Language disorders in disruptive behavior disordered homicidal youth.

Eight homicidal youths were assessed for language disorders and psychiatric diagnoses using a battery of standardized language tests and the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents. Both language disorders and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III-R psychiatric diagnoses were present in all subjects.     

Al Capone and the Internal Revenue Service: State-sanctioned criminology of organized crime

The story of Al Capone's rise and fall as a Chicago gangster has always depended upon selective dissemination of federal agency records, particularly records of the Internal Revenue Service. Capone history, therefore, is state-sanctioned history. The IRS view of the Capone organization, and of the tax evasion conviction, cannot be easily challenged without access to the corpus of the IRS records. Unfortunately, these records remain sealed from public access, despite the fact that selective releases were made prior to 1977 to journalists, popular authors, film producers and historians. Continued secrecy over the Capone records perpetuates a state-sanctioned criminology of organized crime. Calder v. Internal Revenue Service ¹ attempted without success to unlock the corpus of IRS-Capone records to investigate the state-sanctioned view.     

Routine crime in exceptional times: The impact of the 2002 Winter Olympics on citizen demand for police services

Despite their rich theoretical and practical importance, criminologists have paid scant attention to the patterns of crime and the responses to crime during exceptional events. Throughout the world large-scale political, social, economic, cultural, and sporting events have become commonplace. Natural disasters such as blackouts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis present similar opportunities. Such events often tax the capacities of jurisdictions to provide safety and security in response to the exceptional event, as well as to meet the “routine” public safety needs. This article examines “routine” crime as measured by calls for police service, official crime reports, and police arrests in Salt Lake City before, during, and after the 2002 Olympic Games. The analyses suggest that while a rather benign demographic among attendees and the presence of large numbers of social control agents might have been expected to decrease calls for police service for minor crime, it actually increased in Salt Lake during this period. The implications of these findings are considered for theories of routine activities, as well as systems capacity.     

Randomized experiments in criminology: What have we learned in the last two decades?

This paper aims to review randomized experiments in criminology with offending outcomes and reasonably large numbers that were published between 1982 and 2004. A total of 83 experiments are summarized, compared with only 35 published between 1957 and 1981: 12 on policing, 13 on prevention, 14 on corrections, 22 on courts, and 22 on community interventions. Randomized experiments are still relatively uncommon, but there have been more large-scale multi-site experiments and replication programs. There have also been several experiments in which 100 or more places were randomly assigned. Relatively few experiments (only 10 out of 83) were conducted outside the United States. Meta-analyses suggest that prevention methods, correctional therapy, batterer programs, drug courts, juvenile restitution and deterrent policing were effective in reducing offending, while Scared Straight and boot camp programs caused a significant increase in offending.     

From International Sanitary Conventions to Global Health Security: The New International Health Regulations

In May 2005, the World Health Organization adopted the new InternationalHealth Regulations (IHR), which constitute one of the most radicaland far-reaching changes to international law on public healthsince the beginning of international health co-operation inthe mid-nineteenth century. This article comprehensively analysesthe new IHR by examining the history of international law oninfectious disease control, the IHR revision process, the substantivechanges contained in the new IHR and concerns regarding thefuture of the new IHR. The article demonstrates why the newIHR constitute a seminal event in the relationship between internationallaw and public health and send messages about how human societiesshould govern their vulnerabilities to serious, acute diseaseevents in the twenty-first century.     

Hair analysis: a worthless tool for therapeutic compliance monitoring

Hair analysis has been presented by some authors as a possible tool of investigation for estimating patients' compliance to long-term therapies. This paper summarises the different publications that have been devoted to this topic and highlights the available statistical data presented to support this proposition. Qualitative results of such determinations may be of some interest but due to the enormous interindividual variations of quantitative data, the idea of using hair analysis to ascertain whether a patient has taken his treatment exactly as prescribed, clearly appears to be inapplicable.     

Comparison of fingernail striation patterns in identical twins.

The fingernail ridge patterns of a pair of identical twins were compared to each other, their parents, and an unrelated subject. The patterns of the twins' nails showed regions of strong similarity but were distinguishable from one another. Fewer similarities were found when comparing the nails to those of the parents and the unrelated control. The twins were shown to be monozygotic by means of DNA profiling. This therefore represents the first demonstration of unique fingernail ridge patterns in subjects shown conclusively to be identical twins. When the fingernail ridge patterns were examined with a scanning electron microscope, the backscattered electron (BEI) images were found to have superior contrast when compared to the secondary electron (SEI) images.