West African Voices

A new literary programme has been started in the West AfricanService of the B.B.C., and this article is a reprint of oneof the talks. The Ibo speaker was formerly in the Customs, andqualified as a barrister last November: he is also the authorof numerous poems in English, and of a novel, The Prince ofUtete. The other two are schoolmasters working as Assistantsat the School of Oriental and African Studies. For technicalreasons, the orthography is not quite complete.     

Randomized experiments in criminology: What have we learned in the last two decades?

This paper aims to review randomized experiments in criminology with offending outcomes and reasonably large numbers that were published between 1982 and 2004. A total of 83 experiments are summarized, compared with only 35 published between 1957 and 1981: 12 on policing, 13 on prevention, 14 on corrections, 22 on courts, and 22 on community interventions. Randomized experiments are still relatively uncommon, but there have been more large-scale multi-site experiments and replication programs. There have also been several experiments in which 100 or more places were randomly assigned. Relatively few experiments (only 10 out of 83) were conducted outside the United States. Meta-analyses suggest that prevention methods, correctional therapy, batterer programs, drug courts, juvenile restitution and deterrent policing were effective in reducing offending, while Scared Straight and boot camp programs caused a significant increase in offending.     

JUVENILITY AND PUNISHMENT: SENTENCING JUVENILES IN ADULT CRIMINAL COURT*

The study outlined in this article addressed a key limitation of prior research on the punishment of juveniles transferred to adult court by employing propensity score matching techniques to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders. Using recent data from the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, it tested competing theoretical propositions about the salience of juvenile status in adult court. Findings indicate that even after rigorous statistical matching procedures, juvenile offenders are punished more severely than their young adult counterparts. We found no evidence that this “juvenile penalty” is exacerbated by an offender's race or gender, but it does vary starkly across offense type and mode of transfer, being driven primarily by drug crimes and discretionary waivers. The import of these findings is discussed as they relate to the future of juvenile justice policy regarding the continued use of juvenile transfer to adult court.     

Dirty tricks of cross-examination

A mock jury study was conducted to test the hypothesis that perceptions of a witness can be biased by presumptuous cross-examination questions. A total of 105 subjects read a rape trial in which the cross-examiner asked a question that implied something negative about the reputation of either the victim or an expert. Within each condition, the question was met with either a denial, an admission, or an objection from the witness's attorney. Results indicated that although ratings of the victim's credibility were not affected by the presumptuous question, the expert's credibility was significantly diminished—even when the question had elicited a denial or a sustained objection. Conceptual and practical implications of these findings are discussed.This research was supported by funds provided to the first author by the Bronfman Science Center.     

Lingual markings of anterior teeth as seen in human bite marks

A review of the available literature does not reveal a plausible explanation as to why the incisal edges of maxillary anterior teeth do not always mark clearly. Generally, the mandibular incisal edges do mark with some consistency. This paper demonstrates through test bites on skin that the answer lies in the position of the mandible.     

Pete Maravich's incredible heart

Postmortem examination of a former professional basketball player revealed an abnormal heart, most notably a single coronary artery. The literature on single coronary arteries is briefly reviewed, and the possible mechanism which caused the patient's condition is considered. This case is particularly unusual because of the patient's profession, which is so physically demanding.     

The European Parliament and Comitology: On the Road to Nowhere?

The European Parliament has generally been deeply distrustful of the comitology system, primarily on the grounds that it allows the national administrations to undermine its supervisory role in the area of implementing legislation. Parliament has therefore sought to use the political, budgetary and jurisdictional means at its disposal to counteract the spread of comitology, or at least to promote the less intrusive forms of committee procedure. These initiatives have not, for the most part, been wholly successful; neither the interinstitutional agreements nor Parliament's arguments before the Court of Justice have produced the results it had hoped for. Parliament has been able, however, to use its Maastricht powers to influence the choice of committee procedure included in legislation adopted under codecision, and its budgetary tactics have forced the Commission to rationalise somewhat the annual expenditure on committees of all kinds and to bring a modicum of transparency into their operation. The imminence of the intergovernmental conference led to a suspension of hostilities towards the end of 1996.     

Intra-company technology transfer in a multinational industrial firm

Little literature has been developed to describe the process of transferring a corporation's technology between international units of that company for ultimate transfer to their external customers (Kimberly 1981 and Leonard-Barton and Sinha 1993). This paper addresses the issues at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. involved in the transfer of applications technology. Technology is transferred from the unit of the corporation which develops the technology to international affiliates and subsidiaries. The ultimate goal is the support of product sales to the external industrial customer. A strategy for this type of organization is described which is supported by references to theoretical constructs in the literature and empirical observations from the organization itself.