New York City's approach to problem-employee counseling

Employee problems such as alcohol and drugs (and the emotional turmoil that leads to them) continue to slow productivity and increase turnover. For nine years, New York City has been an innovator in this area of personnel concern, abandoning the traditional warn-and-terminate method for the centralized and cost-effective outreach program that is outlined here.     

"Swinging in the park". An investigation of an autoerotic death

Death during autoerotic episodes is of special concern to law enforcement officials, the coroner or medical examiner, the family of the decedent, and to society as a whole. As in the probing of any violent demise, accurate preservation of all evidentiary material, complete photographic documentation, reconstruction of the scene, and interviews with family and acquaintances ("psychological autopsy") are mandatory for proper completion of the case. A recent, atypical instance of sexual asphyxia arising from a bizarre incident exemplifies the foregoing dicta and provides a vivid example of "psychopathia sexualis."     

The OAS and the Summit of the Americas: Coexistence,or Integration of Forces for Multilateralism?

Fifty years after the creation of the OAS, political power is not centralized in that organization but variously diffused throughout the interamerican system. Meanwhile, the Summit of the Americas process has slowly acquired its own institutionality outside the OAS, and is sometimes perceived as challenging the primacy of the ideal of the OAS as the principal institution of interamerican relations. Even with its own weaknesses, the Summit of the Americas has become the most important force for reform of the OAS. As the hemisphere prepares for the third full summit in Quebec, this essay assesses the relationship of these two institutions and their future prospects.     

Understanding the next act

Abstract

This essay argues that the practical difficulties of dealing effectively with terrorism reveal a basic problem in the terms of conventional moral understanding. Specifically, current moral principles permit us to condemn any act of terrorism as categorically unjustifiable only in terms which impose crippling restrictions upon the range of justifiable counterterrorist measures. This problem arises from an abstract individualism which pervades current moral and political thought. If this abstract individualism is rejected, then it is possible to construe acts of terrorism as savage in a special sense, insofar as they rejct the prior moral authority of the community to determine its own standards. On this basis, such acts may be condemned as inherently incapable of moral justification, and in terms which license vigorous counterterrorist measures.     

Law, Diagram, Film: Critique Exhausted

What potential can be found in the work of Deleuze and Guattari for critical legal scholarship? The authors argue that their work can be deployed to re-think ??critique?? by directly addressing the place and role of the ??critic??. It is argued that the continued commitment to a stance of ??resistance?? in CLS is underpinned by never-ending dualisms which, if not confronted and replaced, can only make CLS ever more redundant. The authors ask: ??what is critique beyond the dualism of power and resistance, of state and nomad??? This question arises from a belief that critique is still capable of being effective, but only if there is the courage to experiment, and to think creatively. In this sense, the ??exhaustion?? of critique is framed as an opportunity to re-think and re-engage with the politics of law. The paper diagrams, through image and film, a critical thought: the potential of the artisan. Film is utilised not as representation, nor as illustration, but as a thinking mind in its own right, through which questions relating to the state, political action, and creative thinking can be (re)framed. Such a re-framing is essential, it is argued, for an engagement with the emergence of societies of control.     

Improving eyewitness identification accuracy by screening out those who say they don't know

Improving eyewitness identification evidence remains a key priority for research. Basic laboratory research has consistently demonstrated that allowing participants to withhold answers about which they are unsure leads to improved accuracy. Surprisingly, this approach has not been the subject of comprehensive investigation in the eyewitness identification literature. In this article, we explored the utility of allowing uncertain witnesses to opt out of an identification decision, by providing an explicit don't know option. Further, we contrasted the rate of use of this explicit option with the frequency that participants spontaneously withheld a decision when asked to respond in their own words. Four hundred and twenty participants witnessed a mock crime video before being presented with a showup of the perpetrator or an innocent suspect. Participants were tested either immediately or after a 3-week delay, with one of the three report options: Participants either made their choice in their own words (spontaneous report), chose between identifying and rejecting the showup (forced-report), or chose between identification, rejection and don't know (free-report). Only 2.2% of witnesses spontaneously used a don't know response, compared to 19.3% who used it when the option was explicit. Compared with the forced-report decisions, free-report decisions were more accurate, more diagnostic of the suspect's guilt or innocence, and came at no cost to the number of correct decisions rendered. These data suggest that utilisation of an explicit don't know option may be of practical value.