The development of a sexual abuse severity score: characteristics of childhood sexual abuse associated with trauma symptomatology, somatization, and alcohol abuse

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is common and is associated with both mental and physical health problems in adulthood. Using data from an age- and sex-stratified population survey of 600 Olmsted County, Minnesota, residents, a Sexual Abuse Severity Score was developed. The abuse characteristics of 156 CSA respondents were associated with self-reported trauma, somatization, and alcohol use. Characteristics included age of first sexual abuse, more than one perpetrator, degree of coercion, severity of abuse (i.e., attempted intercourse is more severe than fondling), and the number of occurrences. This is one of the few reports to develop a risk summary that quantifies the severity of CSA.     

National case-control study of homicide offending and methamphetamine use

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between methamphetamine use and homicide. To carry out this study, data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities were combined to create a case-control design. The main exposure measure is methamphetamine use and the main outcome measure is homicide. Results suggest that the odds of committing a homicide are nearly 9 times greater for an individual who uses methamphetamine. More importantly, the association between methamphetamine use and homicide persists even after adjusting for alternative drug use (i.e., alcohol, heroin, crack, cocaine, PCP, LSD), sex, race, income, age, marital status, previous arrests, military experience, and education level. Methamphetamine was the only drug use variable that was strongly correlated with homicide. These results support recent clinical studies that suggest methamphetamine use is different than other drug use in its effects on violence.     

Restricting loans of money to Hong Kong civil servants: social censure or violation of human rights?

Obtaining a loan is an individual’s private business and such a right should be free from interference. However, if Government officers obtain a loan from undesirable persons, they may be lured into committing an act which they would not otherwise have done but for the favours having been shown by the lenders. Section 3 of Hong Kong’s Prevention of Bribery Ordinance attempts to limit such behaviour of Government officers. Since the power of this provision is draconian, it may possibly violate human rights. This paper attempts to use a Social Censure perspective to explain why this provision was put in place in the 1970s and why it was not repealed in the 1990s in line with the rise of human rights standards in Hong Kong. It argues that the then British colonial government used a high-hand legal code to fight against corruption in the civil service to win its legitimacy in face of the rise of Red China in the 1970s. A review of twenty-one Section 3 cases suggests that most of the loans were not distributed for mere friendship but involved a wide range of culpability. Thus the coercion generated by Section 3 was approved by the masses, resulting in the reinforcement of a draconian but efficient legal provision in the service of the colonial administration.     

Place, Space, and Time in the Sign of Property

Property is a complex sign in semiotics. It is also the source of tension and conflict in law. This paper examines property in triadic terms consisting of what Charles S. Peirce would identify as the icon (firstness), the index (secondness), and the symbol (thirdness). From this perspective the paper explores the ideas of place, space, and time at the iconic level of the sign of property. Discussion addresses the way in which property serves as a coded system for communicating information about a given community’s values and its cultural-interpretive hierarchy. Much like an aboriginal songline, property functions as a way of imprinting the land with impressions of social ordering related to place, space, and time. In the context of global trade we therefore observe property conflicts which are sometimes not so much about the technical language of property as they are about tensions among the embedded values in competing signs of property.

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Collaborated Death: An Exploration of the Swiss Model of Assisted Suicide for Its Potential to Enhance Oversight and Demedicalize the Dying Process

Death, like many social problems, has become medicalized. In response to this medicalization, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) has emerged as one alternative among many at the end of life. And although the practice is currently legal in the states of Oregon and Washington, opponents still argue that PAS is unethical, is inconsistent with a physician's role, and cannot be effectively regulated. In comparison, Switzerland, like Oregon, permits PAS, but unlike Oregon, non-physicians and private organizations play a significant role in assisted death. Could the Swiss model be the answer? The following essay explores the Swiss model of assisted suicide for its potential to enhance the regulation of PAS, reduce physician involvement, and perhaps demedicalize the way we die.     

Effectiveness of pupil diameter in a probable‐lie comparison question test for deception

Purpose. There were three objectives of this study: (1) To assess the possibility of using pupil diameter as an index of deception in the context of a comparison question polygraph test. (2) To determine if pupil diameter would make a significant contribution to an optimal multivariate classification equation in combination with the traditional predictor variables used in field polygraph practice. (3) We explored the possibility of replacing one or more of the traditional predictor variables with pupil diameter. Methods. We used a laboratory mock crime experiment with 24 participants, half of whom stole $20 (US) from a secretary's purse. Participants were tested with a comparison question test modelled after standard field practice. Physiological measures were taken with laboratory quality instrumentation. Features were extracted from the physiological measures. Those features were subjected to a number of different statistical analyses. Results. Innocent participants showed larger increases in pupil diameter in response to probable‐lie questions than to relevant questions. Guilty participants did not show differential responding to the question types. The additional of pupil diameter to a multivariate classification model approached, but did not reach significance. Subsequent analyses suggest that pupil diameter might be used to replace the traditional relative blood pressure measure. Conclusions. Pupil diameter was found to be a significant predictor variable for deception. Pupil diameter may be a possible replacement for the traditional relative blood pressure measure. Additional research to explore that possibility would seem to be warranted.     

Does Co‐Regulation Strengthen EU Legitimacy?

Abstract:  Within the Better Regulation programme of the EU, co-regulation is promoted as an important strategy to improve the regulatory environment within Europe. It is assumed that co-regulation can enhance the legitimacy of EU governance in the field where this strategy is used. The purpose of this article is to assess the truth of this premise and to analyse whether co-regulation strengthens the legitimacy of EU governance. To this end, the criteria of input and output legitimacy are applied to the European social dialogue as a form of co-regulation in the EU policy area of social law. In this article, a link is made between the tendency to prescribe co-regulation as a specific regulatory strategy in EU legislative policy and the existing knowledge on the purposes and effects of co-regulation and the conditions under which co-regulation can function as a regulation strategy.     

Forensic imaging of projectiles using cone-beam computed tomography

In patients with gunshot injuries, it is easy to detect a projectile within the body due to the high-density of the object, but artefacts make it difficult to obtain information about the deformation and the exact location of the projectile in surrounding tissues. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is a new radiological imaging modality that allows radio-opaque objects to be localised and assessed in three dimensions. The full potential of the use of CBCT in forensic medicine has not yet been explored.In this study, three different modern projectiles were fired into the heads of pig cadavers (n = 6) under standardised conditions. Tissue destruction and the location of the projectiles were analysed separately using CBCT and multi-slice computed tomography (MDCT).The projectiles had the same kinetic energy but showed considerable differences in deformation behaviour. Within the study groups, tissue destruction was reproducible. CBCT is less severely affected by metallic artefacts than MDCT. Therefore CBCT is superior in visualising bone destruction in the immediate vicinity of the projectile and projectile deformation, whereas MDCT allows soft tissue to be evaluated in more detail.CBCT is an improved diagnostic tool for the evaluation of gunshot injuries. In particular, it is superior to MDCT in detecting structural hard-tissue damage in the immediate vicinity of high-density metal projectiles and in identifying the precise location of a projectile in the body.     

Immigrants’ interaction with the police in Finland: Is it distorted or inflammatory?

One enduring conflict area in police–minorities relations is the distrust of the police by minorities and consequently, the low level of confidence in the police among racial minorities. This stems from the impact of race in policing; and the perception that racial discrimination is a feature of criminal justice systems across the world has intensified. Moreover, race controversy is not new in police work. It is against this background that many police establishments are becoming increasingly frustrated by ethnic minority /immigrant allegations that they are being singled out as easy targets for police stop and search practices. In Finland, however, only little is known about immigrants’ views of police interaction, and perceptions of police discrimination in the country. Moreover, the police force in Finland may also be characterised by discriminatory mechanisms which are found in police institutions of other Western states where there has been more extensive research on the issue. The aim of the present study is to examine the attitude of immigrants toward the police by seeking to place the patterns of immigrants’ interaction with the police into context using their experiences as the basis of the analysis. The study also evaluates the impact of “ethnicity” in immigrants’ police experiences in our attempt to better understand how immigrants are subjected to stereotypical behaviour within the criminal justice system despite the fact that the police are tasked with carrying out their mandate to protect every citizen in the country. Thus, the interactions of immigrants with the police are our focus of analysis in our quest to understand new challenges brought about by the new immigrants in Finland. One thing is certain, however: police are not immune from racial conflict; as they continue to operate within our societies regardless of the ethnic composition of the country must be considered as a major policy issue of legal analysis. Therefore, the cultural and contextual nature of immigrants’ interaction with the police and the author's analysis will serve as the basis for assessing what may be required to ensure that discrimination is eliminated from the criminal justice system in the country.     

Dealing with Wayward Desire

The exercise of synchronic self-control is the way in which an actor can attempt to bring a desire into alignment with his better judgement at the moment and during the interval of time over which, but for the exercise of such self-control, the desire would become the actor’s preponderant desire, which the actor would then translate into an act contrary to his better judgment. The moral psychology of an actor who fails to achieve such self-control can be analyzed in two ways. One way is meant to be consistent with compatibilist metaphysics; the other with libertarian metaphysics. The implications of these analyses for the criminal law are complicated, but perhaps the most important is this: the criminal law should in principle recognize a partial excuse for an actor who exercises synchronic self-control but who gives up his effort because he believes that he can no longer continue to resist. His effort to achieve self-control thus fails, and he ends up translating into action the very desire he set out to control.