On the power of secondary confession evidence

Research on primary confessions has demonstrated that it is a powerful form of evidence. The goal of the current research was to investigate whether secondary confessions – the suspect confesses to another individual who in turn then reports the confession to the police – could be as persuasive. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read a murder trial containing an eyewitness identification, a secondary confession, and character testimony, and made midtrial assessments of the evidence. Results indicated that the secondary confession was evaluated as the most incriminating. In Experiment 3, participants read summaries of four criminal trials, each of which contained a primary confession, a secondary confession, eyewitness identification, or none of the above. The two confession conditions produced significantly higher conviction rates. Our findings suggest that secondary confessions are another powerful and potentially dangerous form of evidence.     

Birth and death in a new land attitudes to infant death in colonial Australia

The goldrush colony of Victoria, Australia, was a favoured destination for aspirational emigrants from nineteenth-century Britain. Yet the persistence of high rates of infant mortality blighted the happiness of many first and second generation immigrant families alone in a new land. Drawing on birth, death and inquest records this paper interrogates the experience of infant death amongst the poorest families in the capital city popularly known as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ during the second half of the nineteenth century. Although few infants died alone, the familial and community networks in which they were enmeshed were not always committed to their survival. While the paper argues that there was a hierarchy of value which determined the degree to which the death of a child would be welcomed or mourned, it also contests popular notions that evil baby farmers and unfeeling mothers were a major cause of infant death.     

‘An interesting and plausible proposal’: Bruce Lockhart,Sidney Reilly and the Latvian Riflemen,Russia 1918

The details of the plot by Lockhart and Reilly to overthrow Lenin in summer 1918 are well established, as is the role played by the Cheka in infiltrating it. One element remains unclear, however: why did Britain's Russia expert and her ‘master spy’ think that Lenin's ‘praetorian guard’, the Latvian Riflemen, might be ‘turned’. New evidence reveals that anti‐Bolshevik sentiment was growing among Latvian troops in autumn 1918, giving good grounds to embark on the enterprise. It was ‘an interesting and plausible proposal’, which failed partly because of Cheka penetration but also because Reilly changed the nature of the original proposal.     

Religion as an insulator of delinquency in schools

While much of the current social control literature has examined the role of religiosity in delinquency, very little attention has been given to its effect on school delinquency. This study sought to fill that void by examining the effectiveness of social bond theory in restraining students from committing school delinquency in a rural Southern county. Further, given the literature that suggests that delinquency varies along developmental stages, the authors also sought to determine the effect of the revised social bond along 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grades. Findings indicate that social control theory was moderately successful in explaining school delinquency, while religion achieved significance in the 6th, 8th, and 12th grades, but not the 10th grade. Suggestions for practitioners and policy makers are also discussed. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Criminal Justice Association, Raleigh, NC, 2004.     

An assessment of the accuracy of discriminant function equations for sex determination of the femur and tibia from a South African population

The purpose of this study is to test the accuracy of seven discriminant function equations that have been derived by Steyn and Is?an for sex determination using measurements of the femur and tibia of South Africans of European descent (SAED). While the validity of some of the discriminant functions has been assessed by the authors who derived them, no previous independent study has been carried out to assess the accuracy of these equations. These equations have not been tested on skeletons located outside of the Gauteng province. A suite of measurements were taken on 272 femora and 256 tibiae obtained from four South African skeletal collections. The validity of each of the previously published equations for the femur was confirmed. However, two functions of the tibia showed low accuracy rates, most likely due to difficulties in recording the distal epiphyseal breadth measurement, and thus were found to be poor assessors of sex.