Pneumomediastinum and Soft Tissue Emphysema in Pediatric Hanging

Postmortem computed tomography (CT) is increasingly being used as a tool in forensic pathology. The exact value of postmortem imaging in detecting specific conditions has not yet been established, but in specific cases, it can be used as a diagnostic tool demonstrating findings that remain undetected during autopsy, as in this case. Pneumomediastinum and soft tissue emphysema were detected with postmortem CT in a 3‐year‐old girl after hanging. It was not found during autopsy. This radiological finding matches 3 adult cases previously described. It is assumed that in this case, the first reported in a child, hanging was the most likely cause as well. In the adult cases, it was interpreted as a vital sign; the person must have been alive to create a pressure gradient causing rupture of the alveoli. This case demonstrates one of the added values of postmortem imaging, the possibility of demonstrating findings that remain undetected during autopsy.     

‘Managing’ the Middle Classes: Urban Managers,Public Services and the Response to Middle-Class Capture

There is a longstanding concern about middle-class capture of the benefits of public service provision, although relatively little evidence exists on the exact nature of any advantage or on the processes by which this comes about. Using a framework developed from Gal (J. Gal, 1998. Formulating the Matthew Principle: on the role of the middle-classes in the welfare state. Scandinavian Journal of Social Welfare, 7, 42–55), and via two case studies of street cleansing services in the UK, the article explores the ways in which middle-class service users assert influence in relation to service design, resource allocation and practice on the ground. It explores how urban managers respond to middle-class influence, revealing the ways in which influence is accommodated and the benefits of this to middle-class service users. It also evidences how urban managers attempt to resist aspects of middle-class advantage, and the challenges such resistance presents. The article concludes that the need to ‘manage’ middle-class influence permeates the routine institutional policies and practices of this key public service.     

Pyro-Terrorism: Recent Cases and the Potential for Proliferation

Several states have had to cope with pyro-terrorism aimed at their forest systems. This method of attack—the ignition of forest fires—harms a valuable natural resource and threatens human population and infrastructure. By adopting specific risk management practices authorities will be better prepared to address this asymmetric, yet rational, threat should it materialize. Prevention and deterrence based on vulnerability assessments would assist officials mitigate risks associated with forest-targeted pyro-terrorism. Given the unique nature and rarity of the threat, responses should be based on separate policies rather than drawn from a modern counterterrorism strategy and may call for engagement at a local level.     

Pygmalion in the reintegration process: Desistance from crime through the looking glass

The study of desistance from crime has come of age in recent years, and there are now several, competing theories to account for the ability of long-term offenders to abstain from criminal behavior. Most prominently, recent explanations have borrowed elements from informal social control theory, differential association theory and cognitive psychology. In the following, we argue that labeling theory may be a neglected factor in understanding the desistance process. Drawing on interview data collected as part of a study of an offender reintegration program, we illustrate how the idea of the “looking-glass self-concept” and others is a useful metaphor in understanding the process of rehabilitation or recovery in treatment programs.     

Treating high-risk rapists in a New Zealand intensive prison programme

The focus of this article is on the pilot development and implementation of a prison-based intensive treatment programme for high-risk adult-victim rape offenders in New Zealand. Advances in actuarial risk assessment enabled the identification of a group of high-risk adult sex offenders for whom no dedicated treatment programme existed. Based on a review of the treatment literature for rapists, a pilot programme was developed called the Adult Sex Offender Treatment Programme (ASOTP). The programme, based on the risk–need–responsivity and cognitive behavioural therapy principles, also used an adaptation of Young's schema therapy to address personality responsivity issues and specific idiosyncratic schema associated with participant offence pathways identified by the Massachusetts Treatment Centre classification (Version 3 for rapists). Measures of responsivity and dynamic risk administered in the ASOTP indicated some success in addressing treatment needs for the pilot participants (n=10). The programme has subsequently been expanded across prison specialist treatment unit sites and delivered to a further 52 participants. Although intermediate measures continue to indicate change in dynamic risk, recidivism outcome evaluations have not yet been possible, due to low numbers of paroled participants.     

Social Expectations in China

I remember the scene vividly:Late last year,I was eating lunch with a Chinese friend who was obviously upset.When I met her at the gate of the student canteen,she tried her best to make small talk,but something was clearly wrong.Her head hung low,her eyes were glued to the floor,and she     

Literary feature reviews

Taking stock of dead people: Argentina's reflections on the ‘Dirty War’ years

A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina's Nightmare. Andrew Graham‐Yooll, London: Eland. 1986. 180pp. £9.95hb/£4.95pb

Requiem for a Woman's Soul. Omar Rivabella, London: Penguin. 1986. 116pp. £2.95pb

The Duke: Memories and Antimemories of a Participant in the Repression. Enrique Medina, London: Zed. 1985. 120pp. £8.95hb/£3.95pb

The Shadow by the Door. Gerardo Di Masso, London: Zed. 1986. 96pp. £8.95hb/£3.95pb

The Long Night of Frncisco Sanctis. Humberto Costantini, London: Fontana. 1985. 184pp. £3.50pb

Caribbean contrasts

Frangipani House. Beryl Gilroy, 1986. 111pp. £3.50pb

Apata: The Story of a Reluctant Criminal. Harold A Bascom, 1986. 279pp. £3.95pb

Beka Lamb. Zee Edgell, 1986. 171pp. £3.50pb

The Wine of Astonishment. Earl Lovelace, 1986. 146pp. £3.50pb

The Lights on the Hill. Garth St Omer, 1986. 119pp. £3.50pb

London: Heinemann Educational Books (Caribbean Writers Series)     

‘Something older than law itself’: Sir Henry Maine,Niebuhr, and ‘the path not chosen’

This article re-evaluates the intellectual context of Maine's historical jurisprudence by emphasising the importance of his classical background. Maine's time at Cambridge coincided with the rise of ‘progressive classical scholarship’, especially the study of ancient history in its social, economic and institutional setting. By exploring the links between Maine's work and that of the ancient historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the article argues that an understanding of Maine's classical provenance enriches the appreciation of his work, especially its literary, interdisciplinary and educational challenge to the common law mind. Maine emerges on this account as a Victorian ‘neo-humanist’ whose later neglect is symptomatic of the more general separation of nineteenth-century English jurisprudence from mainstream European thought.     

The lecturer,the law student and the transmission of legal culture

Abstract

This paper presents a critique of recent work on the culture of the law school and its inhabitants. It examines two questions raised particularly by the work of Professor Fiona Cownie¹, one about staff and the other about students. Cownie detects a shift to greater eclecticism in the general intellectual climate of the legal academy and this paper questions whether this new stance is intellectually coherent. The second issue considered is the extent to which certain features of legal academic culture; its theoretical stances, the skills and values taught, persist and have an enduring effect on law students after they have left the academy and moved to the world of work.