How damages recovery actions can improve the fight against corruption: the crisis of criminal law policies and the role of private enforcement in an Italian case of judicial corruption

In many countries corruption is rife, despite the fact that there is a criminal-law legislative framework for corruption. Italy is one of these countries. The commitment of judges and prosecutors to combating instances of corruption is often frustrated by the consequences of the excessive length of the proceedings. The fight against corruption has been carried out mainly in the field of criminal law. The criminalisation of corruption both in domestic and in international contexts is not enough to reduce corrupt practices. In the last decade another front in the fight against corruption has been explored: the private law approach as a complement to criminal law policies. Indeed, the same corrupt practise may be subject both to criminal proceedings by public authority and to civil proceedings by the victims of corruption. The argument that private law instruments may be used in order to achieve a public policy goal is not new and goes beyond the definition of "private enforcement" in the context of competition law. The idea of creating a favourable social and legal background to encourage the victims of anti-competitive practices can also be transposed to the fight against corruption. In fact, in many cases of corruption the low percentage of successful criminal persecution and the class of punishment associated with corruption offences do not represent a deterrent, considering the benefits deriving from bribe. This paper aims to address the question as to whether private law remedies under national legal systems could constitute an effective disincentive against corrupt practices, alongside criminal prosecutions. The case CIR vs. Fininvest, Lodo Mondadori is one of the first cases involving damages actions resulting from corrupt practices, and addresses two of the main obstacles to civil actions in this field: evidence and the quantification of damages.     

A Very Unusual Accidental Mechanical Asphyxia of Choking with a Whole Solea Solea

The case here reported involves a schizophrenic 19‐year‐old girl under treatment with clotiapine, which was well tolerated except for a moderate dry mouth. The woman ingested a whole sole (Solea solea), which caused a very rapid death by choking. A complete autopsy was performed 24 h later, as well as histological and toxicological analysis. At autopsy, the sole was wedged in the esophagus causing a choking ab extrinseco. The fish had a length of 18 cm and a maximum width of 6 cm, weighing 188.7 g. Toxicological analysis detected 0.57 mg/L of clotiapine in blood, which falls within the therapeutic range. The peculiarity of this case is represented by two factors: one is the choking by fish and the second was the adverse affect caused by clotiapine, which induced a condition of dry mouth making the act of swallowing even more difficult, thereby contributing to a very rapid mechanical asphyxia and the death of the young woman.     

Attitude to personality disorder among prison officers working in a dangerous and severe personality disorder unit

BACKGROUND: It is well established that staff attitudes to personality disordered patients are commonly negative, characterised by pessimism and rejection. A recent study in forensic psychiatric hospitals has described the psychological and social factors underlying positive attitudes, and suggested that staff with more positive attitudes perform better and are less stressed. AIM: To assess whether it is possible to predict which staff will adjust positively to working with personality disordered people. More specifically to confirm links between attitude to personality disorder and: job performance; perception of managers; personal well-being; burnout; and interaction rates with inmates. METHODS: The opening of a new Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder unit within a UK prison allowed a longitudinal study of prison officers to be performed, in which a number of measures, including the Attitude to Personality Disorder Questionnaire (APDQ), were collected at three fixed points (at baseline, eight and sixteen months after the opening of the unit). RESULTS: Attitude to Personality Disorder varied over the course of the study, and changes in attitude were linked to events experienced by individual officers. More positive attitude to personality disorder was associated with improved general health and job performance, decreased burnout, and favourable perception of managers. CONCLUSIONS: Attitude to Personality Disorder has important outcomes, and is responsive to the psychosocial environment. Its measurement is not useful for staff selection, because of low stability over lengthy time periods. The APDQ has been demonstrated to be valid measure of attitude to PD, and potentially useful for outcome studies, or benchmarking between units.     

Development of a heptaplex PCR system to analyse X-chromosome STR loci from five Italian population samples. A collaborative study

Many X-chromosome short tandem repeats (X-STRs) have been validated for forensic use even if further studies are needed on allele frequencies and mutation rates to evaluate the extent of polymorphism in different populations and to establish reference databases useful for forensic applications and for anthropological studies. A single multiplex reaction of seven X-STRs, which includes the DXS6789, HUMARA, DXS10011, DXS7423, HPRTB, DXS6807, DXS101 loci, is presented and their allele frequency distribution in a large population sample including 556 subjects (268 females and 288 males) analysed by five forensic laboratories of Central and Northern Italy is shown. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of a single amplification/detection reaction involving seven markers of the X chromosome, which can be fruitfully used in complex kinship analysis.     

Mobile Borders in Urban Daily Mobility Practices in Santiago de Chile

In cities today, the possibility of being confined is not only applicable to fixed areas, like work or home, but it may also occur while moving. This is because high levels of mobility, long distances, and extended hours of daily travel, along with monotonous and difficult mobility experiences may lead some to "miss" the city, in a tunnel-like manner. In the context of urban daily mobility practices, this paper argues that although the possibility for expanding places by daily mobility exists, increasingly urban experiences in cities like Santiago de Chile, involve a simultaneous tunneling or confining effect, reducing the possibilities of encounter and interaction, which are the essence of urban experience. Using an ethnographic approach to urban daily mobility practices in Santiago de Chile, this paper discusses how mobility relates to place making and to urban inequality and then analyzes the way place enlargement and confinement occur.     

Management Discretion and Political Interference in Municipal Enterprises. Evidence from Italian Utilities

The attention of scholars and policy-makers is shifting from full privatisation to alternative measures as a means to improve the efficiency of public services. This article focuses on three restructuring measures adopted by local governments: partial privatisation (without transfer of control rights), inter-municipal joint ventures, and the presence of outside directors on the Board. Divergent hypotheses on these measures have emerged from two economic theories, namely public choice and the agency perspective. An empirical analysis investigates the effects of restructuring processes on a sample of Italian municipal utilities. Partial privatisation has been shown to play a significant and positive role, while Board independence from management has a less significant influence. Multi-government utilities have been found to suffer from severe coordination costs, which are not outweighed by scale benefits. Our findings reveal that management discretion is a significant source of inefficiency in municipal enterprises.     

A forensic image processing environment for investigation of surveillance video

We present an image processing software suite, based on the Matlab environment, specifically designed to be used as a forensic tool by law enforcement laboratories in the analysis of crime scene videos and images. Our aim is to overcome some drawbacks which normally appear when using standard image processing tools for this application, i.e. mainly the lack of full control and documentation on the operations which have been performed on the images, and the absence of new, more sophisticated algorithms which can provide improved performances and "make the difference" in critical cases.     

Fetal Age Determination Through Biparietal Diameter: A Simple Method of Cranial Reconstruction Using Multipurpose Silicone

In forensic medicine, gestational age of fetal remains is a crucial information in several contests, but the classic methods are inadequate when early gestational age needs to be assessed. In the author's experience, the measurement of the biparietal diameter provides more accurate information for this purpose. The status of the fetal head is therefore critical. This work describes an easy technique that allows to reconstruct the cranial volume of the fetus using multipurpose silicone given both the flexibility of the fetal head structure and the inorganic nature of the silicone itself. In conclusion, the determination of the biparietal diameter achieved through the above‐described technique permitted a more accurate estimation of the dating of pregnancy in judicial cases where the fetal remains were incomplete and disrupted.     

The evaluation of human hand odor volatiles on various textiles: a comparison between contact and noncontact sampling methods

The focus of this study is to compare contact and noncontact human scent collection procedures across an array of textiles (cotton, rayon, polyester, and wool) to determine an optimized collection method for human scent evidence. Six subjects were sampled in triplicate for each textile and collection mode, and the samples were then analyzed through headspace solid-phase micro-extraction in combination with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS). Contact sampling with cotton material has been shown to be the collection method that yielded the greatest number of volatile compounds and the highest scent mass amounts. Through Spearman rank correlations, it was shown that an individual's scent profile is more reproducible within samples collected on the same textile type than between different materials. Furthermore, contact sampling with cotton fabric demonstrated the greatest reproducibility producing the lowest amount of type I and type II errors with 90.85% of the samples distinguished at the 0.9 match/no match threshold.