Critical Punishment Memorialization in Canada

Recent criminological scholarship on penal history museums has shown how sites of popular culture tend to silence the voices of prisoners and present them in ways that legitimate the deprivation of their liberty. While representations that reinforce the penal status quo are observable at most Canadian penal history sites, there are outliers that situate imprisonment as a form of oppression, and account for prisoners’ struggles and resistance. Drawing on three case studies from a 5-year qualitative research project on Canadian lock-up, jail, prison and penitentiary museums, we discuss what critical punishment memorialization looks like in a context of penal intensification in Canada. We show how such critical representations depend on the historical contextualization of penality as a manifestation of colonialism and/or the incorporation of prisoners’ voices and standpoint. We argue that the critical representations and narratives at these museum sites open up possibilities for the social distance between penal spectators and the incarcerated to be diminished by bringing humanizing prisoner narratives into focus in an otherwise dark tourist space.     

Do Mothers and Teens Disagree About Sexual Communication? A Methodological Reappraisal

This study investigated whether parent–teen disagreement in reports of sexual discussions is due to methodological factors. Forty-four mothers and their 12- to 15-year-old daughters (n = 18) and sons (n = 26) completed parallel questionnaires including measures of communication about 18 different sexual topics during the teen's entire life and during the past year. Analyses examined whether congruence rates were influenced by the use of global as compared to specific items, assessment of conversations during the teen's entire life as compared to the past year, and use of forced-choice as opposed to continuous-response categories. Taken as a whole, results support the notion that methodological limitations are partly responsible for lack of congruence in parent–teen reports. Suggestions for methodological improvements in future research are discussed.     

Collecting touch DNA from glass surfaces using different sampling solutions and volumes: Immediate and storage effects on genetic STR analysis

Touch DNA has become increasingly important evidence in todays' forensic casework. However, due to its invisible nature and typically minute amounts of DNA, the collection of biological material from touched objects remains a particular challenge that underscores the importance of the best collection methods for maximum recovery efficiency. So far, swabs moistened with water are often utilized in forensic crime scene investigations for touch DNA sampling, even though an aqueous solution provokes osmosis, endangering the cell's integrity. The aim of the research presented here was to systematically determine whether DNA recovery from touched glass items can be significantly increased by varying swabbing solutions and volumes compared with water-moistened swabs and dry swabbing. A second objective was to investigate the possible effects of storage of swab solutions prior to genetic analysis on DNA yield and profile quality when stored for 3 and 12 months, as is often the case with crime scene samples. Overall, the results indicate that adapting volumes of the sampling solutions had no significant effect on DNA yield, while the detergent-based solutions performed better than water and dry removal, with the SDS reagent yielding statistically significant results. Further, stored samples showed an increase in degradation indices for all solutions tested, but no deterioration in DNA content and profile quality, allowing for unrestricted processing of touch DNA samples stored for at least 12 months. One further finding was a strong intraindividual change in DNA amounts observed over the 23 deposition days which may be related to the donor's menstrual cycle.     

The Legal Context of School Violence: The Effectiveness of Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence in Schools

In the wake of recent school shootings, communities and legislatures are searching for law enforcement solutions to the perceived epidemic of school violence. A variety of legal measures have been debated and proposed. These include: the enactment of tougher gun control laws and more vigorous federal and local enforcement of existing gun control laws; the enactment of laws imposing civil or criminal liability on parents for their children's violent behavior; the establishment of specialized courts and prosecution strategies for handling juveniles who are charged with weapons offenses; stricter enforcement of school disciplinary codes; reform of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to make it easier to expel students for weapons violations; and greater use of alternative schools as placements for students who are charged with weapons violations.
  This article provides a legal and empirical analysis of proposed legislation in these areas as informed by social science research on the patterns of school violence, gun acquisition by juveniles, and the effectiveness of various laws and law enforcement measures. It proposes and discusses recommendations for legal reform. While efforts to reduce school violence will be most effective at the state and local levels, the United States federal government has an important role to play, particularly in federal‐state partnerships aimed at disrupting illegal gun markets, and through the formulation of national standards and guidelines. These standards and guidelines are for the enforcement of existing laws; inter‐agency law enforcement cooperation and information‐sharing (particularly using computer‐based analysis); effective school discipline and alternative educational settings for disruptive youth; and psycho‐educational interventions designed to detect and prevent school violence in the first place.     

Religion and Political Action in Postcommunist Europe

Patterns of political identification in postcommunist Europe are still weakly formed. The churches, however, command high levels of confidence, in sharp contrast to political parties. Representative surveys in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine in late 1997 and early 1998 indicate high levels of confidence in the churches in three of these nations, but not in the Czech Republic for reasons that appear connected to its forced conversion to Catholicism. The religious, as in other countries, are disproportionately female, but attenders in postcommunist Europe are not more likely to be elderly or resident in the countryside. There was little difference between church attenders and national populations in attitudes to the market, NATO membership, or the current government; there were rather larger differences between the countries, with Bulgarians the most favourable to the market, NATO and pro-market parties, and Ukrainians the least favourable. A multiple regression analysis found that church attendance of itself had little effect on attitudes or party preferences in either the Czech Republic or Slovakia; it did, however, increase support for the market, for joining NATO and for pro-market parties in Bulgaria and Ukraine. The relatively modest effects of overt religiosity are likely to be helpful to the formation of a democratic political culture, although account must also be taken of a strong association between the Muslim minorities in these countries and the political parties that seek to represent their interests.     

Exploring the influences on Australian agricultural professionals’ genetic engineering beliefs: an empirical analysis

This paper analyses what influences professionals’ beliefs on agricultural genetic engineering. A telephone survey was conducted in 2004 on Australian public agricultural professionals. Using an ordered probit regression, some of the significant key influences on overall beliefs were: age; research relevance; ethnicity; farm background; information and occupational effects; attitudes towards the current sustainability of conventional agriculture; attitudes towards agricultural research issues; and attitudes towards the individual aspects of genetic engineering. Somewhat surprisingly, subjective knowledge of genetic engineering was not a significant factor in influencing overall beliefs, although it did play a positive influence on some individual beliefs (such as the technology’s profitability benefits and that there is no need for more long-term research before further general release of genetically engineered products). However, more research on the links between actual knowledge and acceptance are needed before any definitive conclusions can be drawn.

Do Judicial Responses to Restraining Order Requests Discriminate Against Male Victims of Domestic Violence?

Every state in the United States authorizes its courts to issue civil orders of protection for victims of domestic violence. Ideally, restraining orders should be available to all victims. However, consistent with the patriarchal paradigm, research suggests that judicial responses to domestic violence temporary restraining order (TRO) requests may be sex-differentiated. This paper reports on a study that explored equal protection issues in family law by evaluating gender and violence profiles of a random sample of 157 TRO petitions involving intimate partners, dating couples, and married persons in a California district court. The majority of cases involved allegations of low or moderate levels of violence perpetrated by male defendants against female plaintiffs. Although there were no systematic differences in level of violence as a function of plaintiff sex, judges were almost 13 times more likely to grant a TRO requested by a female plaintiff against her male intimate partner, than a TRO requested by a male plaintiff against his female partner. Further analyses revealed that this sex differentiation was limited to cases involving allegations of low-level violence.