The War on Violence: Improving the Response to Domestic Violence in the Military

The Department of Defense has taken steps in recent years to improve outcomes for victims of domestic violence who reside on military installations. In 2000, the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence was established, a military‐civilian group of experts charged with improving the military's effectiveness in addressing domestic violence in the Armed Forces in a variety of areas including offender accountability, coordination between military and civilian communities, and changing the military climate around domestic violence. This article will provide an overview of the Task Force, its work during the past three years, and its recommendations.     

Teenage suicide in King County, Washington. I. Rates of suicide for 26 years

The population-adjusted rate of teenage suicide in King County, Washington, was reviewed for the 26 years from 1959 to 1984. For the entire period, the rate did not change significantly. An abrupt change did occur during the middle of this period, but, for reasons discussed in the text, this may well represent a change in procedures and philosophy of death certification rather than a real change in rate. Reasons for the apparent discrepancy with national statistics are discussed.     

Distrust of Government, the Vigilante Tradition, and Support for Capital Punishment

This study probes the interconnections among distrust of government, the historical context, and public support for the death penalty in the United States with survey data for area-identified samples of white and black respondents. Multilevel statistical analyses indicate contrary effects of government distrust on support for the death penalty for blacks and whites, fostering death penalty support among whites and diminishing it among blacks. In addition, we find that the presence of a "vigilante tradition," as indicated by a history of lynching, promotes death penalty support among whites but not blacks. Finally, contrary to Zimring's argument in The Contradictions of Capital Punishment , we find no evidence that vigilantism moderates the influence of government distrust on support for the death penalty, for either whites or blacks. Our analyses highlight the continuing influence of historical context as well as contemporary conditions in the formation of public attitudes toward criminal punishment, and they underscore the importance of attending to racial differences in the analysis of punitive attitudes.     

Spatial variation of refractive index in a pane of float glass.

In the statistical interpretation of forensic glass evidence it is standard practice to make the assumption of homogeneity of the refractive index (RI) of the source glass, or of localized homogeneity. However, the work of Locke and Hayes showed that, for toughened windscreen glass, this assumption might not be true. This work is well cited, but there appears to have been little follow-on published research. Furthermore, the toughening process is something known to affect the refractive index, and is a process that float glass does not undergo. Float glass is a major component of casework in New Zealand and for that reason it would be interesting to know whether the findings of Locke and Hayes apply when dealing with float glass. In this paper we describe an experiment similar to that of Locke and Hayes, systematically examining the variation of RI in a pane of float window glass. It was found that, although there were no systematic differences in refractive index, there were observable differences across the pane.