Spanish Language Training for Law Enforcement Officers: Study Aid Use,Motivation, and Need to Use Correlate with Vocabulary Retention

Job-related Spanish courses are available across the country for a variety of professions. Blandino and Rivardo (Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 21(2):68–82, 2006) assessed the effectiveness of the Officer Safety and Communication Spanish Level I (OSCSLI) (Alentado 1995) course for law enforcement officers, but did not have data beyond 6-months post course and were unable to fully assess potential benefits of study aid use. In a follow-up study, 200 law enforcement officers completed a questionnaire and quiz up to 10 years following course completion. Those who used study aids had higher quiz scores than those who did not. Multiple regression analyses indicated that past need to use Spanish and motivation to learn Spanish were significant predictors of quiz performance, further supporting long term course effectiveness.     

Behavior on the ward of personality-disordered inpatients and chronically psychotic inpatients during a three-year stay in a Dutch forensic psychiatric hospital

To gain insight into the behavior of a group of personality-disordered patients and a group of chronically psychotic patients during their stay in a Dutch forensic psychiatric hospital, data on these patients were collected biannually for seven years. Three aspects of the patients’ behavior were examined: the prediction of institutional behavior shortly after admission, changes in the patients’ behavior on the ward during their stay in hospital, and the prediction of these changes. In the personality-disordered patients, observed irritation/anger and aggressive behavior on the ward turned out to be positively related to psychopathy, the PCL-R lifestyle and antisocial facets, and the neuroticism domain. A positive relationship was also found between aggressive behavior on the ward and trait anger. In the chronically psychotic patients, a positive relationship was found between irritation/anger and the PCL-R interpersonal and lifestyle facet. During a stay of three years, the aggressive behavior of both patient subgroups, which was already low at the start, did not decrease further, but their prosocial behavior increased. In the personality-disordered patients, relatively high scores on the antisocial facet of the PCL-R indicated an increase in prosocial behavior, whereas in the chronically psychotic patients no relationship was found between any PCL-R facet and behavior change. Effect studies on treatment programs for forensic psychiatric inpatients have to contend with the problem of a low base rate of institutional aggression. Therefore, we advise that such studies focus not only on a decrease in negative behaviors but also on an increase in positive behaviors.     

The persistence of collective guilt

Abstract

This paper asks why, despite the obvious difficulties entailed, the notion of ‘collective guilt’ continues to feature in discussions of the responsibilities of one group towards another. The aim is to clarify how it is that the partial success of repeated attempts to distinguish individual from collective guilt and to confine the latter to a pre-modern moment reveals something of our present. The key contributions to this discussion made by Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers in relation to Nazi Germany are examined for their ambivalences in this regard, as are some recent developments in international law and politics. The suspicion is that collective guilt is a notion that modern political reason cannot embrace and yet which it cannot entirely disavow: ‘collective guilt’ and the element of fate that it implies is central to our understanding of citizenship, nationhood and political commitment. The paper thus attempts an analysis of the durability of the concept of collective guilt; it is not an evaluation of its usefulness, but an exploration of its persistence.     

Highly Sensitive Detection of Blood by Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering,,

Raman spectroscopy for forensic body fluid analysis has received some attention due to the nondestructive nature and potential application for identification at the crime scene; however, its usage has been limited by low detection sensitivity. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was evaluated for blood identification for forensic applications. Specifically, a SERS‐active substrate was fabricated, composed of nickel nanotips coated with Ag nanoparticles. Compared with a conventional substrate, the SERS substrate enhanced Raman scattering by more than two orders of magnitude and allowed blood to be identified to a dilution of 1:100,000. Blood was also successfully detected by swabbing the SERS substrate directly on mock evidence. Most importantly, Raman spectra obtained by swabbing the SERS substrate on blood stains were free of luminescence even when blood was deposited on luminescent fabrics. The nondestructive character, simplicity of sample preparation, and high sensitivity make SERS a prime candidate for field and laboratory‐based blood identification.