Accuracy of eyewitness identification is significantly associated with performance on a standardized test of face recognition

OBJECTIVES: This study assessed the relationship between Eyewitness Accuracy regarding a person met under conditions of high stress and performance on a standardized, neutral test of memory for human faces. METHOD: Fifty-three U.S. Army personnel were exposed to interrogation stress. Forty-eight hours later, participants were administered the Weschler Face Test and then asked to identify the one interrogator who they had encountered 48 h earlier. RESULTS: A significant positive relationship was observed between performance on the Weschler Face Test and performance on the Eyewitness task. Inaccurate eyewitnesses exhibited more False Negative errors when performing the Weschler Face Test. DISCUSSION: Trait ability to remember human faces may be related to how accurately people recall faces that are associated with highly emotional circumstances. Detection probability methods, such as ROC curve analyses, may be of assistance to forensic examiners, the police, and the courts, when assessing the probability that eyewitness evidence is accurate.     

Validation of the barcoding gene COI for use in forensic genetic species identification

The application of forensics to wildlife crime investigation routinely involves genetic species identification based on DNA sequence similarity. This work can be hindered by a lack of authenticated reference DNA sequence data resulting in weak matches between evidence and reference samples. The introduction of DNA barcoding has highlighted the expanding use of the mtDNA gene, cytochrome c oxidase I (COI), as a genetic marker for species identification. Here, we assess the COI gene for use in forensic analysis following published human validation guidelines. Validation experiments investigated reproducibility, heteroplasmy, mixed DNA, DNA template concentration, chemical treatments, substrate variation, environmental conditions and thermocycling parameters. Sequence similarity searches using both GenBank BLASTn and BOLD search engines indicated that the COI gene consistently identifies species where authenticated reference sequence data exists. Where misidentification occurred the cause was attributable to either erroneous reference sequences from published data, or lack of primer specificity. Although amplification failure was observed under certain sample treatments, there was no evidence of environmentally induced sequence mutation in those sequences that were generated. A simulated case study compared the performance of COI and cytochrome b mtDNA genes. Findings are discussed in relation to the utility of the COI gene in forensic species identification.     

Incapacitation: Revisiting an Old Question with a New Method and New Data

We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to obtain estimates of the number of crimes avoided through incapacitation of individual offenders. Incarcerated individuals are matched to comparable non-incarcerated counterparts using propensity score matching. Propensity scores for incarceration are calculated using a wide variety of time-stable and time-varying confounding variables. We separately analyze juvenile (age 16 or 17) and adult (age 18 or 19) incapacitation effects. Our best estimate is that between 6.2 and 14.1 offenses are prevented per year of juvenile incarceration, and 4.9 to 8.4 offenses are prevented per year of adult incarceration.

Tamsin Phillipa Paige,Petulant and Contrary: Approaches by the Permanent Five Members of the UN Security Council to the Concept of ‘threat to the peace’ under Article 39 of the UN Charter

Liverpool Law Review -     

Intelligence reform commissions and the producer–consumer relationship

Since 1949 intelligence reform efforts have resulted in extensive studies on every aspect of the intelligence community. One common aspect of commission comment has been how policy-makers interact with the intelligence products, commonly known as the producer–consumer relationship. Decades of successive commissions identify the same or similar problems with the relationship and recommend organizational changes aimed at improving the analyst – policy maker interaction. Eventually, the same issues arise because most structural reforms are incapable of addressing critical aspects of this relationship. Future efforts should first consider previous commission results as well as understand what reforms can and cannot impact this relationship.     

Prospects for Democratic Transition in China

The core tenet of modernization theory is that as nation-states develop both economically and socially, they will inevitably transition to democracy. Yet, despite 30-years of robust economic development and growth, including increases in civil society, democracy remains elusive in China. In this article, we conduct a critical and empirical analysis to understand the challenges and possibilities of democratization in China. Should China transition to democracy, it will most likely occur through a top-down process that transforms the state and its institutions of government or through a cooperative pact by joint forces of top-down and bottom-up processes. Under either a converted or cooperative transition, the modeling in this study strongly suggests that China is likely to be successful should it undertake the process of democratization.