Some further evidence on imprisonment vs. the death penalty as a deterrent to murder

Law and Human Behavior - The research reported here extends an earlier investigation (Bailey, 1977) on the deterrent effect of imprisonment versus the death penalty for murder. As a result of some...     

Comparable Preference Estimates across Time and Institutions for the Court, Congress, and Presidency

Empirically oriented scholars often struggle with how to measure preferences across time and institutional contexts. This article characterizes these difficulties and provides a measurement approach that incorporates information that bridges time and institutions in a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to ideal point measurement. The resulting preference estimates for presidents, senators, representatives, and Supreme Court justices are comparable across time and institutions. These estimates are useful in a variety of important research projects, including research on statutory interpretation, executive influence on the Supreme Court, and Senate influence on court appointments.     

SUPERVISED ACCESS

This article addresses the question of whether long-term supervised access is an appropriate solution when unsupervised access is unlikely to become possible in the future. The article assesses judicial decisions and theoretical commentary on this issue in light of the opinions and practices of service providers and in light of the best interest of the child standard. The opinions and practices of service providers were gleaned from published materials and from interviews with service providers at supervised access facilities in Vermont and New Hampshire and in Ontario, Canada. The supervised access facilities surveyed for this research were diverse in their practices and experiences but remarkably similar in their approach to long-term supervised access. Outside the scope of the research for this article was the question of whether the opinions and practices of the service providers at the facilities surveyed are representative, and this question requires further investigation .     

Writing Histories of Law and Emotion

In recent years the study of emotions in the past has received considerable attention. At the same time, many historians of law have shown reluctance to acknowledge and systematically explore emotions in legal sources and legal contexts. This issue of the Journal of Legal History addresses this imbalance and demonstrates how emotions have played important roles in legal reasoning, legal doctrine, the behaviour of legal actors, and the development of law over time. This article investigates recent developments in the study of the history of emotions and of emotions in contemporary law, before assessing the challenges of writing law and emotions histories. It argues for the importance of utilizing both legal and extra-legal source material to uncover the relationship between legal rationality and emotion; to gain insights into the emotional worlds of those participating in legal systems; and to provide a deeper understanding of the workings of the law.     

A Case Study of Glasgow's Use of the Prudential Borrowing Framework (PBF) for Schools Rationalisation

This paper analyses Glasgow's use of the Prudential Borrowing Framework (PBF) for rationalisation and renewal of its primary schools and the additional borrowing costs to be met by the resulting efficiency savings and by sale of surplus school sites. Our findings reveal that the PBF has many perceived advantages compared with the Private Finance Initiative/Public Private Partnership (PFI/PPP) route to capital procurement and modernisation. In particular, the link between policy and the use of resources is more transparent under PBF than for PFI/PPPs. However, the approach to risk management seems to have become more relaxed using the PBF even though the Council now retains all associated risks.     

The development of the comprehensive health assessment tool for young offenders within the secure estate

Health inequalities are high among offending groups. The comprehensive health assessment tool (CHAT) is a semi-structured assessment developed to provide a standardised approach to health screening for all young offenders admitted to the secure estate. The four sections of the CHAT (physical health, mental health, substance misuse and neurodisability) were evaluated within a two-phased study of male adolescents (aged 15–18?years) within a young offenders institution in the north-west of England. Within Phase 1, a consecutive sample of 127 new receptions was assessed using the physical health, mental health and substance misuse sections of the CHAT against a range of reference standard assessments. Phase 2 of the study evaluated the neurodisability section on 93 male adolescents against reference standard tools. The four sections of the CHAT demonstrated fair to good convergent validity when compared against reference standard tools in male offenders. The diagnostic accuracy rate was 76% for mental health, 63% for physical health, 83% for substance misuse and 53% for neurodisability when compared against reference standard assessment tools. The introduction of the CHAT offers the opportunity to enhance existing reception screening practices and create an integrated approach to the assessment of health needs across the secure estate.     

Use of nitrogen cryogun for separating duct tape and recovery of latent fingerprints with a powder suspension method

Duct tape is sometimes recovered as physical evidence in crimes. The purpose of this study was to determine the quality of latent prints on the adhesive and non-adhesive surfaces of duct tape samples that were separated using three methods. Three hundred donor fingerprint impressions were deposited on duct tape. Sections of duct tape were affixed to sections of cardboard and a fingerprint placed on the non-adhesive surface of the tape. A second layer of duct tape was prepared and a fingerprint placed on the adhesive side of the tape and then the tape was affixed to the piece of tape on the cardboard. After a 24-h period, the samples were separated using gradual force, liquid nitrogen applied with a cryogun and an adhesive neutralizer to separate the layers of tape. The recovered fingerprints were processed with a fingerprint powder suspension method. The recovered fingerprint images were evaluated and rated as +1, +2, or +3. The liquid nitrogen spray separation method yielded the highest number of +3 prints.