Here today, gone tomorrow, back again the next day: Antecedents of correctional absenteeism

Correctional agencies are labor intensive, and many of the posts in a prison cannot be vacated, often leading to mandatory overtime. Despite the high costs and inconvenience associated with absenteeism in prisons, little empirical work was conducted on the antecedents of sick leave use by correctional workers. From self-reported data of workers in federal prisons in 1994, the results of this study indicated that decisions to use sick leave were independent of the culture of the prisons, and that many of the variables found to be associated with sick leave use in other settings also applied to correctional settings. In particular, the authors found that job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job stress, and personal characteristics were associated with the use of sick leave. Surprisingly, tobacco use was not.     

Sudden death as the initial manifestation of primary pulmonary hypertension. Report of four cases

Four autopsy cases are presented in which sudden death was the initial manifestation of primary pulmonary hypertension. The arteriopathy was plexogenic in two cases (a 3-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy) and was thrombotic in two other cases (55- and 59-year-old women). The diagnosis of primary pulmonary hypertension, particularly in forensic cases, requires that the pathologist be especially aware of the possibility and that a careful evaluation of multiple sections of lung be performed. Determination of the histopathologic type also is important because some forms of the disease may be familial and may be treatable in other family members if they are detected early.     

Coming Clean About the Criminal Law

This paper addresses three doctrinal phenomena of which it finds evidence in English law: the quiet extension of the criminal law so as to criminalise that which is by no means an obvious offence; the creation of offences the goal of which is not to guide potential offenders away from crime; and the existence of offending behaviour which is not itself thought to justify arrest or prosecution. While such phenomena have already been criticised by other criminal law theorists, this paper offers a critique to which little attention has yet been paid. It argues that the existence of these phenomena has been concealed from public view: that the organs of state have encouraged the belief that they are no part of English law. The paper then argues that it is high time the state came clean. The state owes its people answers for the imposition of the criminal law: it must account for the creation and enforcement of any given criminal offence. When the state misleads its people about the criminal law’s scope, goals and enforcement, it refuses to provide those people with the answers they are owed.