Forensic Pathologist Consensus in the Interpretation of Photographs of Patterned Injuries of the Skin

Forensic pathologists are commonly asked to evaluate injuries on the basis of photographs. Members of the National Association of Medical Examiners were asked to participate in an online survey in which they were presented with 68 patterned injuries of the skin and asked to make a diagnosis ranging from very general (e.g., “blunt” vs. “sharp”) to specific (e.g., “baton blow”). This was not the case. Consensus for general diagnosis averaged 0.77 and 0.72 for specific diagnosis. While there was a strong correlation between consensus and confidence in aggregate, individual correlations were poor. Consensus diagnosis was inversely correlated with age, and positively correlated with jurisdictional size, medical degree, and whether or not the respondent was actively performing autopsies as a job function. A subsequent survey is exploring possible reasons for lack of consensus in low‐consensus questions. The high correlation between confidence and consensus at the aggregate level and low correlation at the individual level may have implications for quality assurance protocols.     

Contemporary Indigenous Art,Resistance and Imaging the Processes of Legal Subjection

Postcolonial discourse is incredibly diverse and postcolonial art in Australia has numerous critical modes. This paper describes an approach in Contemporary Indigenous art that attempts a critique of the law from within the law rather than outside of it. It takes a radical form of over-proximity, rather than avant-garde distance, and finds the gap and failure in law’s attempt at creating legal subjects of us all. In the work of Gordon Bennett, Danie Mellor and the duo Adam Geczy and Adam Hill, there is a working through the political and legal ramifications of the Indigenous subject in contemporary Australia. The focus on processes of initiation and subjectivization, or what Althusser called “interpellation” and show the effects of this interpellation in the Indigenous subject and offer modes of resistance. The artists are informed by Lacanian notions of subjectivization and utilise this approach to semiotics and power as the starting point for their critique.     

Patterns of prior offending by child abductors: A comparison of fatal and non-fatal outcomes

Our study examines the prior offending of 750 individuals who are known to be responsible for the abduction of a child under the age of 18 years. The first group comprised of 311 offenders (42%) who had abducted a child that was later located alive (found alive, referred to as FA). The second group was comprised of 439 offenders (58%) who had abducted a child that was either found murdered or was still missing and presumed dead (found murdered, referred to as FM). While males perpetrated the majority of the abductions, women perpetrated 31 (10%) of the offenses in the FA group and 10 (2%) of the offenses in the FM group. The average number of prior offenses as reflected in the NCIC criminal history of each offender was seven with these occurring over an average of 12 years. Seventy-five percent of the offenders had prior arrests for an assortment of different crimes while 25% had no known criminal history, a finding that was consistent across both the FA and FM groups. Of those with a criminal history, 41% had been arrested for assault, 40% for larceny, 35% for burglary/breaking and entering, 33% for forcible sex offenses, 25% for drug/narcotic offenses, 21% for weapons law violations, 17% for motor vehicle thefts, 15% for robbery, and 14% for kidnapping. Our findings are congruent with the theme of criminal diversity among child abductors and argue against the specificity in offending that is often assumed with this type of sexual offender. This information is relevant to our understanding of the progression in criminal offending that is manifested by offenders who abduct children and will hopefully be used by law enforcement in helping to direct and focus their investigations.     

Attracting future civil servants with public values? An experimental study on employer branding

Abstract

A frequently cited recommendation of public service motivation (PSM) research is to use PSM in the context of HR marketing. However, empirical evidence demonstrating the usefulness of addressing PSM in the recruitment process is limited. Moreover, we know little about the relative importance of PSM for public employers’ attractiveness. We address this gap using an experimental research design to investigate whether public service motivated individuals differ from extrinsically motivated individuals in terms of their attraction to organizations that emphasize either “traditional” public or private values in their employer branding. Our findings indicate that public service motivated individuals are attracted neither to public nor to private values in employer branding. Furthermore, individuals with very high levels of extrinsic motivation are more attracted to private values employer branding than to public values employer branding and to the control group.     

Identifying Critical Points of Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms from Childhood to Young Adulthood

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Depression is a common mental illness and research has focused on late childhood and adolescence in an attempt to prevent or reduce later psychopathology and/or...     

Beyond disaster framing: exploring multi-mandate INGOs’ representations of conflict

This article examines how and why multi-mandate INGOs represent contemporary armed conflicts in particular ways. Based on empirical analysis of NGO communications and interviews with staff, it finds that these organisations typically adopt a two-track approach to representing conflicts. They use mainstream media to present consequence-oriented accounts to the general public, while utilising alternative channels to represent more nuanced depictions of conflict to more targeted audiences. These alternative forms of communication often aim to disrupt the dominant narratives of conflict produced by influential policy or media actors. Decisions about how to represent conflict are shaped by organisations’ histories, identities and funding relationships.     

Mayoral scalar strategies and the role of the central state after the financial crisis

Much has been written about state rescaling, politics of scale and the rise of cities and regions in Europe. Little is known, however, about the impact of the financial crisis on these processes. By taking the view of city mayors, this paper presents a comprehensive and timely re-evaluation of central tenets of this literature in the turbulent aftermath of the financial crisis. The analysis shows the variegated pathways of state rescaling before and after the financial crisis, the multifaceted scalar strategies with which mayors have responded in different countries and cities, and the impact of such strategies on their perception of a centralisation towards the national state. The paper concludes by emphasising the continued dominance of the central state, whereas potentials for the rise of cities are rather to be sought at subnational than at European or global scales.     

Rescuing Peacebuilding? Anthropology and Peace Formation*

International Relations (IR) and related social science disciplines focusing on peace and conflict studies have enabled a bureaucratic understanding of peacebuilding and a liberal form of peace. This has extended into a neoliberal type of statebuilding. There is now an impressive international architecture for peace, but its engagement with its subjects in everyday contexts has been less impressive. An earlier group of conflict researchers, grouped around John Burton and later A.J.R. Groom, have long argued that this is partly because IR has concentrated on elite power, problem-solving methodology and positivist epistemologies. It has failed to understand the dynamics, agency and hybridity of human society and institutions when it comes to peace, or that inequality is conflict inducing. Rescuing peacebuilding from neoliberal epistemological frameworks requires an anthropological and ethnographic sensitivity.     

What Explains Agency Heads’ Length of Tenure? Testing Managerial Background,Performance, and Political Environment Effects

There are a number of influences on how long an agency head serves. The importance of particular influences, in turn, depends on the prospective destination of the agency head: elsewhere in the public sector, the private sector, or retirement. The authors estimate survival models of agency heads’ tenure using panel data on British central government executive agencies from 1989 to 2012. Findings suggest that chief executives of poorly performing agencies are encouraged to retire sooner. There is no evidence that a change in political control increases the risk of any form of exit, suggesting that political pressure to leave is not substantial for this type of official. Outsiders—agency heads recruited from outside central government—are relatively difficult to retain for a longer time, such that potential shortfalls in suitable managers caused by retirements in an aging workforce may be difficult to make up by appointing from this source.