Working positively with sexual offenders: maximizing the effectiveness of treatment

In this article, the authors draw on literatures outside sexual offending and make suggestions for working more positively and constructively with these offenders. Although the management of risk is a necessary feature of treatment, it needs to occur in conjunction with a strength-based approach. An exclusive focus on risk can lead to overly confrontational therapeutic encounters, a lack of rapport between offenders and clinicians, and fragmented and mechanistic treatment delivery. The authors suggest that the goals of sexual offender treatment should be the attainment of good lives, which is achieved by enhancing hope, increasing self-esteem, developing approach goals, and working collaboratively with the offenders. Examples are provided of how these targets may be met. When this is done within a therapeutic context where the treatment providers display empathy and warmth and are rewarding and directive, the authors suggest that treatment effects will be maximized.     

Defending hospital mergers after the FTC's unorthodox challenge to the Evanston Northwestern--Highland Park transaction

Examining the Federal Trade Commission's retrospective challenge of a hospital merger in Illinois, the author provides an insightful analysis of one of the agency's major antitrust enforcement initiatives in health care in the last several years. Because the case produced several departures from antitrust orthodoxy, these departures may affect the trials of future hospital mergers that are challenged. The author reviews the methodology and evidence of the case, and he identifies theories and best practices that are important for administrators and legal practitioners to implement in future mergers.     

Automated Texture Recognition of Quartz Sand Grains for Forensic Applications*

Quartz sand surface texture analysis has been automated for the first time for forensic application. The derived Basic Image Features (BIFs) provide computer-generated texture recognition from preexisting data sets. The technique was applied to two distinct classification problems; first, the ability of the system to discriminate between (quartz) sand grains with upturned plate features (indicative of eolian, global sand sea environments) and grains that do not exhibit these features. A success rate of grain classification of 98.8% was achieved. Second, to test the ability of the computer recognition system to identify specific energy levels of formation of the upturned plate surface texture features. Such recognition ability has to date been beyond manual geological interpretation. The discrimination performance was enhanced to an exact classification success rate of 81%. The enhanced potential for routine forensic investigation of the provenance of common quartz sand is indicated.     

The effect on reconviction of an intervention for drink-driving offenders in the community

This study reports an evaluation of the Drink-Impaired Drivers program in the English and Welsh probation service. Participants were adult male offenders who had been convicted of a drink-driving offence and were serving community sentences. The 1-year drink-drive reconviction rates were compared for offenders who completed the program, offenders who started but did not complete the program, and a comparison group who were not allocated to the program. At 1-year follow-up, there was no reconviction among offenders who had completed the program. Multivariate analysis showed that the noncompleters had a significantly higher rate of reconviction than the completers and comparison group.     

Identification and age estimation of blood stains on colored backgrounds by near infrared spectroscopy

Non-destructive identification and subsequent age estimation of blood stains are significant steps in forensic casework. The latter can provide important information on the temporal aspects of a crime. As previously shown, visible spectroscopy of blood stains on white backgrounds can successfully be used for their identification and age estimation. The use of this technique however, is hampered by dark backgrounds. In the present study the feasibility to use near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was evaluated for blood stain identification and age estimation on dark backgrounds. Using NIR reflectance spectroscopy, blood stains were distinguished from other substances with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. In addition, Partial Least Squares Regression analysis was applied to estimate the age of blood stains on colored backgrounds. The age of blood stains up to 1 month old was estimated successfully with a root mean squared error of prediction of 8.9%. These findings are an important step toward the practical implementation of blood stain identification and age estimation in forensic casework, where a large variety of backgrounds can be encountered.     

Dissenting and Concurring Opinions in International Investment Arbitration: How the Arbitrators Frame Their Need to Differ

Though still relatively infrequent, the issuing of dissenting and concurring opinions is becoming more common in international investment arbitration. This paper reviews the reasons for delivering separate opinions envisaged in the bibliography on investment arbitration, comparing these with practices in the related area of commercial arbitration. Fourteen recent separate opinions appended to ICSID arbitration awards and decisions are then analysed to determine how the arbitrators themselves explain why they have taken the drastic step of issuing a separate opinion. Potential areas of convergence between investment arbitration and commercial arbitration practice will be addressed.     

Salaried lawyers and billable hours: a new perspective from the sociology of work

The work of legal professionals is changing rapidly, but the changes have not yet been thoroughly investigated from the perspective of the sociology of work. This paper draws on a research project that examined the work of solicitors in private practice in Melbourne, Australia. It uses in-depth interviews, results of secondary surveys and other data sources in order to describe the dominant working-time patterns. The evidence points to a common pattern of rigid and demanding schedules, which can be traced back to the indirect pressures exerted by the widespread system of ‘billable hours’. The paper takes up the challenge to examine the operation of this system. We argue that the billable hours system, initially just a technique for billing clients, has been transformed into a tool for measuring and controlling the work of salaried solicitors, through setting of targets, close time recording, careful monitoring, and a supple set of sanctions.     

Good Faith and the Ubiquity of the ‘Relational’ Contract

The judgment of Leggatt J in Yam Seng Pte Ltd v International Trade Corporation Ltd shows the common belief that the English law of contract does not have a doctrine of good faith to be mistaken. That law does not have a general principle of good faith, but its doctrine of good faith, articulated through numerous specific duties, is more suitable for the interpretation of contracts according to the intentions of the parties than a general principle which invites the imposition of exogenous standards. That Yam Seng involved a relational contract does not mean that paternalistic exogenous standards should be imposed. It means that the good faith obligations essential even to a commercial contract of this sort must be implied in order to give efficacy to the fundamentally co‐operative contractual relationship.     

Blessed be Discord, 1910: Ricardo Flores Magón's Manifesto Mode

This article explores how Ricardo Flores Magón used images to transpose the graphic tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican political journalism into prose by deploying montage to craft both allegorical and prismatic images: while certain images are divorced from their original context and take on a new life, others, analogically related to a single idea, appear prismatically in fragments on the page. The affinities Flores Magón's writing shared with modernismo and the historical avant garde – as intensification of the former and precursor of the latter – have been a blind spot for literary history, to which this article attempts to restore the importance of his writing.