Parents’ knowledge and attitudes about youths’ interrogation rights

Some states and police agencies require youth to consult with parents before or during interrogation by police, yet these policies rely on the untested assumption that parents themselves are knowledgeable about police interrogation practices and youths’ rights. This study assessed knowledge of, and attitudes about, juvenile interrogations in a sample of parents (N?=?294) recruited from urban locales. On average, parents correctly answered fewer than half of the questions about juvenile interrogation practices; knowledge about parental notification procedures was especially poor. At the same time, parents strongly endorsed youths’ rights to support (including support from parents) during police questioning contexts and only moderately endorsed youths’ decision-making autonomy, even for older youth who are legally adults.     

Quality assurance testing of an explosives trace analysis laboratory--further improvements

The Forensic Explosives Laboratory (FEL) operates within the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) which is part of the UK Government Ministry of Defence (MOD). The FEL provides support and advice to the Home Office and UK police forces on matters relating to the criminal misuse of explosives. During 1989 the FEL established a weekly quality assurance testing regime in its explosives trace analysis laboratory. The purpose of the regime is to prevent the accumulation of explosives traces within the laboratory at levels that could, if other precautions failed, result in the contamination of samples and controls. Designated areas within the laboratory are swabbed using cotton wool swabs moistened with ethanol water mixture, in equal amounts. The swabs are then extracted, cleaned up and analyzed using Gas Chromatographs with Thermal Energy Analyzer detectors. This paper follows on from a previous published paper describing the regime and summarizing subsequent results from approximately 6 years of tests. Lessons learned and improvements made over the period are also discussed. Monitoring samples taken from surfaces within the trace laboratories and trace vehicle examination bay have, with few exceptions, revealed only low levels of contamination, predominantly of RDX. Analysis of the control swabs, processed alongside the monitoring swabs, has demonstrated that in this environment the risk of forensic sample contamination, assuming all the relevant anti-contamination procedures have been followed, is so small that it is considered to be negligible. The monitoring regime has also been valuable in assessing the process of continuous improvement, allowing sources of contamination transfer into the trace areas to be identified and eliminated.     

Examining the Overlap and Prediction of Multiple Forms of Child Maltreatment,Stressors, and Socioeconomic Status: A Longitudinal Analysis of Youth Outcomes

Analyses were conducted to examine the extent of overlap and predictive strength of multiple forms of child maltreatment and stressors internal and external to the family. Findings suggest a strong association between child maltreatment (physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence) and stressors (family conflict, personal problems of parents, and external constraints on the family). After controlling for stressors, family socioeconomic status, and child gender, a general construct of child maltreatment was predictive of internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescents. Specific effects of child physical and sexual abuse were revealed in these longitudinal structural equation model tests.

Risk factors for violence and relational aggression in adolescence

Analyses examined risk factors for seventh-and ninth-grade youth categorized as nonoffenders, physically violent, relationally aggressive, and both violent and relationally aggressive. Bivariate and multivariate results showed that relationally aggressive youth were elevated on most risks above levels for nonoffenders but lower than those for youth who were violent alone or violent in combination with relational aggression. Youth who were both relationally aggressive and violent did not differ from those who were violent alone on most risk factors examined. Peer, individual, and family risks were among the strongest predictors.     

Characteristics and Prediction of Cranial Crush Injuries in Children*†

Abstract: This study documents four clinical cases of fatal crush injuries to children between 1.5 and 6 years of age with correlations between modeled stress and clinically observed fracture patterns. The clinical case fractures were concentrated in the basicranium, bridged the impact sites, and traversed the middle cranial fossa in the area of the spheno‐occipital synchondrosis. The crushing forces from these cases were recreated on a simplified finite element model of a cranium by applying bilateral pressures to corresponding regions. Numerous trials were run to develop a representative pattern of principal stress directions. In all cases, the highest tensile stresses were located on the basicranium and corresponded to the observed fracture path(s). These results suggest that prefailure stress field diagrams may predict fracture propagation paths, although these will not be exact. Also, these analyses indicate that quasi‐static bilateral loading of the cranium may lead to predictable fracture of the basicranium.     

Cloud forecasting: Legal visibility issues in saturated environments

The advent of cloud computing has brought the computing power of corporate data processing and storage centers to lightweight devices. Software-as-a-service cloud subscribers enjoy the convenience of personal devices along with the power and capability of a service. Using logical as opposed to physical partitions across cloud servers, providers supply flexible and scalable resources. Furthermore, the possibility for multitenant accounts promises considerable freedom when establishing access controls for cloud content. For forensic analysts conducting data acquisition, cloud resources present unique challenges. Inherent properties such as dynamic content, multiple sources, and nonlocal content make it difficult for a standard to be developed for evidence gathering in satisfaction of United States federal evidentiary standards in criminal litigation. Development of such standards, while essential for reliable production of evidence at trial, may not be entirely possible given the guarantees to privacy granted by the Fourth Amendment and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Privacy of information on a cloud is complicated because the data is stored on resources owned by a third-party provider, accessible by users of an account group, and monitored according to a service level agreement. This research constructs a balancing test for competing considerations of a forensic investigator acquiring information from a cloud.     

Assessing a Child’s Experience of Multiple Maltreatment Types: Some Unfinished Business

Available research indicates that maltreated children frequently experience multiple types of maltreatment, although relatively few studies examine this issue directly. Review of existing studies also shows that, when investigated, maltreatment types are often correlated. However, from study to study the strength of associations among maltreatment types varies considerably, apparently due to methodological differences, such as differences in operational definitions of the maltreatment types, composition of samples and/or method of scaling used. Failure to account for overlap among maltreatment types can result in a misleading picture of a child’s trauma history. This in turn can lead to an inaccurate evaluation of the relationship between a child’s victimization experiences and later developmental outcomes. The wide variation in correlations among the maltreatment types from study to study raises questions about the validity of the different operational definitions used. Improving the construct validity of the maltreatment type measures is proposed as the means to obtaining more consistent results. Steps by which to achieve this objective are outlined. This project (1 RO1 HD049767-01A2) is co-funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). The authors wish to thank M. Jean Russo for reviewing a draft of this paper.     

Who Said What? The Effects of Source Cues in Issue Frames

Drawing on previous research concerning the role that source cues play in political information processing, we examine whether an ideological identity match between the source of a framed message and the respondent moderates framing effects. We test our hypotheses in two experiments concerning attitudes toward a proposed rally by the Ku Klux Klan. In Experiment 1 (N = 274), we test our hypothesis in a simple issue framing experiment. We find that framing effects occur for strong identifiers only when there is a match between the ideology of the speaker and respondent. In Experiment 2 (N = 259), we examine whether matched frames resonate equally well when individuals are simultaneously exposed to competing frames. The results from this experiment provide mixed support for our hypotheses. The results from our studies suggest that identity matching is an important factor to consider in future framing research.     

Wheat from chaff: Third‐party monitoring and FEC enforcement actions

Regulatory theory suggests that providing agencies with multiple sanctioning options allows them to dispose promptly of less serious matters and thereby conserve resources to pursue serious offenders. However, agencies dependent on third‐party monitoring may have their enforcement agendas skewed toward more trivial violations. We consider these competing expectations by analyzing enforcement actions at the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 1999 to 2004 . The FEC – an agency heavily dependent on third‐party monitoring – expanded its enforcement options in 2000 by creating two new programs to pursue low‐level offenders, while leaving its monitoring strategy unchanged. We hypothesized that more sanctioning options would allow the FEC to allocate its resources more efficiently, and thus deal more effectively with the skew created by third‐party monitoring. We found instead that although the FEC disposed more promptly of low‐level infractions, it was no more effective at focusing on serious violations. Our results suggest that for many agencies, expanding enforcement options without addressing monitoring has limited ability to resolve enforcement problems.