The influence of pretrial exposure to community outrage and victim hardship on guilt judgments

Although the courts have explicitly expressed concerns about the effects of public sentiment on juries in highly publicized cases, no research has isolated the degree to which jurors’ exposure to community outrage and/or prospective social interactions in the community independently influence judgments of guilt. In the current research, jury eligible undergraduates were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (negative defendant facts pretrial publicity (PTP): present vs. absent)?×?2 (community outrage PTP: present vs. absent)?×?2 (anticipated social interaction: present vs. absent) between subjects factorial design. In an online session, participants read articles containing PTP (or not), and two days later they arrived at the lab to serve as mock jurors in a murder case – before the trial they were instructed (or not) that they would interact with people from the community in which the case was taking place. Neither PTP containing extra-evidentiary facts about the defendant nor prospective interaction with the community had main or interactive effects on guilt measures; however, mock jurors rated the defendant as more likely to be guilty when they read information about community outrage and hardships on victims. These findings suggest future avenues of PTP research focusing on community outrage and victim impacts.     

The effectiveness of various strategies to improve DNA analysis of formaldehyde-damaged tissues from embalmed cadavers for human identification purposes

Formalin-fixed tissues provide the medical and forensic communities with alternative and often last resort sources of DNA for identification or diagnostic purposes. The DNA in these samples can be highly degraded and chemically damaged, making downstream genotyping using short tandem repeats (STRs) challenging. Therefore, the use of alternative genetic markers, methods that pre-amplify the low amount of good quality DNA present, or methods that repair the damaged DNA template may provide more probative genetic information. This study investigated whether whole genome amplification (WGA) and DNA repair could improve STR typing of formaldehyde-damaged (FD) tissues from embalmed cadavers. Additionally, comparative genotyping success using bi-allelic markers, including INDELs and SNPs, was explored. Calculated random match probabilities (RMPs) using traditional STRs, INDEL markers, and two next generation sequencing (NGS) panels were compared across all samples. Overall, results showed that neither WGA nor DNA repair substantially improved STR success rates from formalin-fixed tissue samples. However, when DNA from FD samples was genotyped using INDEL and SNP-based panels, the RMP of each sample was markedly lower than the RMPs calculated from partial STR profiles. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that rather than attempting to improve the quantity and quality of severely damaged and degraded DNA prior to STR typing, a more productive approach may be to target smaller amplicons to provide more discriminatory DNA identifications. Furthermore, an NGS panel with less loci may yield better results when examining FD samples, due to more optimized chemistries that result in greater allelic balance and amplicon coverage.     

There’s no place like home: Explaining international NGO advocacy

INGO advocacy can range from cooperative to confrontational, and these tactical choices can have important repercussions for the overall success of the organization??s policy work, yet little attention has been paid to this variation. We contend that INGO advocacy strategies are shaped by the organization??s national origin. Drawing on insights from sociology and political science, we argue that there is substantial variation among wealthy industrialized democracies in the availability and structure of material resources as well as the domestic institutional environment surrounding INGO work. Together, these national-level factors shape INGOs?? choice of the level of confrontation or conciliation that they adopt in their advocacy. We first demonstrate the importance of INGO national origin using new data on the confrontational advocacy strategies of over 3000 non-governmental organizations from OECD countries that are international in focus. We then explore the relationship between national origin and INGO practice through comparative case studies of INGO umbrella organizations in the relief and development sector. Throughout, we focus on four countries in particular: the United States, Britain, France, and Japan. These countries differ significantly in terms of the material resources and institutional environments faced by INGOs and thus allow us to understand whether and how these factors influence INGO advocacy choices. These systematic differences in INGO strategies have important ramifications for understanding national and global advocacy by INGOs and demonstrate an enduring role of the state in shaping the behavior of non-state actors.     

Governing transboundary commons in Africa: the emergence and challenges of the Kavango–Zambezi Treaty

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The advent of ‘Peace Parks’ on the African continent is puzzling from the perspective of institutional theory. We...     

The Impact of Freezing on Bone Mineral Density: Implications for Forensic Research

It is common for researchers using animal or human remains for scientific study to freeze samples prior to use. However, effects of freezing on bone macro‐ or microstructure are relatively unknown. The research objective of this study was to determine whether freezing could potentially bias experimental results by analyzing changes in bone mineral density (BMD) with the freezing of remains over time. Eight fetal pigs were scanned to determine their initial BMD before freezing. Three piglets underwent a freeze‐thaw cycle to assess the effects of the freezing process. Four piglets were frozen and scanned weekly for 20 weeks to assess freezing over time. The overall average between the fresh initial scan and final frozen scan was significantly different (p < 0.001). Per contra, the final thawed BMD scans did not differ from the initial fresh scan (p = 0.418). Thus, completely thawed remains are recommended for experimental studies.     

Playing for the Rules: How and Why New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms Invest in Secular Litigation

This article catalogues and analyzes the litigating behavior of four of the leading New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms (NCR PILFs). Consistent with the finding from judicial politics that all PILFs seek first and foremost to have policy influence, we find that most of the litigation these PILFs invest in is either explicitly or implicitly religious or mission driven. However, we also observe a trend of increased participation in secular cases by the two largest NCR PILFs in our study. Through in‐depth, qualitative content analysis of the briefs submitted in these secular cases, we show that while some of this behavior can be attributed to organizational maintenance or coalitional goals, most of this secular participation appears motivated by a desire to influence the legal rules rather than the outcome of the particular case. In doing so, this article shows how PILFs engage with an increasingly complex legal and political landscape.     

Service Providers’ Knowledge and Perceptions of the Legal Service Needs of Crime Victims

Currently, there is an expansive body of victimization literature within the criminal justice field, which covers a number of essential topics such as victimization trends and patterns, short-and long-term effects of victimization, as well as specific effects of intimate partner violence and sexual assault victimization. Despite the variety of topics examined by empirical research, there is a noticeable lack of discourse pertaining to civil legal services for crime victims. This study is among the first to take a close look at civil legal services for victims by exploring three uncharted areas including: (a) service providers’ knowledge of civil legal services, (b) the legal needs of crime victims and available services, and (c) barriers between victims and accessing civil legal services. Using quantitative and qualitative data from interviews with service providers, policy implications and future research recommendations are discussed.     

The impact of family indifference on delinquency among American Indian youth: A test of general strain theory

Native American (NA) youth's delinquency is one of the major problems that have been overlooked by criminal justice researchers and practitioners. To examine if negative family environment influences their delinquency with the mediating effect of negative emotion, this study analyzed structural equation modeling based on the General Strain Theory (GST). Using data regarding NA adolescents, this study found much evidence supporting GST. The results of the model with anger showed that anger was a mediating variable between family indifferences and delinquency, and the model with depression indicated that family indifferences increased delinquency through depression. However, some results in the model with anger and depression were not in accordance with GST hypothesis.     

Establishing a joint agency response to the threat of lone-actor grievance-fuelled violence

The past year has seen a global upsurge of violent attacks by lone, mentally unstable individuals. The motivations for these attacks have varied and extremist ideological drivers are rarely ‘pure’, but mental health problems and personal grievances are common themes. Mentally ill and disenfranchised individuals may be vulnerable to extremist messages and propaganda because such beliefs can be a means of interpreting their social difficulties. Terrorist messages can also be adopted by psychotic people who are seeking to make sense of their symptoms. Most lone-actor attacks are preventable, if there is a system in place for identifying and intervening with antecedent behaviours, which include mental disturbances and the social problems that frequently accompany these conditions. Joint police-mental health models developed to assess and manage fixated persons can be applied to other forms of grievance-fuelled, lone-actor violence. This paper describes the establishment of such a service in Australia, and provides some preliminary data. It also discusses the role of mental health in the current security environment.     

The Higher Power of Religiosity Over Personality on Political Ideology

Political Behavior - Two streams of research, culture war and system justification, have proposed that religious orientations and personality, respectively, play critical roles in political...