Quantification of Maxillary Dental Arcade Curvature and the Estimation of Biological Ancestry in Forensic Anthropology

Previous studies suggest that palate shape is a useful indicator of biological ancestry in human remains. This study evaluates interobserver error in ancestry estimation using palate shape and explores palate shape variation in Gullah (descendants of West Africans) and Seminole (Indigenous American) population samples using geometric morphometric analysis. Ten participants were asked to ascribe biological ancestry and shape to 28 dental casts based on a classification scheme employed in previous studies. The mean correct classification was 42.0%, indicating that the likelihood of assigning the correct ancestry is very poor and not significantly different from random assignment (p = 0.12). The accuracy analysis based on categorical classification of the casts was complemented by geometric morphometric analysis of nine 3D landmarks reflecting palate shape of 158 casts. Principal component analysis results show no difference between populations regarding palate shape, and cross‐validated discriminant function analysis correctly classified only 62.0% of the specimens. Combined, these results show that previous methods to estimate ancestry are inaccurate and that this inaccuracy is probably due to a lack of palate shape differences between groups, rather than limitation of the analytical method per se. Therefore, we recommend caution should be used when choosing to apply the analysis of palate shape in forensically relevant contexts.     

The Role of Emotion and Cognition in Juror Perceptions of Victim Impact Statements

Recent legislation has contributed to an increasing number of victims participating in the trial process by way of providing victim impact statements (VISs). The present study evaluated jurors’ perceptions of VISs in a jury-eligible sample. Participants were 402 jury-eligible community members in the southwestern United States. Using a vignette-based method, VIS presence and content (i.e., Victim Harm versus Victim Emotion information) were examined for their influence on sentencing decisions and blame attribution. Individual differences of need for affect (NFA) and need for cognition (NFC) were featured as moderators of these relations. Notable results included significantly lengthier sentencing recommendations and decreased levels of victim blame in the presence of a VIS, regardless of content. In addition, juror NFC was significantly positively associated with perpetrator blame, while NFA moderated the relation between VIS content and sentencing length. The presence of a VIS impacted blame and sentencing, although jury panel member individual differences moderated such effects. Implications for victim rights policy, trial consultation, and social–emotional theory are discussed.     

Does Public Opinion Respond to Shifts in Party Valence? A Cross-National Analysis of Western Europe, 1976–2002

Recent empirical research has demonstrated that, in addition to policy positions, parties’ electoral support is also affected by their character-based valence attributes such as competence, integrity, and unity. Thus far, however, research into the effects of parties’ character-based valence attributes has not examined how such party attributes affect public opinion. The article examines whether changes in parties’ character-based valence attributes motivate shifts in public opinion – specifically, whether public opinion shifts leftwards when right-wing parties’ character-based valence attributes suffer relative to leftist parties, and vice versa. It presents the results of pooled time-series analyses of the relationship between parties’ valence attributes and shifts in public opinion for nine European polities. The findings suggest that changes in parties’ character-based valence attributes do motivate shifts in public opinion as hypothesised, and the effects are substantively large. These findings have implications for party strategies and for our understanding of the factors which shape public opinion.     

Suicide Bombers in Iraq, 2003–2010: Disaggregating Targets Can Reveal Insurgent Motives and Priorities

Extending data reported by Mohammed Hafez in 2007, we compiled a database of 1,779 suicide bombers who attempted or completed attacks in Iraq from 2003 through 2010. From 2003 through 2006, monthly totals of suicide bombers show a pattern different from the pattern of non-suicide insurgent attacks, but from 2007 through 2010 the two patterns were similar. This biphasic pattern indicates that suicide attacks sometimes warrant separate analysis but sometimes are just one tactic in a larger envelope of insurgent violence. We also show that only 13 percent of suicide bombers targeted coalition forces and international civilians, primarily during the early years of the conflict, whereas 83 percent of suicide bombers targeted Iraqis (civilians, members of the Anbar Awakening Movement, Iraqi security forces, and government entities) in attacks that extended throughout the duration of the insurgency. These results challenge the idea that suicide attacks are primarily a nationalist response to foreign occupation, and caution that “smart bombs” may be more often sent against soft targets than hard targets. More generally, our results indicate that suicide attacks must be disaggregated by target in order to understand these attacks as the expression of different insurgent priorities at different times.     

Local government revenue policies in new Mexico

This examination of the revenue patterns of local governments in New Mexico finds that communities with the greatest social needs for public services-- small population rural areas, less affluent communities, and rapidly growing districts-- are precisely those that have the weakest revenue bases. Moreover, none of these types of disadvantaged jurisdictions receives above-average redistributive assistance from the federal government.Variations in revenue effort, especially among municipalities, exacerbate this problem because certain communities gain huge revenue windfalls which bear little relationship to either their social needs or taxing efforts but stem, rather, from fortuitous geographic positions. This advantage works its way through the entire revenue system, directly because state transfers are linked to place of collection and indirectly because of the overwhelming effect of revenue effort on revenue sharing allocations in the state. The local revenue system in New Mexico, therefore, works against the communities that have the greatest need for government services. Most of these inequities, however, do not appear to be the explicit goal of economic or political policy. Instead, they are the unintended consequences of a supposedly “neutral” allocation formula. This state of affairs certainly argues for policymakers paying more attention to the actual results of their policies.     

Terrorism and democracy: What recent events disclose

This paper is the second in a series of analyses which explore relationships between terrorism and democracy. In this instance, the authors use the Rand‐St Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism for 1994, as well as the US State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism collection of events for 1995. The authors use these data sets to determine if there is a linkage between the occurrence of terrorist attacks and the type of incumbent political regime in the countries where they are perpetrated. The two classifications of political regimes were drawn from Robert Wesson's 1987 study Democracy: a Worldwide Survey and the Freedom House Publication Freedom in the World for 1984–85 and 1994–95, in order to evaluate the impact of regime change on the incidence of terrorist events. Our principal finding, consistent with earlier work, is that terrorist events are substantially more likely to occur in free and democratic settings than in any of the alternatives. We do discover, though, that change in and of itself makes a difference. Countries which underwent regime change in the period under consideration were more likely to experience terrorism than countries which did not.     

Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing for offence-related trauma in a mentally disordered sexual offender

Abstract

Research demonstrates a high incidence of offence-related trauma in mentally disordered offenders convicted of violent and sexual offences. The adaptive information processing (AIP) model offers a theoretical framework for understanding the hypothesised relationship between offence-related trauma and reoffending. Evidence suggests that for a sub-population of offenders presenting with offence-related trauma: (1) therapy may retraumatise them, and (2) unresolved trauma severely blocks the positive benefits of talking therapies. Thus, it is postulated that traumatised violent and sexual offenders may be released into the community when they are still at risk of reoffending. A single case study is presented, which describes the application of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) for a sexual offender presenting with offence-related trauma, whose offences occurred in the context of serious mental disorder. The identification of offence-related trauma and subsequent resolution of trauma symptomatology are discussed in regard to effective offender rehabilitation. Furthermore, the idiosyncratic nature of offence-related trauma and the application of the standard EMDR protocol for a single traumatic event are considered.