Juvenile Offenders’ Alcohol and Marijuana Trajectories: Risk and Protective Factor Effects in the Context of Time in a Supervised Facility

The current study modeled trajectories of substance use from ages 15 to 20 among 1,095 male serious juvenile offenders (M age = 16.54; 42% African-American, 34% Latino, 20% European-American, and 4% other ethnic/racial backgrounds) and prospectively predicted trajectories from risk and protective factors before and after controlling for time spent in a supervised setting. Results indicated that supervised time suppressed age-related growth in substance use. Trajectories of offenders with no supervised time and low levels of supervised time increased in substance use across age, whereas offenders with high levels of supervised time showed no growth. Almost all risk and protective factors had effects on initial substance use but only adolescent history of substance use, impulse control, and psychosocial maturity had an effect on change in substance use over time. Findings highlight the importance of formal sanctions and interventions superimposed on normal developmental processes in understanding trajectories of substance use among serious juvenile offenders.

Movable pillars: Organizing dance 1956–1978, by Katja Kolcio

This essay frames an original mad lib representing a conversation between two friends about romance novels. The author attempts to locate a path to feminism in romance-novel culture in the communities built around a commonality of shame wrought by reading these books. She argues that this shame both draws readers together and undermines the explicit goals of the mainstream romance publishing industry. She asks readers to join in by completing the included mad lib with a friend.     

Chemical composition of fingerprints for gender determination

This work investigates the chemical nature of fingerprints to ascertain whether differences in chemical composition or the existence of chemical markers can be used to determine personal traits, such as age, gender, and personal habits. This type of information could be useful for reducing the pool of potential suspects in criminal investigations when latent fingerprints are unsuitable for comparison by traditional methods. Fingertip residue that has been deposited onto a bead was extracted with a solvent such as chloroform. Samples were analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The chemical components identified include fatty acids, long chain fatty acid esters, cholesterol and squalene. The area ratios of ten selected components relative to squalene were calculated for a small preliminary experiment that showed a slight gender difference for three of these components. However, when the experiment was repeated with a larger, statistically designed experiment no significant differences between genders were detected for any of the component ratios. The multivariate Hotelling's T2 test that tested all ten-component ratios simultaneously also showed no gender differences at the 5% significance level.     

Police officers’ and Registered Intermediaries’ use of drawing during investigative interviews with vulnerable witnesses

ABSTRACT

Attempts to enhance episodic retrieval focus largely on verbal strategies which do not always address the limited or impaired free recall ability of vulnerable witnesses. Asking a witness to draw while recalling episodic information has long been deemed an effective method of improving communication and cognitive performance. Thus far, research has revealed these effects within laboratory settings but with scarce attention paid to real-life interview practice. In this paper, we explore police officers’ and Registered Intermediaries’ use of drawing during investigative interviews with vulnerable witnesses. A sample of specialist practitioners (n?=?85), comprising of vulnerable witness interviewing police officers (n?=?50) and Registered Intermediaries (n?=?35) completed a self-report questionnaire. As expected, frequent use of drawing was reported by both practitioner groups, and there was a positive correlation between reported use and perceived effectiveness. There were similarities between groups in reported techniques employed when using drawing, but some differences were apparent and these were attributed to the differing functions in police and Registered Intermediary roles. Overall, a consensus between empirical research and practice is evident, but these findings warrant further exploration in order to establish whether such practice is wide-spread.     

Child marriage,human rights and international norms: the case of legislative reform in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force in 1990. It condemns child marriage, violence and discrimination against children and enjoins tutelage for their education and health. Implementing such principles in national legislation sometimes conflicts with local norms relating to respect for cultural and religious traditions. This was the case of Trinidad and Tobago, a multicultural and multi-religious society that legally sanctioned child marriage until 2017. The paper makes two unique contributions to the literature. First, using the literature on child marriage and the obligations under international conventions, the paper creates a child marriage conceptual framework with the main normative positions on child marriage. Second, using the framework, it explores the normative motivations underlying the domestic legal reform debates held in parliament between 2015–2017. The paper uses the conceptual framework to explain the transformations in the traditional positions of local religious and ethnic groups, provides evidence of norm penetration from the international to a local multicultural setting and furthers the literature on international human rights norm penetration and contestation.