Blast Injury and the Human Skeleton: An Important Emerging Aspect of Conflict‐Related Trauma

Recent decades have seen an accelerating trend in warfare whereby a growing proportion of conflict‐related deaths have been caused by explosions. Analysis of blast injury features little in anthropological literature. We present a review of clinical literature that includes prevalence of injury to anatomical regions and potential indicators of blast injury which can be used by forensic anthropologists. This includes high prevalence of extremity (22.8–91.2%) and facial (19.6–40%) injury in combat contexts, lower limb fractures (19–74.3%) in suicide bombing, traumatic amputation (3–43%) and diffuse fracture patterns in terrorist bombings. Potential indicators of blast trauma include blowout fractures in sinus cavities from blast overpressure, transverse mandibular fractures, and visceral surface rib fractures. Ability to recognize blast trauma and distinguish it in the skeleton is of importance in investigations and judicial proceedings relating to war crimes, terrorism, and human rights violations and likely to become increasingly crucial to forensic anthropology knowledge.     

Acute Aortic Dissection Diagnosed after Embalming: Macroscopic and Microscopic Findings

A 58‐year‐old man died suddenly in Madagascar and poisoning was suspected. The body was embalmed after death and the general state of preservation was good. We found a major aortic dissection with a large false lumen from the aortic root to the common iliac arteries and a hemopericardium with formalinized blood clot. The intimal tear was on the ascending aorta, and an intramural hemorrhage was noted at the right coronary artery, attesting to a retrograde dissection. Microscopic studies confirmed aortic dissection with extensive intramural hemorrhage and also confirmed the retrograde dissection to the right coronary artery with a reduction of 90% of the true lumen. Classically, aortic dissection occurs in individuals with hypertension and individuals with genetic disorders of collagen formation. The diagnosis is often first established at the postmortem examination. Aortic dissection is therefore dealt with largely in necropsy studies. The usual cause of death is rupture into the pericardial sac. One case of bloodless dissection has been reported but the sudden death was explained by acute myocardial ischemia secondary to dissection of the left coronary artery. In our case, we found major hemopericardium and also intramural hemorrhage at the right coronary artery. We were able to make the diagnosis of aortic dissection and exclude the suspicion of homicide 15 days after death and after embalming.     

The Flypaper Effect: Do Political Institutions Affect Danish Local Governments’ Response to Intergovernmental Grants?

Abstract

Despite a large number of empirical studies on the flypaper effect, it remains disputed whether the effect exists and to what extent it is asymmetrical. The flypaper effect suggests that intergovernmental grants tend to result in higher increases in public expenditures than a similar increase in citizens’ private income would have led to. An asymmetrical effect exists when the fiscal response differs depending on whether grants are increased or decreased. By considering political institutions that moderate the effect of intergovernmental grants, this article offers a theoretical explanation that accounts for the mixed empirical evidence. The local response to intergovernmental grants is tested using a reform of the Danish intergovernmental grant scheme in 2007. In line with the expectation, the article finds a strong asymmetrical effect, but more surprisingly, this effect is found both when subnational budget institutions are centralised and when they are fragmented.     

The Disconnect Between Education and Social Opportunity for the Formerly Incarcerated

This article aims to identify barriers associated with correctional education’s ability to produce social opportunity for the formerly incarcerated. This qualitative review of data collected in the Midwestern and Northeastern parts of the United States serves to better inform the literature surrounding correctional education, as to its positive and negative attributes, and sheds light on areas in which systematic improvements can be made. The goal of these independent but related studies is to investigate correctional education’s role in the outcomes of reentry experiences of former prisoners with emphasis on employment and educational opportunities, including the effects of race on prisoner and staff attitudes toward correctional education. This article serves to inform policy and future research in regards to correctional education, mainly in its uses, implementations, and outcomes.     

Depictions of correctional officers in newspaper media: an ethnographic content analysis

The public relies on the media for most of its information about the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, media depictions of justice actors are not always accurate which, in turn, can lead to distorted images about the system and its operations. Using ethnographic content analysis to analyze 489 articles from major newspapers across the United States, this study seeks to discern how correctional officers and the jobs that they perform are portrayed in print media. The results suggest that correctional officers are overwhelmingly portrayed negatively, with 79.6% of the articles in the research sample presenting one of six distinct negative themes. A typology of these themes is explored in detail, along with its implications for societal support for corrections and correctional officers, especially with regard to the media’s potential contributions to officers’ job stress, burnout, and job dissatisfaction.     

Consumer Redress Legislation: Simplifying or Subverting the Law of Contract

The growth of statutory consumer protection regimes in modern commercial societies has the potential profoundly to disrupt the private law landscape. Such schemes aim to increase access to justice for consumers by offering simplified and clear suites of rights and corresponding remedies. In so doing, however, they affect core areas of private law rights and remedies, and may come to undermine or replace existing contractual principles and policies. The result could be an incoherent system of private law with different principles and rules applying to commercial and consumer transactions. Coherence in the law requires that lawyers abandon their traditional ‘oil and water’ attitudes to legislative schemes and confront directly the interactions between these two bodies of law. This paper engages in that enquiry by considering the relationship between the relatively new consumer redress provisions in the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and general law principles.     

The association between specific competence-related abilities and competence restoration treatment

Inpatient competence restoration treatment comes with enormous costs in terms of civil liberties, but also significant financial costs to the state/institution responsible for providing the treatment. The present investigation was designed to evaluate the utility of a commonly used competence assessment instrument, the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool – Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA), in identifying individuals who may require more tailored, lengthier, and/or more intensive treatment. The sample included 93 men and women who were administered the MacCAT-CA during an inpatient hospitalization for competence restoration treatment in the United States. All of the patients were restored to competence within the study period, ranging from 3 to 32 months of inpatient hospitalization. Results suggest that performance on the MacCAT-CA was associated with hospitalization length, with total scores as the greatest predictor of response to treatment. Sensitivity and specificity estimates are discussed in terms of their utility in identifying patients most at-risk for extended hospitalization, with the authors arguing that instruments like the MacCAT-CA can be used in a practical manner of identifying patients who might require greater or more intensive treatment.