Assessing Psychopathic Traits and Criminal Behavior in a Young Adult Female Community Sample Using the Self‐Report Psychopathy Scale

This study assessed psychopathic traits in a nonforensic female population (N = 343). Respondents completed the Self‐Report Psychopathy Scale‐4: Short Form (SRP‐SF) and also reported on their Criminal Behavior. The results revealed relatively higher scale elevations for the Interpersonal and Lifestyle SRP‐SF facets, compared to the Affective and Antisocial facets. Also, those with a history of Criminal Behavior had significantly higher SRP‐SF facet scores on all four psychopathy domains, compared to those without such history. Consistent with a number of previous studies, the structural equation modeling results revealed good fit for the four‐factor SRP‐SF model. In addition, a super‐ordinate SRP‐SF factor, which accounted for the majority variance of all four SRP‐SF first‐order factors, also accounted for 50% of the variance in a latent Criminal Behavior factor. Taken together, findings support use of the SRP‐SF to assess psychopathic features in a moderately large sample of Belgium women.     

Survival time, capacity of action and radiological diagnosis after gunshot wounds of the cranium (author's transl)]

Three cases of suicidal temporal gunshots. Different circumstances in the clinical course and in the ability of action.--In one case there was a bullet tract in the lower temporal region with considerable destruction of the base of the skull, followed by immediate inability of action and early death. Another case with a transtemporal gunshot without radiological signs of a laceration of the base of skull showed severe disturbance of cerebral functions for some days and remaining blindness. In the third case there was a pistol shot in the temporal region with retained missile, full ability of acting and undisturbed consciousness. Causative for the differences in the effect of the gunshots are differences of weapons and amunition and the anatomical position of the wound track in the temporal region. Discussion about the role of concussion of the brain by different rate of transgression of energy from the missile to the skull. Reference to the importance of X-ray analysis and to a radiographic documentation of the findings in such cases.     

Metric Sex Determination of the Human Coxal Bone on a Virtual Sample using Decision Trees

Decision trees provide an alternative to multivariate discriminant analysis, which is still the most commonly used in anthropometric studies. Our study analyzed the metric characterization of a recent virtual sample of 113 coxal bones using decision trees for sex determination. From 17 osteometric type I landmarks, a dataset was built with five classic distances traditionally reported in the literature and six new distances selected using the two-step ratio method. A ten-fold cross-validation was performed, and a decision tree was established on two subsamples (training and test sets). The decision tree established on the training set included three nodes and its application to the test set correctly classified 92% of individuals. This percentage was similar to the data of the literature. The usefulness of decision trees has been demonstrated in numerous fields. They have been already used in sex determination, body mass prediction, and ancestry estimation. This study shows another use of decision trees enabling simple and accurate sex determination.     

Offending Frequency and Responses to Illegal Monetary Incentives

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - We examine how responsive offenders are to illegal monetary incentives. We draw from rational choice theory, prospect theory, and models of labor supply to...