Married to a ‘British Subject’

In the archives lie the stories of our past, stories that knowingly or unknowingly live in our present. For Aboriginal families, finding records can be a critical source of great healing, enhance and affirm identity, and provide families with new understandings of how things came to be. This essay affords agency to First Nations families looking to the archives for their stories, reading historical documents against the grain, and telling their stories their way. Through family memory, reflection, and archival research, it delivers the microhistory, rich in feeling, of one First Nations family, through the experiences of Mabel Ita Eatts (née Frederick), an ancestral matriarch, a Jaru woman, and the Great Grandmother of the author. Mabel was a member of the Stolen Generations and was later deeply influenced by exemption policy. Her story brings to life the struggles faced by Aboriginal ‘half-caste’ women living in Broome and Derby in the 1920s and 1930s, explicitly highlighting not only the invasive oppression expressed through this policy but, more importantly, how Mabel actively negotiated the system. This paper is a powerful example of how one Aboriginal family writes back to the colonising archive.     

“What Guarantees Do We Have?” Legal Tolls and Persistent Impunity for Feminicide in Guatemala

Guatemala has one of the highest levels of killings of women and impunity for violence against women in the world. Despite laws created to protect women, Guatemala, like other countries, generally fails at implementation. This article examines justice system obstacles in contemporary Guatemala to processing cases of feminicide—killings of women because they are women in a context of impunity—comparing two recent feminicide cases. It argues that the sociopolitical context in Guatemala, including structural violence, widespread poverty, inequality, corruption, and normalization of gender violence against women, generates penalties, or “legal tolls,” that are imposed on victims' families and contribute to impunity through undermining victims' attempts to navigate the justice system. The analysis focuses on the tolls of fear and time: the need to overcome fear of retaliation and the extraordinary time and effort it takes to do so in a corrupt and broken system.     

Police interrogation practice in Slovenia

Interrogation techniques are well explored, but in Slovenia it has remained unknown what interrogation techniques are used and what the basic characteristics of suspect interrogations are. The Slovenian interrogation manual proposes some coercive interrogation techniques and neglects their weaknesses. The aim of the current study was to examine Slovenian police officers’ beliefs as to the basic characteristics of their interrogations and whether techniques proposed by the manual are used in practice to begin to provide some insight into what actually happens in such interrogations. A survey instrument was used to obtain self-report data from a sample of criminal investigators. From 86 completed questionnaires it was found that a typical interrogation of a suspect lasts around 90 minutes and is not recorded. Interviewers typically use three interrogation techniques namely (i) conducting interrogations in isolation; (ii) identifying contradictions in the suspect's story; and (iii) confronting the suspect with evidence. Findings suggest that some coercive interrogation techniques are used in practice (e.g. offering moral justifications, alluding to have evidence of guilt, good cop/bad cop routine, and minimization). The study is the first insight into the practices of Slovenian investigators when questioning suspects. Differences among general, white-collar and organized crime investigators are also discussed.     

Sex Trafficking and the State: Applying Domestic Abuse Interventions to Serve Victims of Sex Trafficking

Advocacy and scholarship addressing sex trafficking as a human rights issue has become a transnational effort, but there has been less attention to sub-national efficacy. Through analyzing progressive justice system responses to domestic violence in Duluth, Minnesota that have been adopted worldwide, this paper demonstrates how to effectively apply these local advances in order to address sex trafficking on a global scale. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to understanding the intersections between domestic abuse and sex trafficking. A key empirical finding is that a coordinated community response (including the justice system and women’s organizations) is crucial for advancing domestic abuse training, monitoring, and legislation—and this coordination can also be productively utilized for improving responsiveness to victims of sex trafficking across a diverse range of socio-legal and economic contexts.     

Detection of Tooth‐Colored Restorative Materials for Forensic Purposes Based on Their Optical Properties: An In Vitro Comparative Study

Victim identification using dental records involves antemortem and postmortem comparison of dental charts. Since dental restorations may be part of such records, identifying them accurately is critical. The objective of this study was to compare the diagnostic reliability and validity of two optical methods for identifying tooth‐colored restorations (digital imaging fiber optic transillumination (DiFOTI) using near infrared light, and fluorescence‐aided identification of restorations (FAIR)) with conventional diagnostic methods. Four examiners identified and charted tooth‐colored restorations in three sets of typodonts on the bench using conventional visual and tactile examination, DiFOTI (DIAGNOcam?) and FAIR. All examinations were repeated after 4 weeks. Both the sensitivity (95%) and specificity (97%) of the FAIR method were significantly higher than those for DiFOTI (82% and 82%) and for conventional inspection (71% and 82%). In conclusion, FAIR method performed better than conventional examination and DiFOTI, and was more reliable for identifying tooth‐colored restorations.