Police response to domestic violence: making decisions about risk and risk management

Assessing and responding to risk are key elements in how police respond to domestic violence. However, relatively little is known about the way police make judgments about the risks associated with domestic violence and how these judgments influence their actions. This study examines police decisions about risk in domestic violence incidents when using a risk assessment instrument. Based on a sample of 501 risk assessments completed by police in Australia, this study shows that a limited number of items on the risk assessment instrument are important in police officers' decisions about risk. Statistical analyses show that the victim's level of fear contributes to police officers' judgment on the level of risk and their decisions on which risk management strategy should be used. These findings suggest that research on police responses to domestic violence needs to pay greater attention to situational dynamics and the task requirements of risk-based decision making.     

Capital Jury Deliberation: Effects on Death Sentencing,Comprehension, and Discrimination

This study focused on whether and how deliberations affected the comprehension of capital penalty phase jury instructions and patterns of racially discriminatory death sentencing. Jury-eligible subjects were randomly assigned to view one of four versions of a simulated capital penalty trial in which the race of defendant (Black or White) and the race of victim (Black or White) were varied orthogonally. The participants provided their initial “straw” sentencing verdicts individually and then deliberated in simulated 4–7 person “juries.” Results indicated that deliberation created a punitive rather than lenient shift in the jurors’ death sentencing behavior, failed to improve characteristically poor instructional comprehension, did not reduce the tendency for jurors to misuse penalty phase evidence (especially, mitigation), and exacerbated the tendency among White mock jurors to sentence Black defendants to death more often than White defendants.     

Research on multiple murder: Where are we in the state of the art?

Despite considerable public and academic attention to the phenomenon of serial homicide and mass murder, researchers have generally lamented the lack of progress that has been made, especially in the area of theoretical advances. As has been found in other areas that have embarked on similar developmental paths, taking stock of the historical development of the field in terms of the type and quality of research being conducted is an important step in moving forward. To address this concern, the present study provides a review of the current “state of the art” in multiple homicide research. Although academic articles exploring this phenomenon have steadily increased, the statistical and methodological sophistication of these studies is sorely lacking. Furthermore, researchers investigating this phenomenon rarely publish multiple articles in the area and these are generally spread through many different journals and fields. Suggestions for future research and recommendations to streamline the efforts in this field are provided based on the study results.     

Ensuring an Inventor's Patent Rights: Recent Supreme Court Case Clarifies Timing of Application

Patent law encourages the development and transfer of technology by making the information regarding new inventions public knowledge, while providing the inventor with the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention for 20 years. Because the exclusive rights to the invention are limited in time, and to prevent the inventor from gaining additional time, the application for a patent must be filed within a statutorily prescribed time. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc. clarified one aspect related to the timing of the patent application. This article specifically examines the Pfaff case and the question of when an invention subject to a contract to sell exists as it relates to the timing of patent applications.     

Unjust Enrichment and the Autonomy of Law: Private Law as Public Morality

Craig Rotherham reviews:
Hanoch Dagan, Unjust Enrichment: A Study of Private Law and Public Values     

Cynicism and job satisfaction in policing: Muddying the waters

Since Niederhoffer’s (1969) pioneering work, police cynicism has been a staple in research on police officers and police work, various typologies of police officers and definitions of the police subculture or police personality rely to a greater or lesser degree on conceptions of cynicism and suspicion. More recent research has questioned both the validity of measures of cynicism and typologies of police officers. The present study examines the link between cynicism and job satisfaction which is implicit in the literature. Findings indicate not only that these two factors are correlated, but also that relationships reported between cynicism and other factors in policing are mirrored by correlations between those factors and a measure of job satisfaction. The question which arises is, to what degree are correlations reported in the literature spurious, resulting not from cynicism, as was thought, but from a more generic measure of job satisfaction?     

Book reviews

Edward F. Mickolus, Terrorism, 1988–1991: A Chronology of Events and Selective Annotated Bibliography, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993, Pp.916, index. $125. ISBN 0–313–28970–0

Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 376, notes, 22 photos, biblio., index. $39.50/£32.50. ISBN 0–691–08778–4

Walter Laqueur, Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Pp.318, photos, biblio note. $27.50. ISBN 0–06‐

Robert W. White, Provisional Irish Republicans: An Oral and Interpretive History, Westport, CT, and. London: Greenwood Press, 1993. Pp.206, biblio, index. $55. ISBN 0–313–28564–8