasm shown by patients who, through long institutionalization, had become apathetic, indifferent, and despairing. Their readiness and ability to learn brought to mind a couple of old sayings often heard around mental hospitals, "I may be crazy but I'm not stupid," and "Sometimes you can't tell the patients from the staff." The staff of at least one ward has picked up "teaching and learning to use as a central theme in treatment of patients, not abandoning traditional methods, but shifting the emphasis from therapy to teaching as a way of getting the patient's interest in his own rehabilitation. Judges, reviewing cases for release, have looked quizzical when the patients' active participation in a "law course" has been used as evidence of satisfactory progress.     

Involuntary outpatient treatment as "desintitutionalized coercion": the net-widening concerns

In American jurisprudence, two justifications have traditionally been put forth to support the government's social control of persons with mental illness: police power and parens patriae. As public mental hospitals became less available as loci in which to exercise these functions, governments sought alternative means to achieve the same ends. One prominent but quite controversial means is involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT). While the concerns about IOT have been myriad, one often alluded to but never documented is that of "net-widening." That is, once IOT became available, it would be applied to an ever greater number of individuals, progressively expanding the margins of the designated population to whom it is applied, despite the formal standard for its application remaining constant. We tested the net-widening belief in a naturalistic experiment in Massachusetts. We found that net-widening did not occur, despite an environment strongly conducive to that expansion. At this time, whatever the arguments against IOT might be, net-widening should not be one of them.     

Assessment of UDP-glucuronosyltransferase catalyzed formation of ethyl glucuronide in human liver microsomes and recombinant UGTs

While ethanol is primarily metabolized to acetaldehyde and acetic acid via alcohol dehydrogenase, a minor but increasingly important pathway in the field of forensic science involves the conjugation of glucuronic acid to form an ethyl glucuronide (EtG) metabolite. The kinetics of ethyl glucuronide formation were examined in human liver microsomes (HLM) and recombinant UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs). The metabolite exhibited a relatively slow rate of formation in a human liver microsome mix of 75.4 pmol/(min/mg). Further investigation identified multiple UGT isoforms to be responsible for catalyzing the addition of glucuronic acid to ethanol, with UGT1A1 and 2B7 being the two most prevalent isoforms. Co-incubation with bilirubin or 3'-azido-3'-deoxythymidine (UGT1A1 and 2B7 inhibitors, respectively) inhibited the greatest amount of ethyl glucuronide formation, though other UGT inhibitors also showed some effect. Enzyme kinetics were performed in human liver microsomes and recombinant UGT enzymes. The apparent Km (Km app) and Vmax values were determined to be 0.17+/-0.08 mM and 75.98+/-5.63 pmol/(min/mg) (human liver microsomes), 0.03+/-0.01 mM and 25.22+/-3.45 pmol/(min/mg) (UGT1A1), and 0.11+/-0.04 mM and 52.03+/-9.8 pmol/(min/mg) (UGT2B7). Thus, it appears that multiple UGTs are responsible for the formation of ethyl glucuronide and that any functional differences in the enzymology underlying ethyl glucuronide formation would most likely be masked by a combination of other enzymatic pathways.     

The identification of sexual and violent motivations in men who assault women: implication for treatment

A qualitative analysis of interview data with 41 rapists determined that five implicit theories (ITs) underlie rapists' offense supportive beliefs/feelings/motives: (a) dangerous world (DW)-where men have feelings of generalized anger and/or resentment toward others; (b) women are dangerous-where men hold a set of attitudes that are hostile toward women; (c) women as sexual objects (WSO)-where women are seen as primarily sexual objects; (d) male sex drive is uncontrollable-where sexual urges are seen all consuming; (e) entitlement-where men feel that they can do exactly what they want. Consideration of whether DW or WSO ITs were present or absent indicated that three main groups could be identified: Group 1: violently motivated-presence of DW and/or absence of WSO; Group 2: sexually motivated-presence of WSO and/or absence of DW; Group 3: sadistically motivated-presence of DW and WSO. These results are discussed in terms of treatment needs of rapists.     

Length variation in HV2 of the human mitochondrial DNA control region.

Hair samples were typed from three individuals who exhibited length heteroplasmy in the homopolymeric cytosine stretches (C-stretch) in hypervariable region 2 (HV2). The study demonstrated that for different hairs within an individual, the HV2 C-stretch region can vary with respect to the number of cytosines and/or proportion of C-stretch length variants. Length heteroplasmy may occur regardless of the prominent length variant present in this region. Differences in the number of cytosines at the C-stretch region, or a variation in the relative amounts of heteroplasmic length variants, cannot be used to support an interpretation of exclusion.