Modeling Bone Surface Morphology: A Fully Quantitative Method for Age‐at‐Death Estimation Using the Pubic Symphysis

The pubic symphysis is widely used in age estimation for the adult skeleton. Standard practice requires the visual comparison of surface morphology against criteria representing predefined phases and the estimation of case‐specific age from an age range associated with the chosen phase. Known problems of method and observer error necessitate alternative tools to quantify age‐related change in pubic morphology. This paper presents an objective, fully quantitative method for estimating age‐at‐death from the skeleton, which exploits a variance‐based score of surface complexity computed from vertices obtained from a scanner sampling the pubic symphysis. For laser scans from 41 modern American male skeletons, this method produces results that are significantly associated with known age‐at‐death (RMSE = 17.15 years). Chronological age is predicted, therefore, equally well, if not, better, with this robust, objective, and fully quantitative method than with prevailing phase‐aging systems. This method contributes to forensic casework by responding to medico‐legal expectations for evidence standards.     

PRIVATIZATION AND CORRECTIONS POLICY

Because corrections is a multibillion dollar growth industry it is attractive to profitmaking firms. The issue is not whether private firms should b e involved in corrections, for they already are; the issue i s how much Involvement should there b e and in what areas. The principal argument used in favor of private involvement is that they will be more efficient than public agencies. But, while this may well be true, the problem is, what impact will this have on corrections policy? Will it increase the move toward retribution and away from rehabilitation? Existing private involvement in corrections has been primarily in the direction of finding workable alternatives to prisons. Private profitmaking firms may take us in the opposite direction. A number of other issues and problems of privatization also are discussed.     

Citizen participation and judgment in policy analysis: A case study of urban air quality policy

The emphasis currently placed on citizen participation in planning results in part from the recognition that planning requires judgments that have both value and technical components. This article describes a case study of a citizen participation process in which planners' judgments, rather than the judgments of the members of a citizens' task force, seemed to dictate the outcome. Although citizens were supposed to be influential in the policy analysis, they were, in effect, excluded from a meaningful role in the process. The analysis was actually guided by planners' supposedly technical judgments. Those judgments had important value implications, however, and those implications were not made clear to the citizens' task force. Examples are given of judgments made by planners at each stage of the analysis and the value components of those judgments are discussed. In each example, the judgments resulted in elimination of alternatives, selection of information, or integration of information. Two examples of methods of citizen participation which can increase the influence of citizens' judgments are also described.The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.     

Computerized lie detection: Advancing the state of the art

Several questions addressing human versus computerized lie detection have been answered as a result of technological advances in the computer field. User friendly software has enabled the polygraph examiner to make necessary test adjustments in “real time” clinical environments. Many of the issues surrounding test procedures and chart evaluation are resolved incorporating this proven technology. Particularly significant is the conversion of physiological responses of a binary system to that of a digital recording, eliminating the subjective errors associated with manual chart measurements usually found with the inexperienced examiner. Online acquisition of data utilizing the ability to make corrections in recording artifacts, along with the capability to perform the final exam analysis in record time are two major examples of computer advantages in the truth verification field.     

System maintenance and legitimation: An historical illustration of the impact of national task forces and committees on correction

Historically, national bodies have addressed the problem of change and reform within the correctional system. The thesis of this article is that special task force commissions, such as the National Advisory Commission on Corrections which generated extensive standards and goals for corrections in 1973, inhibit rather than promote changed within the system they are changed with reforming. This negative impact takes place for several reasons: First, the establishment of such commissions will tend to reduce pressures for change. Second, the members of such commissions, by virtue of their socialization and training, are more adept at processing the language of the system than dealing with its substance. Third, commissions, by making recommendations for change, revise the language through which the system is conceptualized, which in effect legitimizes the system in its existing form.Commissions iterate and legitimize the status quo rather than promote system-wide change. The changes which do occur are only those which are necessary to insure that the system will remain stable. In an attempt to illustrate the arguments, excerpts from Corrections, published by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1973) are compared with Transactions, published by the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline (1870).