A report of an international collaborative experiment to demonstrate the uniformity obtainable using DNA profiling techniques.

This paper describes a collaborative exercise intended to demonstrate whether uniformity of DNA profile results could be achieved between different European laboratories. It was shown that this goal can be obtained provided that a common protocol is followed (specifically the use of a common electrophoretic buffer as being the most important parameter). Generally, lower molecular weight loci (with lower molecular weight fragments) such as YNH24 perform better than higher molecular weight loci such as MS43a. The results of the exercise are discussed in relation to the objectives of the European DNA profiling group (EDNAP).     

Violence,fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview

This introduction presents the core concepts that shape this special issue on the impact of violence and the processes of development in Central and South America. The understanding of development is considered in terms broader than the economic context alone, in order to assess wider social and political aspects. With a similarly expansive scope, forms of violence are addressed that range from direct physical harm and bodily attack to the often more subtle aggression of racialised abuse or the pressures on community-centred production from dominant market forces. In these contexts, violence, economic initiatives, and political allegiances form unintended and often dangerous networks of consequence for development matters. All the articles in this volume exemplify further the spatial environments of violence and diverse ‘landscapes of fear’ that shape our existence and help to define our actions, territories, and understanding of what happens around us.     

Effectiveness of Programs to Prevent School Bullying

Sixteen major evaluations of programs to prevent school bullying, conducted in 11 different countries, are reviewed in detail. Of these 16 evaluations, 8 produced desirable results, 2 produced mixed results, 4 produced small or negligible effects, and 2 produced undesirable results. These varying findings may reflect variations in programs, in implementation, in assessment methods, or in evaluation designs. It is concluded that high-quality evaluations are needed in the future, with randomized designs, theoretically grounded interventions, multiple measures of bullying, and attempts to disentangle the effectiveness of different program components.     

Impact of tropical conditions on thin layer chromatography in analytical toxicology: high temperatures and moderate humidities.

The impact of high temperatures (24 to 39 degrees C) and low to moderately high humidities (20 to 70%) on the applicability of TLC systems for drug identification was studied during a 6 month climatologic cycle in Burkina Faso (West Africa). In general, the Rf values as observed on the plates were found to be substantially affected as compared with values obtained at temperate climates. Some TLC systems were more affected than others and the largest deviations of up to 30 Rf units were at low humidities. Tropical conditions also had a negative effect on the reproducibility of Rf values. However, when an Rf-correction procedure was applied, using reference mixtures of known drugs on each plate, accuracy as well as reproducibility of the resulting Rfc values were drastically improved and data thus corrected were found to be compatible with existing TLC data bases developed under moderate climatological conditions. The impact of high to extremely high humidities (70 to 100%) remains to be investigated.     

Veto Players and Civil War Duration

Civil wars show a remarkable variation in how long they last. Some end within days; others continue for decades. What explains the extreme intractability of some wars while others are resolved quickly? This article argues that conflicts with multiple actors who must approve a settlement (veto players) are longer because there are fewer acceptable agreements, information asymmetries are more acute, and shifting alliances and incentives to hold out make negotiation more difficult. This veto player approach to explaining variation in civil war duration is tested using a new dataset containing monthly data on all parties to each civil war begun since World War II. The statistical analysis shows a strong correlation between the number of veto players and the duration of civil war.     

Key longitudinal-experimental studies in criminology

Following the tradition of Joan McCord's work, this paper reviews longitudinal-experimental studies in criminology with community samples of at least 100 persons, follow-up periods of at least 5 years, personal interviews, and measures of offending. The main advantages of such studies are in investigating both the natural history of development (including the effects of risk/protective factors and life events) and the impact of interventions on offending. This paper also reviews advantages and problems of prospective longitudinal surveys, randomized experiments, and longitudinal-experimental studies in criminology. Four key longitudinal-experimental studies were conducted by Joan McCord, Richard Tremblay, Lawrence Schweinhart and David Olds. Other studies have been conducted, or are currently under way, but no criminological study has yet been published with several years of personal data on participants both before and after an intervention.Joan McCord Award Lecture given at the American Society of Criminology, Toronto, Canada.     

Traditions of governance: interpreting the changing role of the public sector

The role of the state is changing under the impact of, for example, globalization. The changes have been variously understood as the new public management (NPM), the hollowing–out of the state and the new governance. This special issue of Public Administration explores the changing role of the state in advanced industrial democracies. It focuses on the puzzle of why states respond differently to common trends.
This introductory article has three aims. First, we provide a brief review of the existing literature on public sector reform to show that our approach is distinctive. We argue that the existing literature does not explore the ways in which governmental traditions shape reform. Second, we outline an interpretive approach to the analysis of public sector reform built on the notions of beliefs, traditions, dilemmas and narratives. We provide brief illustrations of these ideas drawn from the individual country articles. Finally, we outline the ground covered by all the chapters but we do not summarize and compare their experiences of reform. That task is reserved for the concluding article.     

The UN Human Rights Norms for Corporations: The Private Implications of Public International Law

Though many years in the making, the UN Human Rights Norms forCorporations only registered on the radars of most states, corporationsand civil society organisations in August 2003 when they beganto move up the ladder of the United Nation's policy-making processes.Since then they have been subject to intense, and sometimesintemperate, debate, scrutiny and controversy. A particularlegal feature of the deliberations has been the focus on theclosely related questions of the legal standing of the Normsin their present format (namely, an imperfect draft, and therefore,of no direct legal force), and what they might become (possibly—thoughnot likely soon—a treaty that speaks to corporations butbinds states). A potent mix of distrust and suspicion, vestedinterests, politics and economics has given rise to a greatdeal of grand-standing and cant concerning these questions andhow they might be answered. In this article, the authors explorethe history of the Norms and the form and content of the debatethat surrounds them, in their attempt to disentangle the legalfrom the rest. That said, the article also focuses on the realpoliticking of the circumstances in which the Norms now findthemselves and it seeks to offer some guidance as to where theNorms—or at least their substance, if not their form—mightgo from here.     

Logical evaluation of evidence when a person is suspected of committing two separate offences.

We consider the problem of drawing inferences within a legal framework when a person is a suspect for two separate offences. Although we are primarily concerned with scientific evidence the issue inevitably arises as to how that evidence interacts with other, non-scientific evidence. We show that, in this particular context, the evidence can be conveniently classified into three categories that concern, respectively: the first crime only; the second crime only; and evidence that relates to similarities between the two crimes. Two case examples are considered and we consider DNA, fibres and eyewitness evidence. These are viewed from the perspective of a prosecutor who has to decide whether or not to charge a suspect with one or both crimes. Graphical sensivity analyses are presented which have features that are not intuitively obvious.