Determination of total hemoglobin in forensic blood samples with special reference to carboxyhemoglobin analysis

For the determination of total hemoglobin (Hb) in blood containing elevated carboxyhemoglobin (COHb), a newly developed reagent containing a 100-fold concentration of ferricyanide (20 g/l) and a 2-fold concentration of Sterox SE was compared with a standard reagent (0.2 g/l ferricyanide), the reagent of van Kampen and Zijlstra, using forensic blood samples and experimentally heated blood samples. There were no significant differences between the spectra of hemiglobincyanide (HiCN) solution produced with our reagent and the van Kampen and Zijlstra reagent using experimentally heated blood samples. Although the spectra of HiCN changed gradually with increased heating time and with the passage of time after mixing, the absorbance at 540 nm (A540) did not change until at least 120 min for both the reagents. When forensic blood samples containing elevated COHb were mixed with the van Kampen and Zijlstra reagent, total-Hb concentrations determined 5 min after mixing were 10-20% higher than those determined after 180 min. The overestimates of total Hb determined after 5 min resulted in comparable underestimates of percentage saturation of COHb (COHb%) when COHb% was obtained from the ratio of COHb content, determined by gas chromatogrpahy, to total-Hb concentration in blood. However, there was an extremely good correlation between the values of total Hb in forensic blood samples determined with the van Kampen and Zijlstra reagent after 180 min and those determined with our reagent after 5 min. From the results obtained, our reagent proved to be suitable for the determination of total Hb in forensic science practice.     

The Early Offender Project: A Community-Based Program for High Risk Youth

Oakland County, Michigan, directly north of Detroit, has a population of approximately one million. It is largely suburban with rural outskirts. Oakland County has a tradition of creative and varied youth services.     

The bird in hand: A feasible strategy for gun control

Policy analysis has failed to guide gun control policy away from its current impasse because analysts have avoided facing several crucially important features of the current reality: the existence of some widely held values in the United States public that favor the possession of guns; the limitations on the ability of public agencies in the United States to enforce restraints on the possession of handguns; and the implications of the fact that so many guns are already in the hands of the public. These factors greatly reduce the possibility that effective measures will be introduced to reduce the existing supply of guns. Some effective measures of gun control may be possible nonetheless, mainly through the mobilization of large metropolitan police forces.     

Mental Health Court Outcomes: A Comparison of Re-Arrest and Re-Arrest Severity Between Mental Health Court and Traditional Court Participants

Mental health courts have been proliferating across the country since their establishment in the late 1990's. Although numerous advocates have proclaimed their merit, only few empirical studies have evaluated their outcomes. This paper evaluates the effect of one mental health court on criminal justice outcomes by examining arrests and offense severity from one year before to one year after entry into the court, and by comparing mental health court participants to comparable traditional criminal court defendants on these measures. Multivariate models support the prediction that mental health courts reduce the number of new arrests and the severity of such re-arrests among mentally ill offenders. Similar analysis of mental health court completers and non-completers supports the prediction that a "full dose" of mental health treatment and court monitoring produce even fewer re-arrests.     

Stability of Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in oral fluid using the Quantisal collection device

This article details the stability of Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in oral fluid during collection, extraction and storage. Oral fluid is being increasingly used as the specimen of choice for the detection of drug use in various applications. Studies to determine the extraction efficiency of THC from the collection buffer and stability under various laboratory storage conditions were carried out. THC was extracted from the collection pad and buffer with an average efficiency over 80% and was stable in Quantisal oral fluid extraction buffer when stored at refrigerated temperatures. Fluorescent lighting caused THC losses of over 50%, however the presence of the pad reduced the loss. In the dark, the loss of THC at room temperature was approximately 20% over 14 days. When stored with the serum separators in place, THC losses were significant. After 3 days, THC concentration was reduced by almost 30%, and after 14 days, 60% of the drug was lost and the losses were not concentration dependent.     

The Transformation of the Western State: The Growth of Democracy,Autocracy, and State Power Since 1800

This article uses POLITY II, a new dataset on the authority traits of 155 countries, to assess some general historical arguments about the dynamics of political change in Europe and Latin America from 1800 to 1986. The analysis, relying mainly on graphs, focuses first on the shifting balance between democratic and autocratic patterns in each world region and identifies some of the internal and international circumstances underlying the trends, and deviations from them. Trends in three indicators of state power also are examined in the two regions: the state's capacity to direct social and economic life, the coherence of political institutions, and military manpower. The state's capacity has increased steadily in both regions; coherence has increased in the European countries but not Latin America; while military power has fluctuated widley in both regions. The article is foundational to a series of more detailed longitudinal studies of the processes of state growth. Ted Robert Gurr is a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Scholar at the University's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (Mill Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742). Among his 14 books and monographs areWhy Men Rebel (awarded the Woodrow Wilson Prize as best book in political science of 1970).Patterns of Authority: A comparative Basis for Political Inquiry (with Harry Eckstein, 1975), andViolence in America, (3d edition. 1989). He is engaged in a long-term global study of minorities' involvement in conflict and its consequences and resolution. Keith Jaggers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics, Campus Box 333, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. He is co-author with Will H. Moore of “Deprivation, Mobilization, and the State,” recently published in theJournal of Developing Societies, and is currently working on an empirical study of the impact of war on the growth of the state. Will H. Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics. He is also a co-author with Maro Ellena of a forthcoming article inWestern Political Quarterly on the cross-national determinants of political violence. His current research interests include the resolution of internal wars and the formation of coercive states.     

The “Morpeth Mind” and Australian Politics 1927–1934

The publication of the Morpeth Review between 1927 and 1934 was a milestone in the evolution of an authentic public sphere for Australian political intellectuals. The Review covered several areas of political and philosophical concern, ranging ideologically from Christian socialism and idealist liberalism, through market economics, to reactionary anti‐Bolshevism, within the editorial context of a strongly idealist liberalism inspired by the Oxford liberals of the early twentieth century, and both evangelical and sacramentalist Anglican Protestantism. Ernest H. Burgmann and Roy Lee used the magazine to develop a unique form of Anglican social and political activism and other members of an identifiable group of radical clergy also contributed. A.p. Elkin's writings on Indigenous politics are of particular interest as they can be viewed simultaneously as a turning toward the novel idea of Aboriginal citizenship, and at the same time as a restatement of Darwinist biological determinism and racialism, both lit by genuine compassion and affection for Aboriginal Australians.     

Talking Heads and Bleeding Hearts: Newsmaking, Emotion and Public Criminology in the Wake of a Sexual Assault

Using our own experiences in attempting to ‘do’ public criminology in the wake of a violent sexual assault on our campus, we offer a critique of the emerging public criminology framework. Focusing specifically on tensions between fact and emotion and representations of expertise in the news media, we argue for a greater respect for emotional responses to crime in moving the public criminology agenda forward. We suggest that if public criminology sets as its goal educating the public about crime with an eye towards injecting a counter/critical discourse into ‘get tough’ crime control policies, then public criminologists need to recognize and take seriously the public’s emotions rather than negate them. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge, London, 2004), we suggest that the role of the expert is not to simply inform citizens of the ‘facts’ about crime, but to establish—through emotions—the relationship between themselves and the imagined criminal Other (Young in Imagining crime: Textual outlaws and criminal conversations. Sage Publications, London, 1996). Thus, alongside trying to convince the public to be more ‘rational’ when it comes to crime, critical criminologists must start to accept people’s fear and anger as legitimate reactions and try to redirect these emotions toward more productive ends.     

Personal identification of cold case remains through combined contribution from anthropological, mtDNA, and bomb-pulse dating analyses

In 1968, a child's cranium was recovered from the banks of a northern Canadian river and held in a trust until the "cold case" was reopened in 2005. The cranium underwent reanalysis at the Centre for Forensic Research, Simon Fraser University, using recently developed anthropological analysis, "bomb-pulse" radiocarbon analysis, and forensic DNA techniques. Craniometrics, skeletal ossification, and dental formation indicated an age-at-death of 4.4 ± 1 year. Radiocarbon analysis of enamel from two teeth indicated a year of birth between 1958 and 1962. Forensic DNA analysis indicated the child was a male, and the obtained mitochondrial profile matched a living maternal relative to the presumed missing child. These multidisciplinary analyses resulted in a legal identification 41 years after the discovery of the remains, highlighting the enormous potential of combining radiocarbon analysis with anthropological and mtDNA analyses in producing confident personal identifications for forensic cold cases dating to within the last 60 years.