The Mystery Man Can Increase the Reliability of Eyewitness Identifications for Older Adult Witnesses

Some groups of eyewitnesses, such as older adults and children, are less likely to correctly reject a target-absent (TA) line-up, as compared to younger adults. Previous research reports that using a silhouette in a video line-up called the ‘mystery man’ could increase correct rejections for TA lineups for child eyewitnesses, without reducing correct identifications for target-present (TP) line-ups (Havard and Memon in Appl Cogn Psychol 27:50–59, 2013). The current study, using older and younger adults, investigated whether using the mystery man would also increase the identification accuracy for older adults, without impairing younger adults’ identification accuracy. The results found that older adults in the ‘mystery man’ condition rejected TA line-ups significantly more often than those in the control condition (52 vs. 24 %), with no significant effect upon the TP line-ups. For the younger adults, the mystery man had no influence on identification responses for the TA or TP line-ups. Our findings suggest the mystery man technique may be beneficial for older adults, without detrimentally affecting the accuracy for younger adults, and thus could increase the reliability of eyewitness evidence, where video line-ups are employed.     

The effect of the presence and seating position of an interpreter on eliciting information and cues to deceit

The present experiment examined how the seating position of an interpreter during investigative interviews affects information elicitation and cues to deceit. A total of 60 native English speakers were interviewed in English and 200 non-native English speakers were interviewed in English (a non-native language) or through an interpreter who either sat next to the interviewer, behind the interviewee or interpreted via the telephone. Interviewees either lied or told the truth about a mock security meeting they watched. Interviewees who spoke in their native language provided more detail than interviewees who spoke in their native language through an interpreter or in a non-native language (English) without an interpreter. The latter groups did not differ. Additionally, the amount of detail differentiated truth tellers from liars in all conditions and interviewees found the presence of an interpreter to be a largely positive experience. The interpreter’s seating position had no effect on the findings.     

Household furniture tip-over deaths of young children

The potential for the injury or death of a child resulting from the tip-over of a piece of household furniture or a domestic appliance has not been previously well recognized. We reviewed nine accidental deaths of young children that resulted from avoidable residential hazards and/or lapses in supervision of the children by their caregivers. The offending household items included televisions, bedroom dressers, a kitchen stove, and a lounge chair. The causes of death were mechanical asphyxia, blunt trauma, and combined blunt head trauma and asphyxia. All of the deaths could have been prevented by appropriate anchoring of the piece of furniture and/or closer supervision of the child. A thorough multidisciplinary investigation is essential in establishing the cause and manner of death in such cases and in identifying risk factors that may aid in the prevention of future childhood deaths.     

Aufgriffsobliegenheit bei Kündigung besonders bestandgeschützter Arbeitsverhältnisse?

Juristische Blätter - Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, einen roten Faden durch die verschiedenen Problemkreise einer rechtswidrigen Kündigung eines besonders bestandgeschützten...     

Homeowners Associations as Private Governments: What We Know,What We Don’t Know,and Why It Matters

Homeowners associations (HOAs) are private governments that are reshaping urban governance and service delivery in large parts of the United States. Despite the fact that millions of Americans are HOA members, the field of public affairs has paid scant attention to these new governance entities. The essays in this symposium call attention to HOAs’ potential effects on urban services and civic life in the hope of sparking interest among scholars and public managers to include HOAs in our understanding, research, and teaching of contemporary urban governance.     

Paths to destruction: the lives and crimes of two serial killers

Although research into the phenomenon of serial murder has revealed that serial killers frequently do not fit the initially described paradigm in terms of their physical and psychological profiles, backgrounds, and motives to kill, the media continues to sensationalize the figures of such killers and the investigators who attempt to analyze them on the basis of aspects of their crimes. Although the so-called "typical" profile of the serial murderer has proven accurate in some instances, in many other cases the demographics and behaviors of these killers have deviated widely from the generalized assumptions. This report details two unusual cases in which five and eight murders were committed in upstate New York. The lives and crimes of these offenders illustrate the wide spectrum of variations in the backgrounds, demographics, motivations, and actions witnessed among serial murderers, and highlight the limitations and dangers of profiling based on generalities.     

When (Some) Prostitution is Legal: The Impact of Law Reform on Sex Work in Australia

In Australia, prostitution regulation has taken a very different path from many other countries. Law reform has led to the opening of some significant new spaces for legal sex work, including the (very different) regulatory regimes established in two Australian states – Queensland (brothels legal if their owners are licensed) and New South Wales (most commercial sex businesses and some street prostitution decriminalized; no licensing regime). The main research question is: how has regulation impacted on the positive rights of sex workers? I argue that law reform has engaged a mix of neo-liberal and other approaches – not to increase personal or corporate freedom but as part of a practical strategy designed to control a range of social problems, such as police corruption and organized crime. Neo-liberal regulation of prostitution in Australia has always been deployed in tandem with other modes of regulation – including new criminal law and policing strategies, planning law, health regulations, and (of course) moral regulation.     

Serving the creditors after insolvency filings: from value creation to value distribution

This paper provides original empirical evidence on the financial outcome of insolvency filings in Europe. We adopt a cross-country analysis of the determinants of recovery rates isolating three types of creditors (junior, senior, and new money claims). We investigate the structure of recoveries on a unique hand-collected sample of bankrupt firms in France, Germany, and the UK. We initially question value maximization, and study to which extent the legal provisions prevailing after insolvency filing can influence creditors’ overall recoveries. Three procedures differ significantly from our benchmark (UK liquidations). French continuation and UK receivership exert a positive influence onto total repayments, while such influence becomes negative under French liquidation. We relate this finding to the ability of the two former procedures to improve coordination among the creditors, monitoring of the debtor, and/or incentives to file early. We then analyze value distribution by examining competition between the categories of creditors. We show that the insolvency systems do not converge. Junior and senior creditors are better served under the German and the French continuation procedures than in any other bankruptcy path. At the opposite, the UK liquidation procedures fail to satisfactorily serve the junior/senior creditors. Still, nearly all the insolvency procedures support fresh financing by protecting quite well new money claims. Overall, we do not confirm any superiority of one family of insolvency system over another, but rather stress the importance of an appropriate design of the procedures, especially regarding the incentives they create before and after insolvency filing.