Testifying Absence in the Era of Forensic Testimony

Commenting on the significance of his work at a mass grave in Vukovar, Croatia, 1993–1995, anthropologist Clyde Snow predicted that the application of forensic scientific methods in the documentation of mass atrocity would help prevent the future denial of atrocities. A couple of years later in nearby Kosovo, others would follow forensic scientific investigators only to report what they never saw or never found leading many commentators and tertiary witnesses to doubt that atrocities had occurred. As absence and lack arise against the backdrop of forensic discourse, we are called upon to weigh the stakes of negative evidence witnessing and its implications for cultural memory. This article contends that the semiotic and positional peculiarity of negative evidence in an era of forensic testimony has its analogue in the paschal figure of Jesus’ empty tomb. Analyzing the rhetoric of denial that accompanied the forensic investigations of Kosovo in the late 1990s, the author suggests that the empty tomb is a paradigm that renders intelligible the interdiction implicitly placed on the forensic presencing of the body as well as the problematic with which memory is met in a world where forensic scientific testimony grows in importance.     

Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan

External actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure during and since the second civil war that has helped to protect people, legitimize the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), broker the peace agreements leading to independence, and undergird the new state of South Sudan. After the civil war and especially at independence, many international actors approached South Sudan as a tabula rasa, ready for peace and development; since then, engagement has shifted back to large-scale humanitarian efforts and crisis response. This paper investigates how international actors have engaged with the South Sudanese state and local actors in order to improve access to basic services and build state capacity to deliver those services and provide social protection and livelihood support, what the impacts of such engagement have been, and what aid actors can learn from this history. The paper draws on four years of fieldwork by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), with a focus on Jonglei State.     

The Sooner the Better: The Arguments for the Use of Extended Welfare Assessment Grids in Animal Welfare Cases

Animals are protected under national animal welfare legislation, against intentional acts of cruelty and a failure to act, resulting in neglect and causing an animal to suffer. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) bears the responsibility of investigating and prosecuting the majority of animal welfare offences in England and Wales. In recent years, how they operate has been criticised, and it has been debated whether they should be able to bring private prosecutions, and what their role should actually be. This criticism calls for a change in the way in which the RSPCA approach cases of animal welfare, to strengthen their continuing role in ensuring positive animal welfare is achieved and, where not, prosecuted. This paper outlines the need for a new approach and how it can be managed. Honess and Wolfensohn (Altern Lab Anim 38:205, 2010) have developed an Extended Welfare Assessment Grid (EWAG), a visualisation mapping tool of welfare impact, which has been useful for assessing the welfare of animals used in laboratories. This tool has proven so useful, veterinarians are now using it in veterinary hospitals to help assess whether an animal is likely to further deteriorate, due to disease and illness, and to show any short-term welfare impact on the animal (Williams in UFAW conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018). This paper will explore the potential for the EWAG to be adapted to assess the welfare of animals when owners are not meeting the welfare needs of their companion animals. RSPCA can use it to support their assessments of the current welfare of an animal under a person’s ownership and whether the animal’s welfare will deteriorate should they remain under that ownership. The EWAG will be a useful tool for those working in animal welfare, such as the RSPCA, to help organisations to intervene earlier, work in partnership with an owner, and support their claims of a risk to animal welfare.

     

Assessing Psychopathic Traits and Criminal Behavior in a Young Adult Female Community Sample Using the Self‐Report Psychopathy Scale

This study assessed psychopathic traits in a nonforensic female population (N = 343). Respondents completed the Self‐Report Psychopathy Scale‐4: Short Form (SRP‐SF) and also reported on their Criminal Behavior. The results revealed relatively higher scale elevations for the Interpersonal and Lifestyle SRP‐SF facets, compared to the Affective and Antisocial facets. Also, those with a history of Criminal Behavior had significantly higher SRP‐SF facet scores on all four psychopathy domains, compared to those without such history. Consistent with a number of previous studies, the structural equation modeling results revealed good fit for the four‐factor SRP‐SF model. In addition, a super‐ordinate SRP‐SF factor, which accounted for the majority variance of all four SRP‐SF first‐order factors, also accounted for 50% of the variance in a latent Criminal Behavior factor. Taken together, findings support use of the SRP‐SF to assess psychopathic features in a moderately large sample of Belgium women.     

Loyalist supergrass trials: an opportunity for open source intelligence?

In the 1980s some thirty members of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland both republican and loyalist, agreed to provide evidence against their former colleagues in return for a reduced sentence or immunity from prosecution, a new identity and life. Such individuals became commonly known as ‘supergrasses’. This article drawing on archival and documentary research explores the potential opportunity these supergrass trials provided for republican paramilitary groups to gather open source intelligence on their loyalist counterparts. It also tracks whether individuals named by loyalist supergrasses were subsequently targeted by opposing paramilitary groups on their acquittal or release from prison.