Survival analysis: A survey

This paper is a survey of statistical methods used to analyze the length of time until a specified event occurs. These models have often been used to analyze the survival times (i.e., time until death) of medical patients, and so the term survival analysis is natural. In criminology, the main application of these models has been to analyze the time until recidivism, but many other applications are possible. The paper summarizes the statistical literature on survival analysis, and describes its applications in criminology. The methods are illustrated by an application to the prediction of time until recidivism for a sample of North Carolina prison releasees.     

A snapshot of legal developments and industry issues relevant to information technology, media and telecommunications law in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific – Co-ordinated by Lovells and contributed to by other leading law firms in the region

This column provides a country by country snapshot of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

Urbanization Patterns,Information Diffusion,and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay

We use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of two informational get‐out‐the‐vote campaigns to boost female electoral participation in rural areas of Paraguay. We find that public rallies had a small and insignificant effect either on registration or voter turnout in the 2013 presidential elections. Households that received door‐to‐door canvassing treatment were 4.6 percentage points more likely to vote. Experimental variation on the intensity of the treatment at the locality level allows us to estimate spillover effects, which are present in localities that are geographically more concentrated, which may favor social interactions and diffusion of information. Reinforcement effects on the already treated population are twice as large as diffusion effects on the untreated. Our results underscore the importance of taking into account urbanization patterns when designing informational campaigns.     

The Application of Flow Cytometry as a Rapid and Sensitive Screening Method to Detect Contamination of Vitreous Humor Samples and Avoid Miscalculation of the Postmortem Interval

Research into maximizing the speed, precision, and reliability of estimating the postmortem interval (PMI) has been a recurring object of investigation and methodologies based on the vitreous humor (VH) have provided good results. However, contamination from causes not readily apparent, such as blood, can occur, and thus lead not only to an erroneous estimation of PMI, but also interfere with the correct identification of other substances in the VH. We have developed a flow cytometry method which quantifies blood contamination and is able to detect erythrocytes in 1:750,000 dilution of contaminated VH which affects the results of hypoxanthine. It is an improvement on the previous more complex mass spectrometry method, being faster, more sensitive, and readily available. As such, it could be proposed for the rapid screening of appropriate samples by detecting and eliminating blood contaminated samples from PMI estimation.     

Japanese youth consumption: A cultural and a social (r)evolution crossing borders

This paper deals with the issue of Japanese youth as the social group that is (r)evolutionising the consumption trends in their society by a cultural change in values and lifestyles. These changes are reflected in new ways of social relations, work, gender issues and mainly consumption patterns. Japanese youth is creating a pop culture of their own that is spreading around East and South-East Asia, affecting their consumption trends as well. Such influence confers a new identity to the region that will be a key issue for marketers in the 21^st century.The author thanks the help of the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Technology through the R&D Project BS02003-07810, that enables the funding of this ongoing research.     

Recycling offenders: Re-incarceration trends in Québec federal penitentiaries

Résumé Les statistiques fédérales au Canada comme aux états-Unis démontrent une croissance alarmante des retours en détention, au cours de la mise en liberté sous condition. Le modèle de gestion du risque qui émerge actuellement dans le contexte d’une ?nouvelle pénologie? semble mener inévitablement à l’augmentation de ces taux de retour. L’étude présentée dans cet article examine le processus de libération et le taux de retour qui en découle, enprivilégiant l’analyse desprises de décision et les mécanismes de gestion des détenus. Dans cette optique, les auteurs ont suivi, pour une période d’un an, tous les hommes libérés des pénitienciers du Québec en 1993. L’analyse a mis en évidence que le modèle de gestion de risque est à base du processus de gestion des détenus et semble avoir uneffet notable sur le ?recyclage? des délinquants. De plus, le type de libération et le type des condition de libération, plut?t que le nombre de condition, font de certains détenus des candidats plus vulnérables aux mécanismes de gestion derisque. Les ?retours? à la suite de manquements aux conditions de mise en liberté sont importants et le système carcéral s’alimente donc de plus en plus de ses propres libérés.      

Criminalystic: effectiveness of lysochromes on the developing of invisible lipstick-contaminated lipmarks on human skin. A preliminary study

Latent prints are an important evidence for identification. Nowadays, the technical means, the implementation of image processing techniques and the use of database makes it possible to detect and get information from some prints that seem to be useless at first sight. On the other hand, the possibility of using the print as a DNA source has to be considered, so as to double its identifying value. Human skin is a particularly difficult surface for developing this kind of evidences. Although different methods for locating and developing latent fingerprints on the skin have been already described, it has not been found any method, at the revised bibliography, to obtain and develop invisible lipmarks, that is, lipmarks from protective lipstick, or permanent or long-lasting lipstick. The aim of the work that follows is to determine the effectiveness of several reagents for developing invisible lipmarks on the corpses' skin. Preliminary results show that, under the described experimental conditions, the reagents used, Sudan III, Oil Red O and Sudan Black, are effective for obtaining recent latent lip prints on corpse's skin.