The European Forum for Victim–Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice

The European Forum for Victim–Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice is a non-governmental organisation set up because European victim–offender mediation projects had seldom established contacts beyond national borders. Informal contacts revealed that practitioners, academics and policy makers were looking for a more regular exchange and mutual support in developing victim–offender mediation and other restorative justice practices. This article gives an overview of the background to restorative justice and victim–offender mediation, and pays attention to the development of the Forum, its current aims, objectives and activities, and other (policy) developments at a supranational level.     

Consociational Cradle of Federalism

Except for the time of its painful—consociational—birth,federalism in its theory and practice does not entail a rejectionof a majoritarian mode of decisionmaking. Differently at differenttimes on different issues decisional modes will most probablyvary along a continuum from consociationalism to majority rule.When the governing elites adopt consociational practices, withregard to some issues, such practices result from factors otherthan the federal nature of the system. Most of these factorswould lead to consociationalism in a unitary system as well.In contrast, consociationalism is bound to be the dominant decisionalmode in loose confederations, including those whose componentunits do not practice consociational or majoritarian democracyeither within their own confines or at the confederal summit.     

Quantifying Uncertainty in Estimations of the Total Weight of Drugs in Groups of Complex Matrices: Using the Welch–Satterthwaite Equation

In this paper, a method is described to quantify estimations of the total amount of drugs in groups of seized items, including quantification of the precision. Previous work on this topic was based on the assumptions of normally distributed measurements and grouping of items with a common relative standard deviation. In practice, these assumptions are often violated, for example, for data with point masses at 0, or if certain items in a group have a very high standard deviation. The method described in this paper is based on work by Welch and Satterthwaite and does not assume constant relative standard deviations. Case examples are described for which the method is applied, and simulation studies are carried out for which both methods are applied. In the cases, both methods perform reasonably well. If the assumption of common relative standard deviations clearly does not apply, it is advised to use the method described.     

Comparison of the Performance of Two Methods for Height Estimation

Abstract: In the case study, two methods of performing body height measurements in images are compared based on projective geometry and 3D modeling of the crime scene. Accuracy and stability of height estimations are tested using reconstruction images of test persons of known height. Given unchanged camera settings, predictions of both methods are accurate. However, as the camera had been moved in the case, new vanishing points and camera matches had to be created for the reconstruction images. 3D modeling still yielded accurate and stable estimations. Projective geometry produced incorrect predictions for test persons and unstable intervals for questioned persons. The latter is probably caused by the straight lines in the field of view being hard to discern. With the quality of material presented, which is representative for our case practice, using vanishing points may thus yield unstable results. The results underline the importance of performing validation experiments in casework.     

Measurement Uncertainty When Estimating the Velocity of an Allegedly Speeding Vehicle from Images

Abstract: Sometimes the question arises whether it is possible to estimate the velocity of a speeding car recorded by closed circuit television cameras. By estimating the travelled distance of the car between two images and the time elapsed, estimation of the velocity is rather straightforward. However, to quantify the corresponding measurement uncertainty, the data analysis becomes more involved. The article describes two approaches as to how to derive the measurement uncertainty. In the first method, distance and timing are estimated separately, and the two uncertainties are combined to derive the measurement uncertainty for the velocity. For this, a frequentist and a Bayesian approach are described. In the second method, the measurement uncertainty for the speed is derived directly using validation recordings of a car driving by at known speed. The choice which method to use depends mainly on the length of the path that the car has travelled.     

Dyadic Federations and Confederations

This article focuses on the thirteen-odd bicommunal politiesin which two, and only two, distinct communities dominate thepolitical arena. The concept of a bicommunal polity is analyticalrather than statistical. Permanent asymmetry characterizingthe two components makes a simple majoritarian formula for decisionmakingprocesses unacceptable. What other decisional frameworks havea greater chance for success: federalism, federalism with aheavy dose of confederal ingredients, regional confederation,consociationalism or secession? A confederal modification offederalism has so far appeared as more acceptable to two asymmetricand antagonistic polities than a concept of a federal unionwith its commitment to an overarching cultural-political nationalunion. The high failure rate of bicommunal configurations pointsalso to the necessity to relate the inner working of bicommunalpolities to international balancing processes and/or supportor abstinence of "blood-related" nation-states.     

2D/3D image (facial) comparison using camera matching

A problem in forensic facial comparison of images of perpetrators and suspects is that distances between fixed anatomical points in the face, which form a good starting point for objective, anthropometric comparison, vary strongly according to the position and orientation of the camera. In case of a cooperating suspect, a 3D image may be taken using e.g. a laser scanning device. By projecting the 3D image onto a 2D image with the suspect's head in the same pose as that of the perpetrator, using the same focal length and pixel aspect ratio, numerical comparison of (ratios of) distances between fixed points becomes feasible. An experiment was performed in which, starting from two 3D scans and one 2D image of two colleagues, male and female, and using seven fixed anatomical locations in the face, comparisons were made for the matching and non-matching case. Using this method, the non-matching pair cannot be distinguished from the matching pair of faces. Facial expression and resolution of images were all more or less optimal, and the results of the study are not encouraging for the use of anthropometric arguments in the identification process. More research needs to be done though on larger sets of facial comparisons.     

Quantifying Uncertainty in Estimations of the Total Weight of Drugs in Groups of Complex Matrices

In case practice at forensic drug departments, multiple items from one seizure are sometimes sent in with the question: what is the total amount of drugs in the seizure? This may be complicated especially if impregnated material is involved such as clothes or rubber. Measurement uncertainty is typically stable on drug percentages, not weights, and subsampling may take place. It is recognized more and more that determination and reporting of uncertainty on estimators are an essential part of obtaining scientifically sound results in the forensic field. Methodology is described to quantify uncertainty on estimations of the total drug weight in groups of complex matrices, given simple statistical models, along a subdivision of five types of cases. Given each of these types, case examples are given where uncertainty is quantified in estimations of drug weights, by means of confidence intervals. The described models are statistically sound and relatively easy to implement.     

Comparison of Frequentist Methods for Estimating the Total Weight of Consignments of Drugs

Abstract: A topic in forensic statistics is the estimation of the total weight of consignments of drugs based on subsamples of which a certain fraction may not contain drugs at all. The frequentist approach to this concentrates on obtaining confidence intervals for the total weight, based on estimation of the fraction of drugs and the mean and variance of the weights of drug units. The current study shows that the resulting confidence intervals are basically unreliable, since they are based on an underestimation of the variation of the underlying statistical process. Two alternatives are given that yield asymptotically correct results. These are not reliable for small subsamples either, though, because of the inherent multimodal behaviour of the sample mean. In cases where a relatively large fraction of the consignment contains no drugs, the confidence intervals reported in the literature should not be used in practice.