Establishing the Limits of TrueAllele® Casework: A Validation Study

The limits of the expert system, TrueAllele^® Casework (TA), were explored using challenging mock casework profiles that included 17 single‐source and 18 two‐, 15 three‐ and 7 four‐person DNA mixtures. The sensitivity (ability to detect a minor contributor) of the TA analysis process was examined by challenging the system with mixture DNA samples that exhibited allelic and locus dropout and other stochastic effects. The specificity (ability to exclude nondonors) was rigorously tested by interrogating TA derived genotypes with 100 nondonor profiles. The accuracy with which TA estimated mixture weights of contributors to the two‐person mixtures was examined. Finally, first‐degree relatives of donors were used to assess the ability of the system to exclude close relatives. TA demonstrated great accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. TA correctly assigned mixture weights and excluded nearly all first‐degree relatives. This study demonstrates the analysis power of the TrueAllele^® Casework system.     

Evaluating the Child Abuse and Neglect Institute: Does Training Affect Decision‐Making?

Traditionally, training evaluations have focused on participants' satisfaction and self‐reported knowledge gain. The current study uses a different approach to evaluate the Child Abuse and Neglect Institute (CANI), a training program designed to educate judicial officers on best practices in child abuse and neglect cases. CANI participants were asked to review a case scenario and render decisions about the case before and after the trainings. Findings suggest CANI has several positive impacts on judicial decision‐making, including an increased willingness to engage the father, an increased focus on the child, and increased motivation to comply with the Indian Child Welfare Act.     

Police and the War on Women: A Gender-Linked Examination Behind and In Front of the Blue Curtain

The war on women was a term coined during the 2012 election cycle that referred to attempts to pass legislation that would limit women's rights, from control of women's bodies (with a particular focus on birth control, abortion, and the aftereffects of rape) to equal pay for women and their rights in the workforce (M. E. Gilman, 2014 Gilman, M. E. (2014). Feminism, democracy, and the “war on women.” Law & Inequality, 32, 1–30. [Google Scholar]). One arena in which evidence of such a war's impact on women may be assessed is behind and in front of the blue curtain of policing. To what extent, then, does policing reflect culture that supports and facilitates a war on women? We review arrest trends for female offenders, discuss police responses to crimes against women, and examine policies and practices that may improve understanding of the criminal justice system's role in this war. We find evidence of changes in police perspectives, actions, and policies toward women as perpetrators and victims of crime. Specifically, at the same time that police undertook more aggressive enforcement efforts against certain types of female offenders, resulting in trends for women that were often the reverse of those for men, there was an absence of similar attention to laws and policies protecting women as victims.     

Ethnic outbidding and nested competition: Explaining the extremism of ethnonational minority parties in Europe

The classical outbidding model of ethnic politics argues that democratic competition involving ethnic parties inevitably leads to ethnic outbidding where parties adopt ever more extreme positions. However, recent small‐N studies show that ethnic outbidding is only one of a range of strategies available to ethnic parties. This article seeks to explain why some ethnic parties are extremist, whereas others adopt moderate positions. Drawing on the ethnic outbidding and the nested competition model of ethnic party competition, it is hypothesised that the ethnic segmentation of the electoral market, and the relative salience of an ethnically cross‐cutting economic dimension of party competition, account for the varying degrees of extremism. Hypotheses are tested drawing on a novel, expert‐survey‐based dataset that provides indicators for the positions of 83 ethnonational minority parties in 22 European democracies in 2011. Results of ordinary least squares and two‐level linear regressions show that as the economic dimension gains importance, parties become more moderate relative to the party system mean. The electorate's ethnic segmentation has a positive effect on extremism, but this effect is not significant in all models. Contrary to expectations, higher ethnic segmentation of the party system is associated with more moderate positions in the majority of the estimated models.     

Pathological Teasing and Bullying Turned Deadly: Shooters and Suicide

Bullying, a form of interpersonal violence, has emerged in the 21st century as an important public health issue. Bullying during childhood and adolescence is a common problem and occurs almost universally. It may be viewed on a continuum as a relationship problem in which power and aggression are inflicted on a vulnerable person to cause distress. However, teasing and bullying can turn deadly. A deeply troubled youth, after years of chronic bullying, may decide he has no alternative but suicide. The Daniel Scruggs case is one such example. Alternatively, the troubled youth may be attracted to the violent hero presented in the media that demonstrates his power via weapons as in the cases of school shootings.

Why does bullying continue? Some of the problem is the belief that bullying is simply a part of growing up; adults who believe this are often unwilling to intervene. Bullies are not always easy to identify, as they are adept at concealing bullying behavior. Anti-bullying school programs have shown promise in reducing unacceptable behaviors. The next step is to educate teachers, law enforcement, and mental health staff members to identify the red flags of teasing and bullying that indicate an at-risk youth for either suicide or homicide.     

What do you expect?: The influence of people's prior knowledge of crime categories on fact-finding

Jurors have accumulated prior knowledge of crime categories that influences their verdict choices (V. L. Smith, 1991, 1993). The present research investigates whether this prior knowledge also influences the fact-finding process by operating as an expectancy for information processing. Consistent with the expectancy hypothesis, Study 1 demonstrated that people are more susceptible to misleading information that is perceived to be typical of the crime in question than misleading information that is atypical. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that people's intrusion errors also contain more typical than atypical information. These results indicate that people's prior knowledge of crime categories does indeed serve as an expectancy for fact-finding. Thus, prior knowledge plays a broader role than previously appreciated. The implications of this breadth are discussed.     

Co-witness Information Can Have Immediate Effects on Eyewitness Memory Reports

When questioning a reluctant witness, investigators sometimes encourage the witness by providing information about what other witnesses have said. Three experiments were conducted to test the combined effects of such co-witness information and suggestive questioning on the accuracy of eyewitness memory reports. Experiment 1 was analogous to the experience of a witness who receives information from an interviewer or questioner about what other witnesses have already said, whereas Experiments 2 and 3 simulated the situation in which a witness receives information directly from a co-witness. In all three experiments, when participants received incorrect information about a co-witness's response, they were significantly more likely to give that incorrect response than if they received no co-witness information. This effect persevered in a delayed memory test 48 h after the initial questioning session in Experiment 3. Accuracy rates were lowest of all when incorrect co-witness information was paired with questioning that suggested an incorrect response. These results have implications not only for the immediate effects on the accuracy of witnesses' memory reports, but also for the impact that even one such inaccurate report can have on the manner in which a case is investigated by the police or other authorities.     

Hispanic College Attendance and the State of Texas GEAR UP Program

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the state of Texas GEAR UP project implemented in six school districts from 1998 to 2005. The intent of the program was to enhance preparation for post‐secondary education among low‐income, Hispanic students. The program was comprised of practical interventions including vertical curriculum alignment, training teachers in advanced placement techniques, encouraging students to take rigorous courses, and increasing outreach about college attendance to students and parents. The central dependent variable is reports by parents of graduating seniors about whether their children would be attending college. A multivariate analysis, controlling for household SES, student grades and attendance, household composition, and language spoken in the home indicates that increased student exposure to the GEAR UP program markedly increases the probability that parents will report that their children are going to attend college.