Psychiatric and Forensic Differences Between Men Charged with Sex Offences and Men Charged with Other Offences

Studies on differences between individuals convicted of sexual offences and nonsexual offences are sparse and there is an on-going debate as to whether sexual offenders differ from other offenders. The primary aim of this study was to determine demographic characteristics, prevalence of mental disorders, alcohol and drug use at the time of the crime and the criminal responsibility of individuals charged with sexual offences, compared to nonsexual crimes, with the aim of bringing awareness to the similarities and differences between men charged with sex offences and those charged with other crimes. This is a single-institution retrospective study of subjects charged with sexual offences and sent for institutional psychiatric evaluation to a Forensic Psychiatric Centre in an urban, academic, tertiary-care center. The control group consisted of individuals charged with nonsexual offences referred to the same center. Results showed significant differences between individuals charged with sexual offences and nonsexual offences. Men charged with sex offences more frequently committed their crimes alone and victimized children equally as often as adults. They also less frequently pleaded guilty in court. They were more likely to be abused in childhood and more often had antisocial personality disorder and paraphilias and less often substance-related disorders. The majority were considered criminally responsible. Our results show that sex offenders are different from nonsex offenders in many characteristics of their personal history, offence characteristics and forensic evaluations and these particular differences warrant different approaches to the prevention of future re-offending, compared to nonsex offenders.     

Lawyers about Mixed Tribunals: Do Croatian Professional Judges, State Attorneys, and Private Attorneys Share the Same View?

In this paper, I examine opinions about mixed tribunals, a form of lay participation used widely in the criminal justice systems across Europe. The distinguishing feature of mixed tribunals is the fact that professional and lay judges decide the guilt and sentence jointly. I explore the differences of opinion among lawyers about mixed tribunals in general and about lay judges in particular. Using the theoretical underpinnings of status characteristics theory, I study the impact of the lawyers' role in the criminal justice system and the type of court/office at which they serve or practice law on their opinion about mixed tribunals. The dataset I analyze in this paper consists of questionnaires filled out by Croatian professional judges, state attorneys, and private attorneys.     

Reviews

Andrei Kuznetsov, Foreign Investment in Contemporary Russia: Managing Capital Entry. New York: St Martin's Press Inc, 1994. xiv + 188 pp., £45.00

Leslie Dienes, Istvan Dobozi & Marian Radetzki, Energy and Economic Reform in the Former Soviet Union: Implications for Production, Consumption and Exports. London: Macmillan, 1994, xiv + 246 pp., £45.00

Hilary Pilkington, Russia's Youth and its Culture. A Nation's Constructors and Constructed. London: Routledge, 1994, xiv + 358 pp., £40.00 h/b., £12.99 p/b.

Peter Gatrell, Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914: the Last Argument of Tsarism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xx + 399 pp., £55.00 h/b., £19.95 p/b.

Margot Light (ed.), Troubled Friendships: Moscow's Third World Ventures. London: British Academic Press, 1993, vii + 225 pp., £39.50.

Dale F. Eickelman (ed.), Russia's Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross‐cultural Analysis. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, ix + 225 pp.

Ljubo Sirc, Criticism of Self‐Management Still Relevant? London: Centre for Research into Communist Economies, 1994, 134 pp., £7.50.

Du?an Pokorný, Efficiency and Justice in the Industrial World: Volume 1. The Failure of the Soviet Experiment. New York, London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, 297 pp., £53.00.

Linda J. Cook, The Soviet Social Contract and Why it Failed. Welfare Policy and Workers’ Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1994, xiii + 272 pp., £35.95/$53.95.

Henryk Kierzkowski, Marek Okolski & Stanislaw Wellisz (eds), Stabilization and Structural Adjustment in Poland. London: Routledge, 1993, xi + 314 pp., £45.00.

Stephen Whitefield (ed.) The New Institutional Architecture of Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993, ix + 204 pp., £40.00     

Case of Fatal Starvation: Can Stable Isotope Analysis Serve to Support Morphological Diagnosis and Approximate the Length of Starvation?

The diagnosis of death as a result of starvation is established on anthropological measurements, visual appearance of the deceased on external and internal examination, microscopic analysis, laboratory testing, and exclusion of other causes of death. Herein, we present our findings on a case of 95‐year‐old man who died of starvation. After the diagnosis of starvation was established by traditional forensic medicine methods, we have conducted retrospective segmental analysis of stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope ratios in hair sample. This method reveals periods of starvation through decrease in δ¹³C and increase in δ¹⁵N along the strand of hair. Our analysis revealed the decrease of 0.6 ‰ in δ¹³C during the last 10–12 weeks prior to death, similar as reported in other investigations. Also, a decrease of 0.7 ‰ in δ¹⁵N during the last 8–10 weeks prior to death was determined that was different than observed in previous studies.