Predicting Outcomes for Youth Transferred to Adult Court

Extant research regarding juvenile transfer has focused primarily on the negative effects of current policies, with little consistent and rigorous work on the variation among the adolescents transferred to adult court and their later adjustment in the community. Using a sample of 193 transferred youth from Arizona, we consider how certain individual characteristics are related to four post-release outcomes (antisocial activity, re-arrest, re-institutionalization, and gainful activity). We find considerable variability in outcomes, with adjustment significantly and consistently related to certain legal and risk-need factors. These results indicate that some transferred youth may experience negative outcomes, and that refinements to transfer policy may benefit from consideration of these factors in determining which serious adolescent offenders are most appropriate for transfer.     

Attachment as a Moderator Between Intimate Partner Violence and PTSD Symptoms

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms have been linked to traumatic experiences, including intimate partner violence. However, not all battered women develop PTSD symptoms. The current study tests attachment style as a moderator in the abuse–trauma link among a community sample women in violent and non-violent relationships. Both attachment anxiety and dependency were found to moderate the relation between intimate partner violence and PTSD symptoms. However, attachment closeness did not function as a moderator. Differences in attachment may help to explain why certain victims of domestic abuse may be more susceptible to experiencing PTSD symptoms. Clinically, these findings may aid in the prediction and prevention of PTSD symptoms in women victimized by intimate partner abuse.     

Belief v. Belief: Resolving LGBTQ Rights Conflicts in the Religious Workplace

Employment disputes are increasingly centered on the conflicting moral and religious values of corporations, their employees, and their customers. These conflicts are especially challenging when they involve the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) employees and customers contraposed against the religious beliefs of corporations and their owners. When religious values compete with civil rights in the employment context, a complex web of legal protections renders the outcome unclear. Conflicts over these competing rights can involve a number of broad, thorny legal disputes, including those concerning the First Amendment and Title VII, fights between secular and religious beliefs, and competition between religious beliefs and equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. This article illustrates the reasons for this growing tension between the beliefs of business owners and the beliefs of their employees. It explores recent conflicts between religion and rights in the workplace particularly in the context of LGBTQ rights, the ways in which state‐level regulation complicates these conflicts, and the potential impact of recent cases addressing these concerns. It also identifies examples of potential specific conflicts in the context of LGBTQ rights and suggests the principles that should guide the resolution of these cases, offering a framework for assessing the hierarchy that a court may use in resolving cases in which values conflict with rights in the workplace. Finally, it addresses some of the troubling implications that arise as a result of the resolution of the potential specific conflicts.     

An investigation on the secondary transfer of organic gunshot residues

Gunshot residues (GSR) are an important forensic trace in firearm-related events. Currently, routine GSR analyses focus on the detection and characterisation of the inorganic components (IGSR). The increasing prevalence of heavy metal-free ammunition challenges these current protocols and there is an increasing interest in how the organic components of GSR (OGSR) can provide complementary information. Similar to the situation with IGSR, OGSR compounds originally deposited on the shooter during the firing process may further be transferred onto another individual or surface. Hence, the aim of this study was to provide additional information regarding the risk of a secondary transfer of OGSR. Two scenarios were investigated, the first one related to the arrest process and the possibilities of a secondary transfer arising between a shooter onto a non-shooter (e.g. between a police officer and a person of interest (POI)). The second scenario concerned the transfer of OGSR onto the non-shooter after handling a firearm for few minutes without discharging it. One calibre was chosen, the .40 S&W calibre, used by several Australian State police forces. A secondary transfer was observed in all cases for the two scenarios investigated, for three compounds of interest: ethylcentralite (EC), diphenylamine (DPA), N-nitrosodiphenylamine (N-nDPA). The firearm handling scenario resulted in a larger secondary transfer to that of the arrest scenario. Overall, the amounts of OGSR detected on the non-shooter were generally lower than that detected on the shooter and controls after the arrest scenario. The results of this study provide complementary knowledge about OGSR, which can be further used to improve the current practice and the interpretation of OGSR evidence. In particular, it highlights that the secondary transfer proposition must be considered during the interpretation of forensic findings, especially when small amounts of OGSR target compounds are detected.     

Consequences of mental and physical health for reentry and recidivism: Toward a health‐based model of desistance*

During the last few decades, criminologists have identified several adult roles and statuses, including employment, positive family relations, and economic stability, as critical for promoting successful reintegration and desistance. Very few researchers, however, have investigated the conditions that serve to bring about these transitions and successes crucial for behavior change. As a complement to a burgeoning amount of literature on the impact of incarceration on health, we emphasize the reverse: Health has important implications for reentry outcomes and reincarceration. Informed by multiple disciplines, we advance a health‐based model of desistance in which both mental and physical dimensions of health affect life chances in the employment and family realms and ultimately recidivism. Investigating this issue with longitudinal data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) and structural equation models, we find overall support for the health‐based model of desistance. Our results indicate several significant pathways through which both manifestations of health influence employment, family conflict, financial problems, and crime and reincarceration. The findings highlight the need for implementation of correctional and transitional policies to improve health among the incarcerated and avert health‐related reentry failures.     

Seeing Like an Islamic State: Shari‘a and Political Power in Sudan

Islamic law, or shari‘a, has been incorporated into the legal systems of many states. In much of the existing literature, this process is understood as part of the colonial and postcolonial state's attempt to render law legible—that is, codified, standardized, and abstract. In this article, I show how some state actors chose to move in the opposite direction, actively discouraging the transformation of shari‘a into a formal and codified system of law. Using the case of colonial and postcolonial Sudan, I argue that these actors viewed legal legibility as a threat to state power, recognizing the jurisgenerative potential of an informal and uncodified law.     

Reproductive Health: Morals,Margins and Rights

Reproductive interventions and technologies have the capacity to generate profound societal unease and to provoke hostile reactions underpinned by various moral concerns. This paper shows that this position currently goes relatively unchecked by the European Court of Human Rights, which allows the margin of appreciation and consensus doctrines significantly to limit the scope of reproductive rights under the right to respect for private and family life under Article 8. This occurs both in relation to the interest in avoiding reproduction at stake in abortion, and that in achieving it at stake in medically assisted reproduction. The paper demonstrates significant flaws in the Court's framing and deployment of these doctrines in its reproductive jurisprudence. It argues that, as regards existing and upcoming reproductive interventions and technologies, the Court should attend to the concept of reproductive health, long recognised in international conventions and policy materials.