Partisan issue preferences and partisan change

This paper addresses the relationship between changes in issue preferences and changes in partisanship, and examines the possibility that different types of issues may be associated with different dimensions of partisanship. A discriminant function analysis using the 1972–74–76 CPS Panel reveals that Democrats, Independents, and Republicans are very different from one another in terms of partisan issue preferences on a New Deal and a racial issue. The association between issue preferences and changes in strength among partisans is less stable, but the Democratic identification seems to be more closely aligned with the New Deal and racial issues than the Republican identification. Leaners appear to be more partisan in their issue preferences than weak identifiers are.     

Political involvement and the projection process

The politically involved members of the mass public have commonly been described as having more sophisticated awareness of political issues and a greater ability to use issues in forming their evaluations of candidates. This paper briefly reviews the issue-voting literature which comes to that conclusion, and proposes that the politically involved people might also be more subject to projection in the formation of their political perceptions. A model of perception that includes both projection and inference processes is estimated using data from the 1972–74–76 CPS Panel Study. Separate estimations for the involved and uninvolved strata reveal higher projection coefficients for the more involved on the more ambiguous issues.     

Designing Ethical Online Dispute Resolution Systems: The Rise of the Fourth Party

As the pandemic forces public and private institutions to move online, many court and business leaders are looking to the field of online dispute resolution (ODR) for best practices and lessons learned. Developed over the last twenty years, largely in response to the growth of e‐commerce, the ODR field has generated a deep well of theory and practice while also identifying potential ethical dilemmas and risks. The application of technology, the “fourth party,” plays an increasingly integral role in how we negotiate resolutions to our disputes, with or without a third party. A brief overview of the history of ODR’s development will set the context for the exploration of the range of tools and techniques encompassed by online dispute resolution. Consideration of the ethical challenges raised by ODR practice will illuminate key questions and choices that need to be made in designing ODR systems and in governing their use.     

The Infant Injury Database: A Tool for the Study of Injury Patterns in Medicolegal Investigations of Child Abuse

In 2012, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences began prospectively collecting injury data from pediatric autopsies. These data and associated case information from 635 pediatric cases are archived in the Infant Injury Database (IID). This paper introduces the IID to the forensic community and demonstrates its potential utility for child abuse and infant fatality investigations. The database is intended to be a source of evidence‐based research for coroners/medical examiners and clinicians in the recognition and diagnosis of child abuse. RR estimates were employed to quantify the relationship between individual autopsy findings to trauma‐related and nontrauma‐related causes of death. For example, unsurprisingly, the RR of trauma cases with multiple injury types is significantly greater than other causes of death, but the RR results provide a quantitative representation of the relationship. ROC curve modeling of the presence/absence of various injury types performed well at discriminating trauma from other causes of death (AUC = 0.96).     

Schools and Terrorism: Global Trends,Impacts, and Lessons for Resilience

This study characterizes trends in the frequency and characteristics of terrorist attacks in child-serving educational institutions around the world, examining the specific vulnerabilies of children and schools with regard to terrorist violence, as well as the various impacts that violence has on children, communities, and societies. Following the analysis of available data on terrorist attacks against educational institutions, vulnerabilities, and impacts, the study concludes with a discussion of what still needs to be understood in the intersection of child vulnerability and terrorism, and provides recommendations for improving resilience to terrorist attacks against child-serving educational institutions.     

Book Reviews

The past decade has seen many developments in anti‐discrimination law in Great Britain, from the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Treaty of Amsterdam 1997, to the EU framework directive for equal treatment in employment introducing three new protected grounds between 2003 and 2006 (and the subsequent extension beyond employment, in national law, of two of those grounds). All of these, and myriad implementing regulations, build on the national foundations set by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976. With formal equality remaining the dominant model, this article looks at the scope for positive measures within British anti‐discrimination law.     

Gunshot residue testing in suicides: Part I: Analysis by scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray

Several different methods can be employed to test for gunshot residue (GSR) on a deceased person's hands, including scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) and inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Each of these techniques has been extensively studied, especially on living individuals. The current studies (Part I and Part II) were designed to compare the use and utility of the different GSR testing techniques in a medical examiner setting. In Part I, the hands of deceased persons who died from undisputed suicidal handgun wounds were tested for GSR by SEM-EDX over a 4-year period. A total of 116 cases were studied and analyzed for caliber of weapon, proximity of wound, and results of GSR testing, including spatial deposition upon the hands. It was found that in only 50% of cases with a known self-inflicted gunshot wound was SEM-EDX positive for at least 1 specific particle for GSR. In 18% of the cases there was a discernible pattern (spatial distribution) of the particles on the hand such that the manner in which the weapon was held could be determined. Since only 50% of cases where the person is known to have fired a weapon immediately prior to death were positive for GSR by SEM-EDX, this test should not be relied upon to determine whether a deceased individual has discharged a firearm. Furthermore, in only 18% of cases was a discernible pattern present indicating how the firearm was held. The low sensitivity, along with the low percentage of cases with a discernible pattern, limits the usefulness of GSR test results by SEM-EDX in differentiating self-inflicted from non-self-inflicted wounds.     

Genetic variation at six STR loci (HUMTH01, HUMTPOX, HUMCSF1PO, HUMF13A01, HUMFES/FPS, HUMVWFA31) in Aragon (north Spain).

The STR loci HUMTH01, HUMPTPOX, HUMCSF1PO, HUMF13A01, HUMFES/FPS and HUMVWFA31 are widely used in forensic casework analyses and population data are necessary to estimate the frequency of a DNA profile. This paper presents the results of a survey aimed to investigate the allele frequency distribution of these loci in an important Spanish population (Aragon, North Spain). Statistical analysis to determine whether allele frequencies were in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium was carried out and also to obtain some parameters of medico-legal interest. There was no evidence of association between the alleles of the loci. The Aragonese sample does not differ substantially from other Caucasian populations.     

The making of Narco bosses: hard drug dealing crimes among Mexican students

This study aimed at investigating the predictors of hard drug dealing crimes among Mexican students. Tests of difference and ordinal regression were employed to explore group differences and predictors of hard drug dealing crimes. The sample included 14,306 last-year high school students nationwide. Results show that 3.5% of the students surveyed admittedly reported to have been involved in a drug dealing crime of an illegal substance different from Marijuana. Several factors were found to decrease the odds of a student to get involved in a hard drug crime. Federal policy implications and solutions are provided.