How Large Should the Strike Zone Be in “Three Strikes and You're Out” Sentencing Laws?

So-called three strikes and you're out sentencing laws for criminal offenders have proliferated in the United States. The laws vary considerably in their definitions of what constitutes a strike. This paper adapts the classic Poisson process model of criminal offending to investigate how varying sentence lengths and definitions of what constitutes a strike affect the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these sentencing laws. In particular, it asks whether, by using different definitions for the first, second, and third strikes or different sentence lengths, one can make the resulting incarceration more efficient in the sense of incapacitating more crimes per cell-year served.     

Holding Back the Tide— a Review of Recent Developments in Copyright Law in the United Kingdom

This article surveys recent developments in UK copyright law. It sets these developments in the context of broader trends in copyright law and policy. Significant decisions concerning subsistence of copyright, authorship, infringement, defences, remedies and collective licensing are analysed. The author notes that copyright, and other intellectual property rights, have been given extra force as a result of recent legislative developments. He argues that, against this background, it is possible to discern increasing judicial concern to ensure that such an expansion in monopoly power does not operate against the public interest.     

Coercion, Cooperation, and Control: Understanding the Policy Impact of Administrative Courts and the Ombudsman in the Netherlands

This article examines the way in which administrative courts and the National Ombudsman in the Netherlands seek to control administrative action, and is aimed at developing a heuristic model that can also be useful in a wider context. Two styles of control will be introduced: "coercive" and "cooperative." An exploratory empirical study was conducted of two administrative agencies, investigating the implementation process of court and ombudsman decisions. This article argues that it is likely that the policy impact of the courts and the ombudsman is directly related to their style of control. More empirical research is needed to evaluate this hypothesis.     

The Fate of an Orphan: The Hawley Board and the Debates over the Postwar Organization of Medical Intelligence

The US Army's medical intelligence program developed during World War II to meet the requirements for information on the medical threat facing soldiers deployed in the first truly global military conflict. The war served as a proving ground for the application of medical intelligence on a strategic, operational and tactical level. However, hasty postwar demobilization decimated many wartime intelligence programs, including medical intelligence. The US intelligence community recognized the utility of medical intelligence as part of the overall strategic scientific and technical intelligence program and sought ways to rebuild the program. During the post-World War II debates over the unification of the military services and the responsibilities of the nascent CIA, the ‘Hawley Board’ was one of several committees which studied the problems facing the medical intelligence program. Although there was broad consensus on the need for better coordination of medical intelligence, the intelligence community ultimately failed to adopt the recommendations of the Hawley Board. The principal reasons behind the failure of the Hawley plan were the re-emergence of prewar interservice rivalries, the dominant role of the Army medical intelligence program, and the lack of a joint military–CIA vision of a centralized medical intelligence service.     

Simultaneous analysis of six amphetamines and analogues in hair, blood and urine by LC-ESI-MS/MS: Application to the determination of MDMA after low Ecstasy intake

A rapid and sensitive method using LC-MS/MS triple stage quadrupole for the determination of traces of amphetamine (AP), methamphetamine (MA), 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “ecstasy”), 3,4-methylenedioxyethamphetamine (MDEA), and N-methyl-1-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)-2-butanamine (MBDB) in hair, blood and urine has been developed and validated. Chromatography was carried out on an Uptisphere ODB C₁₈ 5 μm, 2.1 mm × 150 mm column (Interchim, France) with a gradient of acetonitrile and formate 2 mM pH 3.0 buffer. Urine and blood were extracted with Toxitube A^® (Varian, France). Segmented scalp hair was treated by incubation 15 min at 80 °C in NaOH 1 M before liquid–liquid extraction with hexane/ethyl acetate (2/1, v/v). The limits of quantification (LOQ) in blood and urine were at 0.1 ng/mL for all analytes. In hair, LOQ was <5 pg/mg for MA, MDMA, MDEA and MBDB, at 14.7 pg/mg for AP and 15.7 pg/mg for MDA. Calibration curves were linear in the range 0.1–50 ng/mL in blood and urine; in the range 5–500 pg/mg for MA, MDMA, MDEA and MBDB, and 20–500 pg/mg for AP and MDA. Inter-day precisions were <13% for all analytes in all matrices. Accuracy was <20% in blood and urine at 1 and 50 ng/mL and <10% in hair at 20 and 250 pg/mg. This method was applied to the determination of MDMA in a forensic case of single administration of ecstasy to a 16-year-old female without her knowledge during a party. She suffered from hyperactivity, sweating and agitation. A first sample of urine was collected a few hours after (T + 12 h) and tested positive to amphetamines by immunoassay by a clinical laboratory. Blood and urine were sampled for forensic purposes at day 8 (D + 8) and scalp hair at day 60 (D + 60). No MDMA was detected in blood, but urine and hair were tested positive, respectively at 0.42 ng/mL and at 22 pg/mg in hair only in the segment corresponding to the period of the offence, while no MDA was detectable. This method allows the detection of MDMA up to 8 days in urine after single intake.