Intellectual disability and mental illness in the NSW criminal justice system

There has been increasing international, national and local recognition of the need for more appropriate responses and services for individuals who come in contact with the criminal justice system and who have an intellectual disability and mental health issues. This article provides an overview of prevalence data that indicates a significant over representation of people with intellectual disabilities in correctional facilities and reviews the problems facing this population. Findings from two specific evaluation studies undertaken by the Centre for Developmental Disability Studies are presented, along with recommendations for future provision based on these results. One of these projects trialled a case management approach to supporting offenders with an intellectual disability upon their release from prison. The 20-month follow-up found that a number of serious barriers were encountered within the overall system of provision for this population; the most serious of which related to lack of adequate accommodation upon release. The second project involved a two-stage evaluation of one model of provision for individuals with intellectual disabilities who are sex offenders, only some of whom were on parole. This service provided both residential and therapy services in a small group home located in the community. Residents were found to have high levels of emotional and behavioural difficulties, in addition to offending behaviour, that continue to require support and supervision. Critical issues, including guardianship involvement, restrictive practices and retrieval, therapy provision, and risk management issues are discussed in relation to overall clinical and lifestyle outcomes.     

Discrepancies between forensic identification kits explained by a laser power supply shutdown

The occurrence of two null alleles for the same individual was suspected because of the discrepancy at two loci (vWA and THO1) between genotypes characterized by the mean of two different commercial kits. Reanalysis of the samples indicated there was no null allele, and that this abnormality was indeed related to an automatic laser power shutdown. The laser power supply was set to a value (6.4V) too close to the automatic shutdown threshold (6.0V). The alleles were undetected because of the absence of emission at the time of migration of the two alleles through the detection device. However, since no alarm is triggered in such an event, the users should monitor their laser power supply values.     

Love and Communism: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Shattered Community

This paper takes as is its point of departure Jean-Luc Nancy’s argument that the occidental idea of community in the modern era has always meant a kind of project or work whose intention was to glorify death in order to redeem and make it meaningful. It does so in order to return the community to its self-identity; to inter or assimilate what intrudes. In so doing, it also produces us as beings who cast this glorious lost past retrospectively. Recalling a lost original communalism, then, is not only politically dangerous, it is a symptom: it operates as a kind of compensatory reinstatement of an imaginary lost unity. On this view, casting ‘back’ to a glorious communal past must not only be resisted on political grounds, it also provides, as a symptom, a way to undertake that resistance. In this paper, I investigate a narrow dimension of Nancy’s strategy for resisting this lure: Nancy’s notion of shattering reveals that the ‘lost object’ of community is a melancholically interred, narcissistically invested retroactive creation of the very work of mourning he resists and re-thinks. The work of mourning on this view, can itself only be resisted by a certain disouevrement or unworking.     

Trace detection of meglumine and diatrizoate from Bacillus spore samples using liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, letters containing Bacillus anthracis were distributed through the United States postal system killing five people. A complex forensic investigation commenced to identify the perpetrator of these mailings. A novel liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry protocol for the qualitative detection of trace levels of meglumine and diatrizoate in dried spore preparations of B. anthracis was developed. Meglumine and diatrizoate are components of radiographic imaging products that have been used to purify bacterial spores. Two separate chromatographic assays using multiple mass spectrometric analyses were developed for the detection of meglumine and diatrizoate. The assays achieved limits of detection for meglumine and diatrizoate of 1.00 and 10.0 ng/mL, respectively. Bacillus cereus T strain spores were effectively used as a surrogate for B. anthracis spores during method development and validation. This protocol was successfully applied to limited evidentiary B. anthracis spore material, providing probative information to the investigators.     

Exploration of the Cyberbullying Victim/Offender Overlap by Sex

As usage of the Internet has grown to approximately 657 million users worldwide, criminality online has become more prevalent. Termed “cybercrime,” this form of criminal behavior can occur in several different. While cybercrime in general is fairly new comparably to crimes in the physical realm, one of the most recently recognized forms of cybercrime is cyberbullying. The present study will examine the victimoffender relationship. Results indicate that both males and females with lower levels of self-control were more likely to participate in cyberbullying by posting hurtful messages or pictures to Facebook. Second, both sexes were more likely to cyerbullying via Facebook if they had been cyberbullied as well.     

Frequency of Parental Violence Against Children in Chinese Families: Impact of Age and Gender

The present study examines the impact of child and parent gender on parental violence across age span of children and their parents in Hong Kong Chinese families. A randomly selected community sample of 1,019 households was surveyed. Results indicate that, in general, boys experience more frequent parental violence than girls and mothers engage in more violent behaviors against their children than fathers. Parental violence shows a curvilinear pattern with age of children, peaking at age 8 for boys and age 3 for girls. There is a pattern of declining frequency of parental violence as parental age increases across child gender. Fathers exhibit an inverted U pattern of violent behavior against their children, with a peak around age 31–40, while mothers have a steadily declining trend until age 46. Separate parental violence indices are constructed for boys and girls.