Gender ‘Hostility’, Rape,and the Hate Crime Paradigm

This article examines whether crimes motivated by, or which demonstrate, gender ‘hostility’ should be included within the current framework of hate crime legislation in England and Wales. The article uses the example of rape to explore the parallels (both conceptual and evidential) between gender‐motivated violence and other ‘archetypal’ forms of hate crime. It is asserted that where there is clear evidence of gender hostility during the commission of an offence, a defendant should be pursued in law additionally as a hate crime offender. In particular it is argued that by focusing on the hate‐motivation of many sexual violence offenders, the criminal justice system can begin to move away from its current focus on the ‘sexual’ motivations of offenders and begin to more effectively challenge the gendered prejudices that are frequently causal to such crimes.     

The Role of Overall Organizational Justice Perceptions Within the Four-Dimensional Framework

Given the recent interest in a global model of organizational justice, the purpose of the present paper is to examine the role of overall justice within Colquitt’s (J Appl Psychol 86:386–400, 2001) four-dimensional framework. In two studies (using a student and professional sample), confirmatory factor analysis results supported a five-factor model of justice. Analyses demonstrated that overall justice is likely an independent construct, can be predicted from the facet measures of justice, and is not a second-order hierarchical construct. In both studies, structural equation modeling indicated that overall justice partially mediated the relationship between the four dimensions of justice and both global and specific outcomes examined by Colquitt (2001) and Ambrose and Schminke (J Appl Psychol 94:491–500, 2009), respectively. Taken together, this research demonstrates that there is a need for both overall justice and the four justice dimensions in comprehensive models of organizational justice. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Behavioural case linkage with solved and unsolved crimes

Offender behaviour is used to distinguish between crimes committed by the same person (linked crimes) and crimes committed by different people (unlinked crimes) through behavioural case linkage. There is growing evidence to support the use of behavioural case linkage by investigative organisations such as the police, but this research is typically limited to samples of solved crime that do not reflect how this procedure is used in real life. The current paper extends previous research by testing the potential for behavioural case linkage in a sample containing both solved and unsolved crimes. Discrimination accuracy is examined across crime categories (e.g. a crime pair containing a car theft and a residential burglary), across crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing a residential burglary and a commercial burglary), and within crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing two residential burglaries) using the number of kilometres (intercrime distance) and the number of days (temporal proximity) between offences to distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The intercrime distance and/or the temporal proximity were able to achieve statistically significant levels of discrimination accuracy across crime categories, across crime types, and within crime types as measured by Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. This suggests that behavioural case linkage can be used to assist the investigation, detection and prosecution of prolific and versatile serial offenders.     

Effects of hydrated lime and quicklime on the decay of buried human remains using pig cadavers as human body analogues

Recent casework in Belgium involving the search for human remains buried with lime, demonstrated the need for more detailed understanding of the effect of different types of lime on cadaver decomposition and its micro-environment. Six pigs (Sus scrofa) were used as body analogues in field experiments. They were buried without lime, with hydrated lime (Ca(OH)(2)) and with quicklime (CaO) in shallow graves in sandy loam soil in Belgium and recovered after 6 months of burial. Observations from these field recoveries informed additional laboratory experiments that were undertaken at the University of Bradford, UK. The combined results of these studies demonstrate that despite conflicting evidence in the literature, hydrated lime and quicklime both delay the decay of the carcass during the first 6 months. This study has implications for the investigation of clandestine burials and for a better understanding of archaeological plaster burials. Knowledge of the effects of lime on decomposition processes also has bearing on practices involving burial of animal carcasses and potentially the management of mass graves and mass disasters by humanitarian organisations and DVI teams.     

Leadership in multiple perpetrator stranger rape

Sexual offences by multiple perpetrators are more violent and involve more severe forms of sexual violation than those perpetrated by a lone offender. Often a clear leader exists within these groups. Questions have been raised as to the relative risk of reoffending and the potentially differing criminogenic needs of leaders and followers. However, a recent study comparing leaders and followers in juvenile multiple perpetrator rapes (t'Hart-Kerkhoffs et al., 2011) failed to find some of the expected differences. It was proposed that this might be due, in part, to the way leaders and followers were classified in the study. Before work can progress in this area, it is important to devise reliable and valid means of identifying leaders and followers in multiple perpetrator rape. This article reports on a study which investigated the utility of two different methods of identifying leadership. The Scale of Influence (Porter & Alison, 2001) was applied to a sample of 256 offenders responsible for 95 multiple perpetrator rapes from the United Kingdom. Following this, the relative number of directives uttered by offenders was used to designate leadership. In 66% of the offences sampled, a leader was designated using the number of directives uttered compared with 80% when using the Scale of Influence. When combining both measures to form a composite measure of leadership, this percentage increased to 89%. Classifications of offenders as leaders, followers, and neither, according to the Scale of Influence, the count of directives, and the composite measure, were compared with classifications made by a practitioner to assess their concordance. The composite measure showed the greatest agreement with practitioner opinion. These findings suggest that the Scale of Influence could be developed to take account of other ways that leadership is displayed during multiple perpetrator rapes.