‘Criminal families’ and the court: co-offending in Amsterdam, 1897–1902

This article focuses on a specific aspect of the history of crime: co-offending (offending with one or more accomplices) in a family setting at the end of the nineteenth century. The aims of this article are to analyze how genders interacted in a criminal setting and to show a possible bias in the court's decision to prosecute ‘criminal families’, either in relation to the people involved or to the environment in which the crime was committed. This article also questions the relevance of the concept of the civilizing mission in a court setting towards ‘criminal families’ and compares it with the reality of the court's work. The study is based on the archives of Amsterdam's Arrondissementsgerecht between 1897 and 1902. This court was in charge of trying criminal offences committed in Amsterdam and its surrounding area (a semi-urban environment within a 25-kilometre radius) according to the 1886 Dutch code of laws. Urban and semi-urban co-offending criminal rates in Amsterdam and its surrounding area are compared, as well as gender patterns and class origins in relation to the crimes committed, in order to highlight a possible prejudice towards working-class offenders. The analysis reveals a high rate of co-offending in female criminality and more gender interactions in the urban environment. However, the results also show that, despite a general anxiety towards working-class families and rising crime rates, magistrates were not more inclined to prosecute them. The family situation was taken into account before trials, and semi-urban families were not treated more leniently than urban families.     

Survival at what cost? Origins and effects of the modern controversy on treating severely handicapped newborns

This paper examines the background of technological innovation, ethical debate, and social change, against which the 1980s debate over how to treat severely handicapped newborns in general, and Baby Jane Doe in particular, took place. A commentary follows examining the relative place of government, practitioners, hospital ethics committees, and parents in making decisions about treatment for handicapped newborns.     

Using myths: Former Yugoslav perpetrators and violence

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, increased levels of east to west immigration in Europe partly explains the delinquent activities among a growing number of Eastern Europeans in western cities. Young people from te former Yugoslavia have a reputation for being particularly violent. In this article we argue that the alleged violence among Yugoslav delinquents is not so much a reflection of reality, but rather a myth used instrumentally by Yugoslav delinquents themselves to establish a position on the criminal scene – as doorkeepers, bodyguards, money collectors or other so-called `specialists in violence'.     

Books in review

has taught at the universities of London and York. He is author of The Making of Sociology, The Shaking of the Foundations: Family and Society,and The Abolitionists—The Family and Marriage under Attack.Fletcher’s own book on Burt, Science, Ideology, and the Media,will be issued by Transaction in 1991.     

Prostitution, morality crusades and feminism: German-Jewish feminists and the campaign against white slavery

Feminism did not come easily to Germany's middle-class Jewish women. Moral outrage against white slavery and prostitution, however, led many religious housewives to join the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women), a Jewish feminist organization. Their attitudes towards their ‘victimized’ or ‘erring young sisters’, their motivations for fighting white slavery, and the tactics they employed in their campaigns are examined in this essay. While they emphasized the virtues of purity and invoked Jewish ethical codes, theirs was not simply a morality crusade. The feminist founders of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (JFB) struggled to persuade their more conservative followers that the sexual abuse of women was linked to their inferior status in German society and Jewish culture. These leaders successfully convinced JFB members to take a giant step beyond their traditional family roles and charitable activities in order to challenge sexism. Thus the fight against white slavery became instrumental in serving wider feminist goals.     

Evaluation of the IDS One-Step ELISA kits for the detection of illicit drugs in hair

This work presents the validation of a new immunological assay, the One-Step enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests from International Diagnostic Systems Corp. for the screening of drugs of abuse (cannabis, amphetamines, opiates, and cocaine) in human hair, with subsequent GC-MS confirmation. After decontamination and segmentation into small pieces, 50 mg of hair sample were incubated in 1 ml of methanol during 16 h at 40 degrees C. A 100 microL aliquot was collected and evaporated to dryness in presence of 100 microL of methanol/hydrochloric acid (99:1, v/v) to avoid amphetamines loss. The dried extract was dissolved in 100 microL of the "sample and standard diluent" solution included in the kit. This solution was submitted to analysis according to the recommended instructions of the manufacturer. During the validation phase, GC-MS confirmations were conducted according to our fully validated and published methods for opiates, cocaine, cannabis, and amphetamines determinations in hair. In a last development step, these procedures were slightly modified to directly confirm ELISA results by GC-MS using the methanolic extract. Ninety-three specimens were simultaneously screened by the ELISA tests (103 for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)) and confirmed by GC-MS. Twenty were found positive for cannabis (THC: 0.10-6.50 ng/mg), 21 for cocaine (0.50-55.20 ng/mg), 24 for opiates (6-acetylmorphine (6-AM): 0.20-11.60 ng/mg, MOR: 0.20-8.90 ng/mg, codeine (COD): 0.20-5.90 ng/mg), and 13 for amphetamines (AP: 0.20 and 0.27 ng/mg, methamphetamine (MAP): 0.30 and 1.10 ng/mg, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA): 0.22-17.80 ng/mg). No false negative results were observed according to the Society of Hair Testing's (SoHT) cutoffs (0.5 ng/mg for cocaine, 0.2 ng/mg for opiates and amphetamines, and 0.1 ng/mg for THC). The One-Step ELISA kits appear suitable due to their sensitivity and specificity for drug of abuse screening in hair. This technology should find interest in workplace drug testing or driving license regranting, especially when many samples have to be tested with a high rate of negative samples, as ELISA is an easy and high-throughput method.     

Hair analysis for diphenhydramine after surreptitious administration to a child

Diphenhydramine is one of the first effective antihistamine agents to have been discovered. The compound is also used for its sedative and antiemetic effects. The first case involving repetitive sedation linked to the use of diphenhydramine as a drug-facilitated crime and subsequent impairment of a 9-year-old female victim is reported. Due to the long delay between the alleged crime and clinical examination, collection of blood or urine was of little value. Hence, the laboratory developed an original approach based on hair testing by LC-MS/MS. A single strand of hair from the victim was sampled about 7 weeks after the last suspected administration and was cut into small segments. After cutting into small pieces, about 20 mg of hair per segment was incubated overnight in a phosphate buffer (pH 8.4). The aqueous phase was extracted with 5 ml of a mixture of methylene chloride/diethyl ether (80/20), in presence of diazepam-d5, used as internal standard (IS). The hair extract was separated on an XTerra MS C18 column using a gradient of acetonitrile and formate buffer. Detection was based on two daughter ions: transitions m/z 256.2-152.1 and 167.1 and m/z 289.9-154.0 for diphenhydramine and the IS, respectively. In the hair of the child, diphenhydramine was detected at concentrations in the range 33-39 pg/mg, depending on the segment.