Books in review

His most recent books are The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s,and Movements, Currents, Trends.     

Distinguishing accurate from inaccurate eyewitness identifications with an optional deadline procedure

Abstract

Two experiments examined the efficacy of an optional deadline lineup procedure for distinguishing correct from incorrect eyewitness identification decisions. The procedure involved briefly presenting the lineup, removing the lineup from view, then giving participants the option of either making an identification decision or viewing the lineup again. When compared with participants operating under a forced deadline (i.e. forced to respond after the brief presentation) or standard lineup instructions, the optional deadline procedure identified participants with an impressive probability of having made a correct identification when used with target-present lineups and biased instructions. With unbiased instructions, the optional deadline produced clear discrimination between correct and incorrect identification decisions for choosers and, importantly, also for non-choosers. Possible strategies for improving the efficacy of the procedure are suggested.     

A Comparison of Disaster Paradigms: The Search for a Holistic Policy Guide

The following article discusses the current emphasis and attention being given to the future of emergency management, as well as theoretical constructs designed to guide research and help practitioners reduce disaster. It illustrates that while the disaster-resistant community, disaster-resilient community, and sustainable development/sustainable hazards mitigation concepts provide many unique advantages for disaster scholarship and management, they fail to sufficiently address the triggering agents, functional areas, actors, variables, and disciplines pertaining to calamitous events. In making this argument, the article asserts that any future paradigm and policy guide must be built on—yet go further than—comprehensive emergency management. The article also reviews and alters the concept of invulnerable development. Finally, the article presents "comprehensive vulnerability management" as a paradigm and suggests that it is better suited to guide scholarly and practitioner efforts to understand and reduce disasters than the aforementioned perspectives.     

Evaluation of the correlation between time corpses spent in in-ground graves and findings at exhumation

To determine how long pathological findings persist after burial and which factors play a role in decomposition of a corpse, we evaluated all bodies exhumed under the auspices of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Hannover Medical School between 1978 and 1997. A total of 87 exhumations (54 men, 33 women) were performed in this period. The time bodies remained buried varied between 5 days and 16.8 years (mean 1.5 years, median 2.3 months). Fifty-six percent of the bodies were exhumed after at most 3 months, 10% remained buried for greater than 3 years. Pathomorphological changes of the soft tissues and the internal organs remained evident after several months, in some cases after several years of burial. Overall, it was possible to evaluate internal organs after 5 years of burial. Bodies became mostly decomposed after approximately 8 years at the earliest, although it was still possible to evaluate some soft tissue remnants after 16.8 years. In stepwise logistic regression, both the length of time the body was buried (p < 0.00005) and the time of year (p < 0.0019) clearly affected the rate of physical change. The variables of sex (p = 0.33), age (p = 0.61) and changes in the integrity of the body before burial (trauma, autopsy before burial; p = 0.15) did not influence the physical state of the body after exhumation. Our data show that much information may be gained from an exhumation even after significant time has passed since burial.     

The dynamics of injuries caused by thrown, razor-sharp shurikens

In 10 tests, the linear velocity and rotation frequency of a thrown, pointed, razor-sharp shuriken were investigated using a high-speed camera. The linear velocity (5.1-9.87 m/s) and rotation frequency (0-4.46 m/s) determine the impact (0.91-3.6 nm) of this Asiatic weapon. An impact of 3.6 Nm is sufficient to cause a penetration depth of more than 3.5 cm within the regio ossis temporalis, the regio collis lateralis and the regio intercostalis. Legally, the use of this new generation of pointed, razor-sharp shurikens should be prohibited as "sports" apparatus.     

Informal interference in the judiciary in new democracies: a comparison of six African and Latin American cases

This article focuses on the efforts of power holders – at the executive or the legislative level – to influence or curb court activity informally or extra-legally, an acknowledged but under-researched topic in studies of judicial politics. We first define informal judicial interference and operationalize the concept; we then explain how we collected information on the topic through systematic cross-country interviewing. Our concept focuses on judicial intervention actions exercised by political actors once judges are on the bench. We distinguish these actions according to type – direct or subtle – and further differentiate each type according to six different modes. We provide new empirical data on informal interference in six third-wave democracies, three in Africa (Benin, Madagascar, and Senegal) and three in Latin America (Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay). Our empirical findings, first, confirm the importance of informal practices in shaping political-judicial relations. Second, they point to long-standing legacies and to the level of socio-economic development as possible explanations for different performances in terms of the prevalence and severity of informal interference in the judiciary in these newly established democratic regimes