Factors influencing the contamination of UK banknotes with drugs of abuse

Bank of England banknotes sampled from different locations in the UK have been analysed for the presence of cocaine, diamorphine (DAM), Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). A database of the contamination detected is routinely used as a benchmark against which the contamination detected on seized banknotes can be compared. Evidence presented at court details how banknotes seized from a suspect may differ from banknotes in general circulation in terms of their contamination with controlled drugs. A question arising from such evidence is whether seized banknotes could have become contaminated through being in circulation in drug "hot spots". In order to address this issue, a Plackett-Burman experimental design was used to investigate the influence of source location and other factors on banknote contamination with drugs of abuse. Banknotes were drawn from banks in eight regions throughout the UK. Each location could be described by a unique combination of the factors under investigation, namely whether the location was rural or urban, in the North or South of the UK, and whether it was a port of entry. The socio-economic class and the proportion of drug offenders in the area and the denomination of the banknotes were also considered as potentially influential factors. Indices were calculated to describe the degree to which samples were contaminated with different drugs, and normal probability plots were used to identify the factors that could account for the contamination observed. Whilst some factors were more influential than others, it was shown that, at the 95% confidence level, none of the proposed factors were significant influences on the contamination. Cocaine contamination on banknotes has been shown to follow a log-normal distribution. It was, therefore, possible to calculate F- and t-statistics to compare the cocaine contamination on the entire sample set with that detected on a second sample set consisting of banknotes all drawn from a single bank branch. It was shown that both inter-bank samples and intra-bank samples had similar variance and similar contamination levels at the 95% confidence level. This suggests that there are no significant regional trends in the contamination of banknotes with drugs of abuse across the UK.     

Deposition of cannabinoids in hair after long-term use of cannabis

Hair analysis has shown great potential in the detection and control of drug use. Whether an assay is of quantitative value roughly corresponding to the amount of drug consumed, is still a matter of debate. The present investigation was aimed at a possible relationship between the cannabinoid concentration in hair and the cumulative dose in regular users of cannabis. Hair samples from the vertex region of the scalp were obtained from 12 male regular users of cannabis, and 10 male subjects with no experience of cannabis served as controls. None of the subjects had his hair permed, bleached or colored. Cannabis users provided information on drug use such as the current cannabis dose per day, the cumulative cannabis dose of the last 3 months, as well as the frequency of cannabis use during the last year. The concentration of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabinol (CBN) and cannabidiol (CBD) in hair was determined using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Cannabinoids were present in any hair sample of cannabis users, but were not detectable in control specimens. An increase in the amount of cannabinoids in hair with increasing dose was evident. The concentration of major cannabinoids (sum of THC, CBD and CBN) was significantly correlated to either the reported cumulative cannabis dose during the last 3 months or to the cannabis use during the last 3 months estimated from the daily dose and the frequency per year (r=0.68 or 0.71, p=0.023 or 0.014). A significant relationship between THC and the amount of cannabis used could not be established. As a conclusion, the sum of major cannabinoids in hair of regular users may provide a better measure of drug use than THC.     

Das "9+1"-Modell der Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Hot Cognition in Investigative Judgments: The Differential Influence of Anger and Sadness

The authors predicted that the cognitive appraisal tendencies associated with sadness and anger would exert different influences on investigators' crime-related judgments. Supporting evidence was found in an experiment with 61 experienced criminal investigators. First, when judging the reliability of a witness statement, sad participants relied on their perception of both witness and situational variables, whereas angry participants relied only on their perception of witness variables. This corresponds to the emphasis placed on situational and individual control in the appraisals associated with sadness and anger, respectively. Second, when making judgments of the case, sad participants were sensitive to the consistency of a witness statement with the central hypothesis of the investigation, indicating substantive processing, whereas angry participants were unaffected by statement-hypothesis consistency, indicating heuristic processing. The findings suggest that the process of reliability assessment can be better understood by consulting theories of attribution and information processing.     

Assessing Data Completeness,Quality, and Representativeness of Justifiable Homicides in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports: A Research Note

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - The most widely used data set for studying police homicides—the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation—is...