The effect of perceived risk and victimization on plans to purchase a gun for self-protection

Purposes

To determine if perceived risk of criminal victimization, and past criminal victimization experiences, increases the likelihood of a person owning a gun for self-protection, and to determine if defects in past research concerning the way gun ownership was measured had obscured such effects.

Methods

We analyzed data on over 2,500 U.S. adults, using different ways of measuring gun ownership, and also analyzed future plans (among persons who did not own a gun at the time of the survey) to acquire a gun for self-protection. The latter procedure avoids the causal order problem attributable to the possibility that acquiring a gun might affect victimization risks and perceived risks, as well as the reverse.

Results

The estimated effect of perceived risk and prior victimization changed from being nonsignificant when household gun ownership was the dependent variable (as in most prior research) to being increasingly strong, and statistically significant, when gun ownership of the individual respondent for defensive reasons was measured. Further, once the causal order issue was side-stepped, risk and victimization showed even stronger, significant positive effects on planning to get a gun.

Conclusions

Crime affects gun ownership, in addition to any effects that gun ownership may have on crime.     

Marked for Death: An Empirical Criminal Careers Analysis of Death Sentences in a Sample of Convicted Male Homicide Offenders

Background

Although prior criminal record and concurrent criminal charges constitute the main eligibility and aggravating circumstances used in capital sentencing, relatively little research has examined the criminal careers of offenders who are ultimately sentenced to death.

Materials and Methods

Using official criminal history data for 618 incarcerated male homicide offenders selected from 8 states—191 of whom were sentenced to death—the current study explored the criminal careers of offenders that received the most severe legal punishment.

Results

Poisson regression incidence rate ratio models indicated that multiple measures of prior criminal activity including contemporaneous and prior history of violence, prior incarceration, early onset of arrest, juvenile homicide offending, and juvenile child molestation were associated with subsequently being sentenced to death. Separate models for white, African American, and Hispanic males showed contrasting effects in their criminal careers and varying relationships between prior criminal career and current capital offending.

Conclusion

The current study adds to the literature on lifespan criminality by applying Poisson regression analyses and a criminal careers approach to study the most extreme offenders including those sentenced to death.     

Validating TrueAllele® DNA mixture interpretation

Abstract: DNA mixtures with two or more contributors are a prevalent form of biological evidence. Mixture interpretation is complicated by the possibility of different genotype combinations that can explain the short tandem repeat (STR) data. Current human review simplifies this interpretation by applying thresholds to qualitatively treat STR data peaks as all‐or‐none events and assigning allele pairs equal likelihood. Computer review, however, can work instead with all the quantitative data to preserve more identification information. The present study examined the extent to which quantitative computer interpretation could elicit more identification information than human review from the same adjudicated two‐person mixture data. The base 10 logarithm of a DNA match statistic is a standard information measure that permits such a comparison. On eight mixtures having two unknown contributors, we found that quantitative computer interpretation gave an average information increase of 6.24 log units (min = 2.32, max = 10.49) over qualitative human review. On eight other mixtures with a known victim reference and one unknown contributor, quantitative interpretation averaged a 4.67 log factor increase (min = 1.00, max = 11.31) over qualitative review. This study provides a general treatment of DNA interpretation methods (including mixtures) that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative review. Validation methods are introduced that can assess the efficacy and reproducibility of any DNA interpretation method. An in‐depth case example highlights 10 reasons (at 10 different loci) why quantitative probability modeling preserves more identification information than qualitative threshold methods. The results validate TrueAllele^® DNA mixture interpretation and establish a significant information improvement over human review.     

Sickle cell trait-associated deaths: a case series with a review of the literature

This study presents a series of 16 carriers of hemoglobin S (HbS) who died during various circumstances. Many of the cases were associated with mild to moderate exertion. The onset and/or duration of symptoms varied from a few minutes to several hours with many displaying a prolonged lucid interval with stable vital signs. Despite seeking medical treatment, sickle cell trait-related micro-occlusive crisis was never considered in the differential diagnosis. Several cases were associated with sudden death. In those deaths which were delayed, high anion gap and uncompensated metabolic acidosis were typical and were not heat related. Also characteristic were large increases in creatine kinase, alanine aminotransferase, and aspartate aminotransferase along with myoglobinemia. Although the antemortem diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis was made, the underlying cause was never deduced by the clinicians. The sickling found at autopsy is not always a postmortem artifact, and in the right circumstances can be diagnostic.     

The legal aspects of corporate computer usage policies

In this paper we examine the legal aspects of corporate computer usage policies including their creation, management, and their relevance to corporate computer forensic investigations. Misuse of corporate computing facilities cannot only lead to a reduction in employee productivity and network bandwidth, but can also increase the risk of infection of such facilities by computer viruses and other malicious code. Moreover, it may lead to the risk of liability and legal action.     

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos: criminal and legal aspects of serial homicide with over 200 victims

This is the first scientific report on the crimes of the homosexual paedophile sadist Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos, based on a research stay of the authors in Columbia, and including discussions with the investigators, and the offender. Between 1992 and 1999, Garavito killed more than 200 children in the core age span between 8 and 13 years (as an exception, 6 to 16 years). His modus operandi remained stable. During daytime, he lured children of a lower social status out of crowded parts of the city into hidden areas that were overgrown with high plants. Garavito promised either payment for easy work, or drugs, or made other socially believable offers. The children were tied up, tortured, raped, and killed by at least one cut in the lateral part of the neck, or by decapitation. During the killings, Garavito was drunk. Even after his arrest (for attempted sexual abuse under a wrong identity) it was not immediately possible to track his crimes since Garavito had frequently changed his places of stay and his jobs. He also grew different hairdos and used wrong names. During his still ongoing confessions, he directs the investigators correctly to all scenes of crime spread over large parts of Columbia. In our report, we give an overview over the course of investigations, hint to similarities in the cases of the German serial killer Denke (1920's) and homosexual paedophile serial killer Jürgen Bartsch (1960's), and give preliminary impressions on the offender's personality. Furthermore, the violent environment and juridical peculiarities in Columbia are discussed. In spite of a total penalty of 2600 years in prison, it is formally well possible that Garavito will be released out of prison within the next 10 to 20 years, i.e. even before the maximum sentence of 40 years will be over.