Effects of advanced age and dementia on restoration of competence to stand trial

Elderly defendants (age 65+) and defendants with dementia adjudicated incompetent to stand trial and hospitalized for restoration to competence (RTC) often present unique challenges to clinicians charged with their restoration. In this study, we attempted to better identify predictors of successful RTC by building upon previous research correlating increased age with decreased likelihood of RTC. We identified elderly non-demented defendants (n = 31) and defendants diagnosed with dementia (n = 47) from a state database of 1380 individuals hospitalized for competence restoration from 1988–2004. Using regression analysis and correcting for demographic variables and common admission psychiatric diagnoses, we studied the relationship of age at hospital admission and dementia diagnosis on the likelihood of successful RTC. Both advanced age and dementia diagnosis were associated with decreased RTC. After correcting for dementia diagnosis, increased age retained its negative correlation with restoration success. Both elderly non-demented defendants and defendants diagnosed with dementia were significantly less likely to be restored to competence than all other RTC admissions (n = 1302). However, a substantial percentage of both demented and elderly non-demented defendants were successfully restored to competence, potentially justifying restoration attempts for both of these groups of defendants.     

Die systematische Verankerung des Artenschutzrechts im Ordnungsrecht

Zusammenfassung  Die europarechtlichen Normen des sog. individuenbezogenen Artenschutzes (insbesondere Art. 5 lit. a Vogelschutz- und Art. 12 Abs. 1 lit. a FFH-Richtlinie) sowie die innerstaatlichen Umsetzungsnormen in § 42 Abs. 1 BNatSchG sind entgegen einer weit verbreiteten Tendenz als Verbote bestimmter gezielt auf individuelle Exemplare der geschützten Arten gerichtete Zugriffshandlungen ernst zu nehmen. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, wie auf dieser Basis der ausufernden Anwendung der genannten Normen vorgebaut werden kann. Die abgestufte Handlungsverantwortlichkeit von Verkehrsteilnehmern, Beh?rden zur ordnungsbeh?rdlichen Regelung des Verkehrsgeschehens sowie zur Zulassung von Verkehrsanlagen und -wegen wird verdeutlicht, zugleich ein praktikabler Weg zum ma?vollen und differenzierten Umgang mit dem besonderen Artenschutzrecht aufgezeigt.     

Knowledge diffusion from university and public research. A comparison between US,Japan and Europe using patent citations

This paper estimates the process of diffusion and decay of knowledge from university, public laboratories and corporate patents in six countries and tests the differences across countries and across technological fields using data from the European Patent Office. It finds that university and public research patents are more cited relatively to companies’ patents. However these results are mainly driven by the Chemical, Drugs & Medical, and Mechanical fields and US universities. In Europe and Japan, where the great majority of patents from public research come from national agencies, there is no evidence of a superior fertility of university and public laboratory patents vis à vis corporate patents. The distribution of the citation lags shows that knowledge embedded in university and public research patents tends to diffuse more rapidly relative to corporate ones in particular in the US, Germany, France and Japan.

Detection of intimate partner violence in a general medicine practice

In this study, an assessment phase is undertaken to determine intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence. An anonymous survey is followed by a chart review documenting identification of IPV. Two methods are attempted to increase assessment/documentation of IPV: a physician educational intervention and a nursing routine inquiry intervention in one quadrant of the practice. The IPV physician educational intervention includes didactic sessions, an IPV counselor, and resource information. The routine inquiry intervention involves nurses screening female patients for IPV at check-in. IPV is found to be prevalent in a general medicine clinic. An enhanced educational intervention does not increase IPV documentation. A routine inquiry intervention significantly increases documentation of lifetime IPV but does not impact current IPV identification.     

C. Wright Mills and higher immorality: implications for corporate crime,ethics, and peacemaking criminology

During the past decade, there was a resurgent tendency in criminology to explain emerging patterns of crime within the United States by referring solely to dysfunctional families or dysfunctional individuals. Other criminologists questioned these latter approaches as detaching individuals and crime from the social institutions that envelope them. In light of this recent attempt to link crime to social institutions, it seems fruitful to revisit the work of one of the most astute analysts of institutional structure: C. Wright Mills. Hence, this article begins with an overview of Mills’ sociological perspective and then shows how it provides useful insights into institutional sources of illegal behavior. The article also illustrates ways the Millsian perspective can be directly applied to an analysis of corporate crime in relation to other forms of crime emanating from the structure of contemporary U.S. society. After that, the article explores how the Millsian perspective can broaden understanding of the growing decline of ethics within America’s leading industries, governmental agencies, and the justice system. The article concludes by addressing policy implications, particularly in regard to the prospects of linking the Millsian perspective with basic tenets of peacemaking criminology.

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Evaluating U.S. judicial district prosecutor performance using DEA: are disadvantaged counties more inefficient?

In this paper, we evaluate the efficiency of prosecutor office efficiency in the United States. Using multiple inputs and multiple outputs to characterize prosecutor office production, technical and scale efficiency are calculated for U.S. counties. Given the complex nature of service provision and potential heterogeneity based on judicial district size, we restrict our sample to those counties with populations between 100 and 500 thousand. Given the efficiency results, we also test whether efficiency is statistically related to median income and the percentage of minority population. The results suggest that prosecutor offices in more socio-economically disadvantages counties are more inefficient.      

Two generations of Sutherland’s white-collar war crime data and beyond

Edwin Sutherland published his famous White Collar Crime in 1949 where he excoriated leaders of American firms for their war crimes. The names of all corporations were deleted, however, from the book by the threat of legal action. The unabridged version was published in 1983 when the Sutherland files at Indiana University were unsealed. These files can now be compared with both the 1949 and 1983 book, as well as with other evidence of corporate war crimes during World War II.     

Nanotechnology,Nanomaterials, and the Potential for Regulatory Action by USEPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has recently taken steps toward directly regulating the potential environmental, health, and safety risks associated with the manufacture and use of nanomaterials, and indications are that it is considering additional regulatory action. More particularly, the agency appears ready to start relying more on the exercise of its existing statutory authorities—including the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act—than on voluntary industry efforts to address these potential risks. As a result, companies that work with nanomaterials should pay close attention to USEPA's activities in this arena.     

Forensic application of Y chromosome SNPs in inconclusive cases

Biallelic markers, Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), are nowadays a powerful tool in the analysis of degraded samples. Namely, Y chromosome SNPs allow to determine the gender of the analyzed sample and to establish its haplogroup, making possible to attribute the ethnicity of male individuals. The aim of this study is to obtain Y-SNPs in forensic samples without STRs results, checking methodologies previously used.