The placement of the human eyeball and canthi in craniofacial identification

An accurate understanding of the spatial relationships between the deep and superficial structures of the head is essential for anthropological methods concerned with the comparison of faces to skulls (superimposition) or the prediction of faces from them (facial approximation). However, differences of opinion exist concerning: (i) the position of the eyeball in planes other than the anteroposterior plane and (ii) the canthi positions relative to the bony orbital margins. This study attempts to clarify the above relationships by dissection of a small sample of adult human cadavers (N = 4, mean age = 83 years, s = 12 years). The most notable finding was that the eyeballs were not centrally positioned within the orbits as the more recent craniofacial identification literature expounds. Rather, the eyeballs were consistently positioned closer to the orbital roof and lateral orbital wall (by 1-2 mm on average); a finding consistent with the earlier anatomical literature. While these estimation errors are small ipsilaterally, several factors make them meaningful: (i) the orbital region is heavily used for facial recognition; (ii) the width error is doubled because the eyes are bilateral structures; (iii) the eyes are sometimes used to predict/assess other soft tissue facial structures; and (iv) the net error in facial approximation rapidly accumulates with the subsequent prediction of each independent facial feature. While the small sample size of this study limits conclusive generalizations, the new data presented here nonetheless have immediate application to craniofacial identification practice because the results are evidence based. In contrast, metric data have never been published to support the use of the central positioning guideline. Clearly, this study warrants further quantification of the eyeball position in larger samples and preferably of younger individuals.     

The economics of crime and criminal law: An antithesis to sociological theories?

The relationship between sociology and economics of crime has been dominated by mutual prejudice and misunderstanding. This paper tries to contribute to a change of this stale of affairs by showing that, on the one hand, the economics of crime does not as a method imply politically conservative policy recommendations and, on the other hand, that insights of the sociology of crime may enrich the economic approach considerably. This is done via a brief survey of the economics of enforcement, the literature on the relation of income distribution and unemployment on crime, and the literature relating sociological theories of crime to methodological individualism.     

Reviews

Steven Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science. Macmillan, London/Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986, 234 pp. £27.50, $28–50.

Cameron Ross, Local Government in the Soviet Union: Problems of implementation and Control. London: Croom Helm, 1987, 229pp., £29.95.

Albert P. van Goudoever, The Limits of Destalinization in the Soviet Union. Translated by Frans Hijkoop. London: Croom Helm, 1986, viii + 276 pp., £25.00.

Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: the Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941, London: Pluto Press, 1986, vi + 338 pp., £25.00.

William Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State. Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929. Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois Press, 1987, xviii + 344 pp., $29.90.

Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigre Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xiv + 251 pp., h/b £25.00, $34.50.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe and Mark W. Janis, eds. Soviet Law and Economy. Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 32. Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986, xii + 335 pp., £58.75.

A. Hewett, ed., Energy Economics and Foreign Policy in the Soviet Union. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984, xi + 228 pp., £12.85 p/b, £34–00 h/b.

George W. Hoffman (with contributions by Leslie Dienes), The European Energy Challenge: East and West. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985, xvi + 207 pp., £34.75.

Carl H. McMillan, Multinationals from the Second World. London: Macmillan, 1987, xvi + 220pp., £29.50.

Sergio Alessandrini and Bruno Dallago, eds., The Unofficial Economy: Consequences and Perspectives in Different Economic Systems. Aldershot: Gower, 1987, 345 pp., £22.50.

A. James McAdams, East Germany and Detente: Building Authority after the Wall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xi + 233 pp., £25.00, $34.00.

Karel Kaplan, The Short March, The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia 1945–1948. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1987. xvi + 207 pp., £16.50.

D. Turnock, The Romanian Economy in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke, Kent: Croom Helm, 1986, xx + 296 pp., £27.95.

John Hiden, The Baltic states and Weimar Ostpolitik. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xi + 276 pp., £25.00.

Jan F. Triska, ed., Dominant Powers and Subordinate States: the United States in Latin America and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, Duke University Press, 1986, 504 pp. £48.90 h/b, £14.40 p/b.

Rasul B. Rais, The Indian Ocean and the Superpowers. Economic, Political and Strategic Perspectives, London: Croom Helm, 1986, 215 pp., £25.00.

Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks. The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism, Hants: Gower/Maurice Temple Smith, 1987, 224 pp. £17.50.

J. P. Roos and Andrzej Sicinski. Ways of Life in Finland and Poland. Gower, Aldershot and Vermont: 1987, viii + 203 pp., £18.50.     

Swedish Bureaucracy in an Era of Change

Swedish bureaucracy combines some structural peculiarities founded on constitutional traits from the 17^th century with a clear formal division of labor between the national and local levels from the late 19^th century. These structures have mainly remained unchanged during periods of strong expansion in the first post-WWII decades and preconditions for shrinking during the 1980s and 1990s. In this article, we highlight how these changes have put stress on the bureaucracy and the public sector in general, and how demands for reform and adapting have been managed and viewed by the administrative and political camps, respectively. Social, educational, and political changes among Swedish bureaucrats and their roles are presented and analyzed. The national bureaucracy has "muddled through" and has not been subjected to radical reforms. Its working is still approved—though by no means regarded as sacred—by its administrative agents and its political principals.     

A Large‐Sample Test of a Semi‐Automated Clavicle Search Engine to Assist Skeletal Identification by Radiograph Comparison

In 2014, a morphometric capability to search chest radiograph databases by quantified clavicle shape was published to assist skeletal identification. Here, we extend the validation tests conducted by increasing the search universe 18‐fold, from 409 to 7361 individuals to determine whether there is any associated decrease in performance under these more challenging circumstances. The number of trials and analysts were also increased, respectively, from 17 to 30 skeletons, and two to four examiners. Elliptical Fourier analysis was conducted on clavicles from each skeleton by each analyst (shadowgrams trimmed from scratch in every instance) and compared to the search universe. Correctly matching individuals were found in shortlists of 10% of the sample 70% of the time. This rate is similar to, although slightly lower than, rates previously found for much smaller samples (80%). Accuracy and reliability are thereby maintained, even when the comparison system is challenged by much larger search universes.     

Photo‐Realistic Statistical Skull Morphotypes: New Exemplars for Ancestry and Sex Estimation in Forensic Anthropology

Graphic exemplars of cranial sex and ancestry are essential to forensic anthropology for standardizing casework, training analysts, and communicating group trends. To date, graphic exemplars have comprised hand‐drawn sketches, or photographs of individual specimens, which risks bias/subjectivity. Here, we performed quantitative analysis of photographic data to generate new photo‐realistic and objective exemplars of skull form. Standardized anterior and left lateral photographs of skulls for each sex were analyzed in the computer graphics program Psychomorph for the following groups: South African Blacks, South African Whites, American Blacks, American Whites, and Japanese. The average cranial form was calculated for each photographic view, before the color information for every individual was warped to the average form and combined to produce statistical averages. These mathematically derived exemplars—and their statistical exaggerations or extremes—retain the high‐resolution detail of the original photographic dataset, making them the ideal casework and training reference standards.     

Homicides with Mutilation of the Victim's Body

Abstract:  Information on homicide offenders guilty of mutilation is sparse. The current study estimates the rate of mutilation of the victim's body in Finnish homicides and compares sociodemographic characteristics, crime history, life course development, psychopathy, and psychopathology of these and other homicide offenders. Crime reports and forensic examination reports of all offenders subjected to forensic examination and convicted for a homicide in 1995–2004 ( n  = 676) were retrospectively analyzed for offense and offender variables and scored with the Psychopathy Check List Revised. Thirteen homicides (2.2%) involved mutilation. Educational and mental health problems in childhood, inpatient mental health contacts, self-destructiveness, and schizophrenia were significantly more frequent in offenders guilty of mutilation. Mutilation bore no significant association with psychopathy or substance abuse. The higher than usual prevalence of developmental difficulties and mental disorder of this subsample of offenders needs to be recognized.     

Can decision transparency increase citizen trust in regulatory agencies? Evidence from a representative survey experiment

Decision transparency is often proposed as a way to maintain or even increase citizen trust, yet this assumption is still untested in the context of regulatory agencies. We test the effect of transparency of a typical decision tradeoff in regulatory enforcement: granting forbearance or imposing a sanction. We employed a representative survey experiment (n = 1,546) in which we test the effect of transparency in general (providing information about a decision or not) and the effect of specific types of transparency (process or rationale transparency). We do this for agencies supervising financial markets, education, and health care. We find that overall decision transparency significantly increases citizen trust in only two of the three agencies. Rationale transparency has a more pronounced positive effect only for the Education Inspectorate. We conclude that the overall effect of decision transparency is positive but that the nature of the regulatory domain may weaken or strengthen this effect.