The accuracy of sex identification in European skeletal remains using the phenice characters

Three documented European skeletal series were examined to assess the accuracy and reliability of the pubic variables described by Phenice for correctly identifying the sex of adult human skeletal remains. The accuracy and objectivity of these variables, as reported by Phenice, Kelley, Sutherland and Suchey, and Lovell, could not be confirmed on this European material. In general, the subpubic concavity feature, when used alone, proved to be the most reliable variable for sex identification. In this study, the level of correct sex identification that could be achieved using the Phenice variables was shown to be significantly affected by the previous experience of the observer.     

THE NEUTRALIZATION OF CRIMINAL OFFENSE

A previously untested proposition from Sykes and Matza's neutralization theory is that certain types of offenders will favor certain types of neutralizing excuses. Murderers, for example. may tend toward denial of responsibility or denial of the victim. A competing hypothesis, derived from Hindelang's challenges to neutralization and drift theories, is that offenders would favor excuses keyed to offenses similar to their own. Robbers, for example, may favor excuses for robbery over excuses for other offenses. regardless of the content of the excuses themselves. The data presented in this article, based on o survey of inmates in four Florida prisons, fail to support either hypothesis. This may suggest that the two perspectives from which the hypotheses are derived are overly simplistic-that the nature of crime and delinquency is more subtle and complex than indicated by either the subcultural or antisubcultural theoretical traditions.     

THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT*

I was invited to give an address on the topic “The Changing Role of the Public Service”. With the agreement of the organizers I have changed my title to “The Role of the Public Service in a Changing Environment”. That is a small change—but it is a significant one. Our role has not really changed. It is easy in the public service, as elsewhere, to be preoccupied with contemporary challenges, and to imagine that these are new and different. But that says more about the way memory discounts the past than anything else—the latest problem or challenge is always the worst. When I joined the Treasury in 1952 the economy had just come through the Korean War boom and was in the process of adjusting to Fadden's so-called “horror” budget. The world financial system was in disarray owing to the “shortage” of US dollars. The Arbitration Court in the two or three previous years had made some awards of great concern as to their inflationary consequences. I found the Treasury was a hive of frantic activity. Looking back from the perspective of today I merely note, as the French put it, that the more things change the more things stay the same.