The Predicament of AUKUS To Southeast Asian Nations

正The leaders of three countries—President Joe Biden of the United States, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia declared the establishment of a military alliance known as AUKUS—which stands for Australia, UK and U.S.—on September 15. Among the consensus reached within AUKUS is the allocation of nuclear-powered submarine technology from the U.S. to Australia. In addition,     

Restructuring the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion in England

Determining whether a person who appears to have committed anoffence should then be prosecuted for it requires a number ofassessments and weighing of interests. Yet, to read the latestCode for Crown Prosecutors, one would think that the exerciseof prosecutorial discretion is a relatively unstructured process.This is because the Code does not require prosecutors to identifyan aim in seeking the punishment of the accused, and becauseit does not distinguish between the harms caused to the defendantby punishment and the distinct harms which are caused to himby prosecution. I shall argue that the aim of the prosecutor(assuming that guilt will be proven) should be to decide whetherthe aims of punishment of the accused would be justified bythe likely costs of the proceedings, but that this aim may beconstrained by considering the harms which may be caused tothe defendant by prosecution. If this structure were to be accepted,then it would both be easier to draft a Code for Crown Prosecutorswhich has useful guiding value and to identify to whom the prosecutorshould be accountable for his decisions.     

Suicide in a patient with undiagnosed periarteritis nodosa

Surveys of medical examiners' records have shown that as many as one-third of suicide victims have serious physical illnesses. We report the case of a 56-year-old woman who committed suicide by drug overdose. At autopsy, she had severe widespread periarteritis nodosa, which had been unsuspected during life. The identification of treatable physical illness in suicide victims is important in suicide prevention, yet such illness may be overlooked after death unless a forensic autopsy is performed.     

An Evaluation of Malingering Screens with Competency to Stand Trial Patients: A Known-Groups Comparison

The assessment of malingering is a fundamental component of forensic evaluations that should be considered with each referral. In systematizing the evaluation of malingering, one option is the standardized administration of screens as an initial step. The current study assessed the effectiveness of three common screening measures: the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test (M-FAST; Miller, 2001), the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS; Widows & Smith, 2004), and the Evaluation of Competency to Stand Trial-Revised Atypical Presentation Scale (ECST-R ATP; Rogers, Tillbrook, & Sewell, 2004). Using the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS) as the external criterion, 100 patients involved in competency to stand trial evaluations were categorized as either probable malingerers (n=21) or nonmalingerers (n=79). Each malingering scale produced robust effect sizes in this known-groups comparison. Results are discussed in relation to the comprehensive assessment of malingering within a forensic context.