Fighting Organized Crime, with Particular Reference to Mafia Crimes in Italy

The special legal regulation of mafia crimes in Italy operatesat very different levels: at that of investigations, of criminalproceedings, of sentencing and of imprisonment. This legal regimeis based on a double track treatment, which generally speaking,is very harsh, but may turn especially lenient whenever a personopts out of a criminal group and decides to cooperate with theprosecution. In the daily fight against mafia crimes as wellas criminal offences perpetrated by other criminal organizationsor ‘associations’, the role of ‘cooperatingwitnesses’ has proven to be of pivotal importance. Anotheruseful prosecutorial tool developed by the Italian courts isthe notion of ‘external support to mafia associations’,although this now needs to be laid down in legislation. It is,in this writer's experience, the coordination of investigationsthat is critical to the prosecution and punishment of mafiacrimes, and to the dismantlement of mafia associations.     

Shooting distance estimation for shots fired by a shotgun loaded with buckshot cartridges

The present study was carried out to clarify the problem of shooting distance estimation, by studying shots fired with buckshot ammunition in 12 gauge shotgun.For this purpose, the pattern diameter (PD) and the distances between buckshot (DBB) within the pattern were evaluated.Experimental shots were carried out with three differently choked barrels: full, half and cylinder; Winchester-Western OOB and OB buckshot ammunition were used.The results show that the estimation of shooting distance, based on the present parameters, is scarcely reliable especially when this estimation must be calculated on the basis of only a few wound holes on which measurements are made.     

Elderly sexual offenders: two unusual cases*

The aim of this case report is to describe two cases of sexual abuse by elderly subjects for which the Judge commissioned an expert psychiatric-forensic opinion. The elderly are generally believed to commit nonviolent crimes, whereas the two cases we observed feature forcible rape committed by elderly offenders, who showed no form of mental disease and had rationally planned their offense. They had never previously committed similar acts and had no history of homosexuality; both had been married for many years before the death of their wives and had adult children. Finally, no previous episodes of rape emerged in their personal histories during interrogations. The sociocultural context in which the crimes were committed was identical and arouses interest as regards both the method employed and how the crimes were discovered. The legal authorities then commissioned accurate investigations including medicolegal and psychiatric-forensic evaluations of the offenders and their victims.     

Review of Richard Dagger,Playing Fair: Political Obligation and the Problems of Punishment

Richard Dagger purports to solve the problem of political obligation and the problem of punishment simultaneously, by employing the principle of fair play.     

Regulation of Speech and Media Coverage of Corruption: An Empirical Analysis of the Mexican Press

Restrictions to media freedom, in the form of repressive defamation legislation, are thought to affect the amount of information about corruption that the media report. Exploiting variation in regulation of speech across states in a federal country, Mexico, and using a novel data set based on content analysis of the local press, I estimate the effect of lack of freedom on the coverage devoted to acts of malfeasance by public officials. Corruption receives significantly less attention in states with a more repressive defamation law. Instrumental variable models corroborate the interpretation of the negative association between regulation and coverage as a causal “chilling effect.”     

Political polarization in retrospective economic evaluations during recessions and recoveries

Retrospective economic evaluations are politically biased: across a broad range of democratic countries, supporters of the party that controls the executive provide evaluations that are systematically more positive than those of the rest of the electorate; similarly, ideological distance from the ruling party predicts more negative evaluations. Yet, during economic downturns, citizens of different ideological persuasions and partisan affiliations tend to agree that the state of the economy is dire. During recoveries, on the other hand, evaluations are polarized along partisan and ideological lines. Due to the psychological phenomenon of negativity bias, retrospective evaluations respond to economic downturns more strongly than to recoveries. As a consequence, the extent of polarization in public opinion varies dramatically between good and bad economic times.