Prosecutorial discretion to defer criminalization: The effects of defendant's ascribed and achieved status characteristics

This research contributes to a further understanding of prosecutorial discretion by exploring tenets of casual attribution theory and etiology of bias theory as each informs an uncertainty avoidance perspective on the prosecutor's decision to divert felony drug defendants from criminal prosecution and into a treatment program. The sociolegal consequences of the exercise of this early screening decision are expressed by both conflict theorists and labeling theorists. Our analysis involves estimating main effects and interaction effects of defendant ascribed status and achieved status on the likelihood of diversion. The findings indicate partial support for hypotheses derived, from the theoretical perspectives pursued. In addition these findings point to a more complex model of the subjective nature of the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, a model that benefits from understanding the salience of minimizing uncertainty in the decision to criminals.     

A comparison of the use of visible microspectrometry and high performance thin layer chromatography for the discrimination of aqueous inks used in porous tip and roller ball pens

Ink lines made by porous tip and roller ball pens have been examined by high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) and by transmission microspectrophotometry (VM) in the visible region. Better discrimination between apparently similar coloured inks was obtained with HPTLC but VM has value as an additional technique for ink examination.