The Truth Behind the Lies: The Complex Motivations for False Allegations of Sexual Assault

The issue of false allegations is arguably the most controversial topic in the area of sexual violence. Portrayals of women who make false allegations are largely negative and leave little room for a comprehensive understanding of the complex motivations behind false complaints of sexual assault. The current study uses detailed qualitative data on 55 sexual assault cases that were reported to the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008 and that were subsequently unfounded. Our study focuses on identifying the factors that motivated complainants to file false allegations. Results reveal that motivations for false allegations fall into five overlapping categories: avoiding trouble/providing an alibi, anger or revenge, attention seeking, mental illness, and guilt/remorse. In addition, our findings more obviously suggest that motivations for filing false reports are varied and complex, often resulting from a need to alleviate social and personal distress. Given that we centered our study on motivations, this research is more comprehensive than prior examinations of motivations that have tackled numerous facets of false sexual assault reports.     

Does electoral fraud spread? The expansion of electoral manipulation in Russia

In this paper, we argue that the occurrence of electoral manipulation in Russia has been driven, in part, by diffusion across neighboring raions through emulation, incentives, and networks. Presumably, in Putin’s Russia all local authorities have some incentives to deliver a high number of votes to United Russia, the “party of power”. However, the perceived pressure to deliver ever higher levels of support for Putin’s party arguably increases considerably if one’s raion is located in a region marked by extraordinarily high turnout and high vote share for United Russia. Conversely, the absence of perceived competition to curry executive favor through delivering votes and networks of uncorrupted local authorities, as well as local opposition organizations working to combat electoral fraud, may help explain the absence of fraud among raions located in regions marked by clean elections. Our quantitative analyses suggest that a “neighborhood effect” – the existence of manipulated raions within a region – strongly influences the likelihood that raions are manipulated. Moreover, although results are more mixed, spatial autocorrelation analysis suggests that turnout levels in raions are influenced by the turnout in proximate raions.     

Bad cops

Research Summary Police scholars and public policymakers throughout generations have sought to identify reliable correlates of police misconduct. Despite these efforts, general statements as to the etiology and epidemiology of police misconduct remain inconclusive, in part because of the inconsistent definitions of misconduct and the difficulty of obtaining the data required to make such statements. This research attempts to fill these gaps through a comparison of the personal and career histories of all 1,543 officers who were involuntarily separated from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for cause during 1975–1996 with a randomly selected sample of their police academy classmates who served honorably. The study uses confidential NYPD files as its major data sources, which include extensive biographical and career information. The study finds that career‐ending misconduct rarely occurs in the NYPD and that the types of misconduct do not match well with existing definitions. Several factors emerge as significant predictors of misconduct, including officer race, minimal education, records of prior criminality and prior poor employment, failure to advance in the NYPD, and histories of citizen complaints. Policy Implications This study shows that existing definitions of police misconduct are difficult to apply to actual cases of police malpractice, which leads the authors to create a new eight‐category classification scheme. The rarity of misconduct, especially on‐duty abuse, confirms prior research indicating that most police officers do their jobs without engaging in serious malpractice. These findings suggest that the NYPD has become better behaved as it has become more diverse along race and gender dimensions and that the link between black officers and misconduct might be explained by persistent “tokenism.” The findings related to race have important implications for continued efforts to build racially representative police departments. Personal history findings highlight the importance of conducting background investigations that disqualify candidates with arrest records and employment disciplinary histories, whereas the inverse relationship between college education and misconduct provides strong support for continued emphasis on pre‐ and post‐employment educational requirements.     

Examining fatal and nonfatal incidents involving the TASER

Research Summary According to TASER International, nearly 10,000 police departments in the United States have deployed the TASER as a less lethal force alternative in some capacity. Despite the TASER's increasing popularity, serious questions have been raised about the device's physiological side effects; in particular, Amnesty International has reported that more than 300 people have died after being subjected to the TASER. Although a growing body of research has examined the physiological effects of the TASER on animals and healthy human volunteers in laboratory settings, there has been virtually no empirical analysis of “real‐world” fatal and nonfatal TASER cases simultaneously. This article examines all media reports of TASER incidents from 2002 to 2006 through a comprehensive review of LexisNexis and New York Times archives. We compare TASER incidents in which a fatality occurred to TASER incidents in which a fatality did not occur and then employ multivariate analyses to identify the incident and suspect characteristics that are predictive of articles describing TASER‐proximate deaths. Policy Implications Several suspect factors were significantly associated with the reporting of a fatal TASER incident, including drug use (but not alcohol), mental illness, and continued resistance. Multiple deployments of the TASER against a suspect was also associated with the likelihood of the article describing a fatality—especially if the suspect was emotionally disturbed—which raises the possibility that the risk of multiple shocks might not be uniform for all suspects. More research is needed to explore the relationship between mental illness, drug use (illicit or therapeutic), continued resistance, and increased risk of death. In the meantime, police departments should develop specific policies and training governing the use of multiple TASER shocks against individuals who could be in these vulnerable physiological and psychological states.     

Inter- and intra-subject variability in ethanol pharmacokinetic parameters: effects of testing interval and dose

Calculation of a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at the time of an offence by forward or back-extrapolation, using population average values for ethanol pharmacokinetic parameters or a single estimate of individual specific parameters, ignores the possibility of inter- and intra-subject variability. In order to estimate inter- and intra-subject variability in the elimination rate and absorption rate, BAC was measured over time in 12 male volunteers on 4 occasions. Subjects received 0.44 g kg(-1) body weight of ethanol on the first study day, and 0.70 g kg(-1) body weight on subsequent study days 1, 11 and 12 weeks later, to enable comparisons in variability over short and long time periods and when the same or different doses were administered. Evidence of both inter- and intra-subject variability was found, with inter-subject variability substantially smaller than intra-subject variability when the dose varied. Forensically important differences in pharmacokinetic parameters were observed within individuals between occasions. These findings could have an important impact on medico-legal issues related to ethanol pharmacokinetics.     

Amplification of a variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) locus (pMCT118) by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and its application to forensic science

A genetic locus (D1S58, defined by DNA probe pMCT118) that contains a variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) has been successfully amplified from a very small amount of genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The DNA sequence of the locus was determined and was found to consist of a 16-base consensus sequence and flanking sequences. Oligonucleotide primers complementary to the flanking sequences were synthesized to serve as primers for amplification of MCT118 by the PCR method. Human genomic DNA isolated from blood (2 ng from each sample) was successfully amplified at the MCT118 locus, and polymorphic bands were detectable by ethidium bromide staining after electrophoresis on polyacrylamide gels. Determination of genotypes at this VNTR locus can now be routinely achieved within 24 h, without the need for Southern blots or radioactive materials. Furthermore, the small size (387 to 723 base pairs) of the DNA fragments produced in the PCR amplification permits good resolution of individual alleles that differ by only one repeat unit. The precise specification of the number of tandem repeats present in each allelic fragment is reproducible from one analysis to another.     

Urban community organizations and local government: Exploring relationships and roles

There is an increasing interest in using local community organizations to assist in the development process. Observers who evaluate the contribution of such groups frequently classify them into two clusters: those which are closely tied to the government and focus on service delivery, and those which guard their autonomy and engage in development rather than service delivery. This dichotomy, however, downplays the developmental role of groups allied with local governments and obscures some important contributions they can offer. Three different models are proposed and two case studies of service-oriented groups in Cairo are presented. The cases suggest that an important criterion in assessing voluntary groups is the extent to which their service delivery role enables them to develop an organization. From this perspective their role is potentially much broader than expediting government services.