Post-mortem examination prior to cremation--an instrument to verify the quality of medical post-mortems and uncover non-natural deaths?

The external post-mortem examination, its deficient quality and possible causes have been the subject of numerous political and professional discussions. The external post-mortem examination is the basis for the decision whether further criminal investigations are required to clarify the cause of death. It is thus an essential instrument to ensure legal certainty. Before cremation, a second external post-mortem examination is performed by a public medical officer to make sure that errors of the first post-mortem are corrected. In the present study, cases were retrospectively analyzed in which a forensic autopsy had been ordered on the basis of the results of the post-mortem examination performed before cremation. The entries on the death certificate regarding the manner and cause of death were compared with the autopsy results. Between 1998 and 2007, 387 autopsies were ordered after external examination before cremation. In 55 cases (14.2%), the autopsy revealed a non-natural death, although a natural death had been attested on the death certificate. In descending order, a wrong manner of death was attested by clinicians, general practitioners and emergency physicians. With regard to the place where the first external post-mortem had been performed the lowest error rate was seen in nursing homes. Concerning the cause of death, discrepancies between the first post-mortem and autopsy were found in 59.4% of the cases. In this respect, general practitioners and clinicians were ranking first, whereas in nursing homes the cause of death was wrongly assessed in over 70% of cases. At present, the medical post-mortem does not meet the required quality standards, especially with regard to legal certainty. Determination of the cause of death on the basis of the external post-mortem examination is a challenging task even for the experienced medical examiner. As to the categorization of the manner of death it has to be stated that non-natural deaths are often not recognized or that the possibility to certify a death as unclear is not sufficiently used. As a result, it seems important to demand intensive, qualified, additional training in external post-mortem examinations for physicians.     

The relationship between investigative interviewing experience and open-ended question usage

We present three studies examining the role of prior job experience in interviewing and interviewers' ability to learn open-ended questions during a training program. We predicted a negative relationship such that more experienced interviewers would perform worse after training than less experienced interviewers, and that (irrespective of baseline performance) the more experienced interviewers would improve the least during training. These predictions were made for two reasons. First, specific questions are commonly used in the workplace (i.e. open-ended questioning constitutes new learning). Second, experience in the use of specific questions potentially interferes with newly learned open-ended questions. Overall, our predictions were supported across different participant samples (including police officers specialized in child abuse investigation and social workers from the child protection area), time delays, and modes of training. The results highlight the need for investment in ongoing investigative interviewing training commencing early during professionals' careers, prior to the establishment of long-term habits in the use of specific questions.     

The emerging EU peacebuilding framework: confirming or transcending liberal peacebuilding?

The European Union (EU) is now emerging as a major actor in regional and global peacebuilding. Yet its peacebuilding approach and practices are subject to some significant and familiar contradictions. In this article, we identify the basis for what may become an ‘EU peacebuilding framework’ (EUPF), and argue that, while it aspires to a ‘just and durable peace’ including practical tools and a normative framework, these need to be set in critical relief. The EU's nascent approach to building peace is compared and contrasted with the evolving liberal peacebuilding consensus and the much criticized statebuilding project which has recently emerged. This is evaluated against recent research focusing on developing a more sophisticated form of contextually relevant peacebuilding. Finally, we assess how the embryonic EUPF might contribute to the development of a just and durable peace, and ask what sorts of issues and dimensions this raises.     

Suicide in children, youths and young adults

Suicides among children and youths are tragic events. The suicide cases of children, youths and young adults examined between 1995 and 2009 at the Institute of Legal Medicine of the Hanover Medical School were retrospectively analyzed. Altogether, 54 suicides among children, youths and young adults (37 males, 17 females; median age 17.5 years) were evaluated. The suicide victims were predominantly male (68.5%). The vast majority used "hard" methods such as hanging, jumping from a height or being run over by a train. In seven cases (13.0%) psychiatric disorders were known. Seven victims (13.0%) left a suicide note. Suicide was most frequently (40.7%) committed in the open air (40.7%). In addition, the evaluation shows that at the time of committing suicide more than 40% of the youths and adolescents, in whom a chemical toxicological examination was performed, were under the influence of alcohol, medical and/or illegal drugs.     

“Living Here has Changed My Whole Perspective”: How Escaping Inner‐City Poverty Shapes Neighborhood and Housing Choice

Research on the housing choice voucher program and housing mobility interventions shows that even with assistance, it is difficult for poor minority families to relocate to, and remain in, low‐poverty neighborhoods. Scholars suggest that both structural forces and individual preferences help explain these residential patterns. However, less attention is paid to where preferences come from, and how they respond to policies and social structure to shape residential decisionmaking. In this paper, we use data from fieldwork with 110 participants in the Baltimore Mobility Program (BMP), an assisted mobility voucher program, to demonstrate how residential preferences can shift over time as a function of living in higher opportunity neighborhoods. Since 2003, BMP has helped over 2,000 low‐income African American families move from high‐poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods in Baltimore City to low‐poverty, racially mixed neighborhoods throughout the Baltimore region. Along with intensive counseling and unique program administration, these new neighborhood contexts helped many women to shift what we term residential choice frameworks: the criteria that families use to assess housing and neighborhoods. Parents who participated in the mobility program raised their expectations for what neighborhoods, homes, and schools can provide for their children and themselves. Parents report new preferences for the “quiet” of suburban locations, and strong consideration of school quality and neighborhood diversity when thinking about where to live. Our findings suggest that housing policies should employ counseling to ensure relocation to and sustained residence in low‐poverty communities. Our work also underscores how social structure, experience, and policy opportunities influence preferences, and how these preferences, in turn, affect policy outcomes.     

Consistency of Risk Preference Measures: An Artefactual Field Experiment from Rural China

A variety of measures have been developed to elicit individual risk preferences. How these measures perform in the field, in particular in developing countries with non-student subjects, is still an open question. We implement an artefactual field experiment in rural China to investigate (i) consistency across incentivised experimental risk measures, (ii) consistency in risk preferences elicitation between non-incentivised survey measures and incentivised experiments, and (iii) possible explanations for risk preference inconsistency across measures. We find that inconsistent risk preferences across survey and experimental measures may be explained by ambiguity preferences. In the survey, subjects may mix risk and ambiguity preferences.     

Investigating Sub-groups of Harassers: The Roles of Attachment,Dependency, Jealousy and Aggression

The study aimed to classify non-harassers, minor, and severe harassers based on responses to measures of jealousy, dependency, attachment, perpetration, and victimization of relationship aggression, and harassment victimization, in a convenience sample of undergraduate students. Respondents (n = 177) replied on the following scales: Unwanted Pursuit Behaviors Inventory (UPBI: Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al., Violence and Victims 15:73–89, 2000), Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS: Straus, Journal of Marriage and the Family 41:75–88, 1979, measuring physical and verbal aggression for respondents and their partners), Sexual Jealousy Scale (SJS: Nannini and Meyers, The Journal of Sex Research 37:117–122, 2000), Interpersonal Dependency Inventory (IDI: Hirschfeld et al., Journal of Personality Assessment 41:610–618, 1997), and the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ: Bartholomew and Horowitz, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61:226–244, 1991, measuring adult attachment). Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA), with responses to these measures entered as predictors, produced significant differences between the groups in the univariate results on measures of: preoccupied attachment, jealousy, emotional reliance, verbal aggression and harassment victimization, and physical aggression perpetration. The functions identified by the DFA correctly classified 61% of cases, and identified the important roles of jealousy, dependency, attachment, and relationship aggression in harassment. Differing responses to the measurement of these can theoretically distinguish between non-, minor, and severe harassers.