Juvenile Delinquency in Central European Cities: A Comparison of Registration and Processing Structures in the 1990s

The authors trace and compare the developments in recorded juvenile delinquency in Hamburg, Prague, Cracow and Budapest from 1991-1997 and then analyse the processing and selection procedures of the various justice systems. They devote special attention to ethnic minorities within this filtering process. The most salient feature is that the crime rates and processing structures in the former socialist countries display considerable similarities. It would almost be possible to speak of a specific type of criminal justice system with a typical form of reaction. While in the West, the large number of suspects is considerably reduced during later stages of selection to a much smaller number (those actually sentenced and/or imprisoned), what the authors call a funnel model, in the East a smaller number of suspected offenders enters this selection process, but tends to remain within it and be sentenced - the cylinder model. These procedural structures have changed little in the 1990s, and there has certainly not been any increasing alignment of the Eastern systems with the Western one. Indeed, the difference has, if anything, become greater. These lower crime statistics as compared with the West - represented here by Hamburg - are, however, not only the result of equally large discrepancies between the real crime rates, but in this regard the pro-active crime prevention measures of the police, which in Hamburg have caused the inclusion of an increased number of juveniles and foreigners in the crime statistics since 1995, have also had a great effect. The research project thus clearly demonstrates the importance of interpreting crime statistics neither as a true representation nor as a distorted reflection of the activities of a criminal justice system. Instead, these statistics should be seen as reflecting specific processing procedures and methods of crime control.     

Alternative primers for DYS391 typing: advantages of their application to forensic genetics

The amplification of the STR DYS391, using the primers described in the Genome Data Base (GDB: G00-365-251), shows not only an additional band to the Y-specific one in males with a size range of 26 bp less than those of DYS391 locus alleles, but also a polymorphic pattern in females in the same size range as the additional band observed in males. The DYS391 pattern in families reflects a Y-specific linked locus and also a polymorphic X locus with an X-linked pattern of inheritance. A first screening in the X homologous locus allowed the identification of five different alleles. Allele frequencies were explored in different population groups for both the Y locus and the homologous locus in the X chromosome showing a similar allele distribution pattern in the X and Y homologous loci. An alternative reverse primer was designed to amplify the Y-chromosome specific STR in order to improve the specificity and applicability of this system to forensic genetics. Comparative results of the amplification with the new and the previously described primers proved that with this new primer there is a substantial increase in the specificity of the amplification. Moreover, a smaller fragment is amplified with a size out of the range of the alleles of the other Y-STRs usually used in forensic applications, therefore simplifying its inclusion in multiplex systems.