Breaking the Net: Family Structure and Street-Connected Children in Zambia

Drawing on original fieldwork in the slums of Ndola in Northern Zambia we isolate those features of a child's nuclear and extended family that put him most at risk of ending up on the streets. We find that older, male children and particularly orphaned children are more likely to wind up on the street. Families with a male household head who is in poor health are more likely to originate street-connected children. In contrast, households with surviving maternal grandparents or with a male head who has many sisters are significantly less likely to originate street-connected children.     

Sharp Force Injury Fatalities: A Retrospective Study (1982–2012) in Brescia (Italy)

A retrospective study was carried out on postmortem examination data of 131 sharp force‐related casualties recorded by the Brescia Institute of Forensic Medicine between 1982 and 2012. The objective was to identify relevant parameters that may be used to distinguish the manner of deaths between homicide, suicide, and accident. The following variables were considered: manner of death; demographic data; scene; type of sharp object; location and numbers of wounds; the presence of hesitation marks/defense wounds; toxicological findings; psychiatric history. There were 92 homicides, 28 suicides, and 11 accidents. Most victims were male, with an average age of 43. Injuries in isolation were present in 9.8% of homicides, in 35.7% of suicides, and in 54.5% of accidents. Most injuries involved the left anterior chest in homicides and the forearms in suicides. This study underlines the importance of a meticulous postmortem examination of injuries on the body and their relationship with other results from the death scene investigation.     

Dimensions of security

Abstract

The Arab uprisings’ failure to bring about either the scale or type of political change in the Maghreb that it initially seemed to promise belies the significance of its impact on the region. While Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco continue to be ruled by the same competitive authoritarian regimes that held power when the protests began, they, and the new governments in Tunisia and Libya, must now negotiate an altered and more dangerous security environment than before. The unsettling of Tunisia’s security apparatus and the outbreak of full-blown civil war in Libya have created new opportunities for terror and criminal groups to thrive and expand. The primary aim of this special issue is to chart and explain many of the critical changes in the Maghreb’s security environment that have occurred as a result of the Arab Spring. Each of the articles collected here identifies and analyses at least one important security issue in one or more Maghreb country as well as explain how that issue has emerged in response to or been affected by the Arab Spring.     

Fair use and copyright protection: a price theory explanation

Copyright scholars suggest that computer technology has reduced transaction costs associated with copyright transfer, allegedly eliminating the need for the fair-use doctrines that were developed to allow limited use of copyrighted material in situations where the transaction costs of securing authorized use would be prohibitive. According to this emerging view, in an ideal world with no contracting costs, third party use of copyrighted material could realistically only take place with the express consent of the copyright holder. This would give the author absolute power to dispose of his work, including the right to veto uses, without the possibility of a fair use “override” of any sort.This paper shows the limits of such transaction cost-based arguments. If transaction costs provide the dominant economic justification of “fair-use” doctrines, an exogenous reduction of such transaction costs would limit the scope and application of the defense of fair use. Nevertheless, in this paper we suggest that, when viewed in light of the anticommons theory, fair-use doctrines retain a valid efficiency justification even in a zero transaction-cost environment. Fair-use defenses are justifiable, and in fact instrumental, in minimizing the welfare losses prompted by the strategic behavior of the copyright holders. Even if copyright licenses can be transferred at no cost (for instance, in a “click and pay” frictionless computer world), the strategic behavior of the copyright holders would still create possible deadweight losses.In this context, we identify a number of critical variables that should guide and constrain the application of fair-use doctrines. These variables include (a) the number of copyright holders; (b) the degree of complementarity between the copyrighted inputs; (c) the degree of independence between the various copyright holders in the pricing of their licenses; and (d) ability to price discriminate.     

Shared genetic data and the rights of involved people.

The authors examine the two main attitudes toward genetics: Exceptionalism and Undervaluation. They firstly pose the basis of the matter from the scientific point of view and then verify how these two attitudes really work in the different fields where human genetics finds relevant applications, dealing with the questions arising from the unique characteristics of genetic data that is shared among the whole bio-group. Then some judicial cases related to the conflicts arising when genetic data are stored in repositories, whatever the aims and reasons, are presented and discussed. The matter is then considered from the criminal law perspective, in the light of the new possible implications of DNA fingerprinting in criminal investigations. Finally, some general considerations on opposing Exceptionalism/Undervaluation viewpoints and the real reason for making up new rules are presented.