A metric method for sex determination using the proximal femur and fragmentary hipbone

The pubic bone is considered one of the best sources of information for determining sex using skeletal remains, but can be easily damaged postmortem. This problem has led to the development of nonpelvic methods for cases when the pubic bone is too damaged for analysis. We approached this problem from a different perspective. In this article, we present an approach using new measurements and angles of the proximal femur to recreate the variation in the pubic bone. With a sample from the Terry Collection (n > 300), we use these new variables along with other traditional measurements of the femur and hipbone to develop two logistic regression equations (femur and fragmentary hipbone, and femur only) that are not population specific. Tests on an independent sample (Grant Collection; n = 37-40) with a different pattern of sexual dimorphism resulted in an allocation accuracy of 95-97% with minimal difference by sex.     

The Intention Debate in German Criminal Law

Abstract.  This article considers the various suggestions that have been put forward by German scholars to replace the traditional concept of intention, which the author has criticised elsewhere ( Taylor 2004 ). The debate on this topic has become a minor academic industry in Germany, and should be better known as the English-speaking world struggles with its own concepts of intention. Despite the great amount of effort and ingenuity devoted to this topic in Germany, however, the author concludes that only one theory of intention, that put forward by Professor Wolfgang Frisch, shows any substantial degree of promise.     

Studying the reach of deterrence: Can deterrence theory help explain police misconduct?

This article reports the first perceptual deterrence study of a sample of police officers. The study investigated the influence of traditional deterrence considerations, extralegal sanctions, and impulsivity on the intention to commit several hypothesized acts of police misconduct. The results were largely consistent with perceptual deterrence findings from samples of college students, experienced offenders, and corporate managers. In particular, this study found that both legal and extralegal sanction threats potentially deter police misconduct. Further, it found that impulsivity diminished the deterrent influence of both sanction forms. The study also found that some of the effects of the explanatory variables depended on whether officers had prior punishment experience. The article discusses the implications of its findings for combating police misconduct and for deterrence research generally.     

Enhancing public participation through narrative analysis

Effective public participation requires methods of policy analysis that can accommodate the discourse of the participants' opinions, preferences and values. This requires analytic methods that retain and convey the social and cultural contexts of the discourse of culturally diverse communities. Narrative policy analysis can incorporate cultural and social diversity within the process of analysing and presenting public preferences. Labov's evaluation model is used as a basis for describing how narrative analysis can be used to identify and present public preferences within a participation process. The value of this approach is demonstrated with reference to a participation process conducted on environmental quality.     

Environmental equity and public participation

The principles and practice of public participation can serve to promote environmental equity for disadvantaged social groups. The effectiveness of such practice in preventing or reducing environmental inequity depends upon the use of participation methodology which caters to the cultural and social needs of such groups. These methods need to provide appropriate forms of information, suitable venues for participation, and access to expertise and education which enable the public to understand policy issues and formulate preferences. The extent to which public preferences are incorporated in policy decisions determines the worth of public participation programs in promoting environmental equity.     

Everyday forms of state decomposition: Quetzaltenango,Guatemala, 1954⋆

This essay explores how Guatemala's 1952 agrarian reform played out among Quetzalteco K'iche's. Much of the academic writing on the revolution is concerned with the way the agrarian reform affected indigenous communities. These studies either view the reform as creating bitter political conflicts within the community, thereby weakening or destroying local institutions of communal politics and identification, or else they understand the reform as deepening incipient class divisions. In all of these studies,‘conflict’is understood to be something antithetical to‘community’. Yet conflict is as essential to communal formation as are more visible identity markers, suggesting an intriguing correlation: the greater the degree of communal conflict, the greater the level of communal identification.