Quality of criminal responsibility reports submitted to the Hawaii judiciary

This paper is the third in a series of research reports on quality of forensic mental health evaluations submitted to the Hawaii judiciary. Previous studies examined quality of reports assessing competency to stand trial (CST) and post-acquittal conditional release, in felony defendants undergoing court-ordered examinations. Utilizing a 44-item quality coding instrument, this study examined quality of criminal responsibility reports in a sample of 150 forensic mental health evaluations conducted between 2006 and 2010 by court-appointed panels. Raters attained high levels of agreement in training and quality coding. Similar to the previous studies, overall quality of reports was mediocre, falling below the .80 quality criterion score for report elements, regardless of evaluator professional identification or employment status. Level of agreement between evaluators and judicial sanity determinations was “fair” using Cicchetti's (1994) standards for interpretation of intra-class correlations. Level of agreement was lower than previously published findings for CST reports and better than conditional release reports. Reasons for mediocre report quality and “fair” inter-rater agreement are discussed, including the fact that criminal responsibility evaluations are complex, retrospective in nature, and involve significant degrees of inference. In contrast to CST evaluations, assessment of criminal responsibility involves a mental state at the time of the offense evaluation. Threats to reliability in forensic reports are discussed. Suggestions for improvement of report quality are proffered, including standardization of procedures and report format and use of forensic assessment instruments.     

Time for a haircut: political regimes and sovereign debt restructurings

ABSTRACT

Conventional wisdom claims that reputation leads sovereign states to full debt repayment. However, defaults are recurrent, some debtor countries take a lot of time to end them, and some extract costly concessions from investors. This article argues that these differences are largely explained by the political regimes in the borrowing countries. While previous research examines whether democracies make more credible commitments, we analyze how democracies affect bargaining with foreign investors after a default occurs. Democracies, with their institutional checks, electoral uncertainty, greater transparency, and public deliberation, make swift decision-making harder, create incentives to pander and posture, and give leverage to minimize the win set of viable agreements. We test our theory on a comprehensive dataset of debt restructurings with private creditors in the period 1975–2017. The event history analysis indicates that democracies experience longer restructurings and the double-hurdle regression analysis shows that democracies obtain larger creditor losses. Further, there is interesting variation among democracies and autocracies. Our findings suggest that political regimes are crucial to explaining why cooperation fails in international debt markets.     

Sickle cell trait-associated deaths: a case series with a review of the literature

This study presents a series of 16 carriers of hemoglobin S (HbS) who died during various circumstances. Many of the cases were associated with mild to moderate exertion. The onset and/or duration of symptoms varied from a few minutes to several hours with many displaying a prolonged lucid interval with stable vital signs. Despite seeking medical treatment, sickle cell trait-related micro-occlusive crisis was never considered in the differential diagnosis. Several cases were associated with sudden death. In those deaths which were delayed, high anion gap and uncompensated metabolic acidosis were typical and were not heat related. Also characteristic were large increases in creatine kinase, alanine aminotransferase, and aspartate aminotransferase along with myoglobinemia. Although the antemortem diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis was made, the underlying cause was never deduced by the clinicians. The sickling found at autopsy is not always a postmortem artifact, and in the right circumstances can be diagnostic.     

Freedom in paradise: quality of conditional release reports submitted to the Hawaii judiciary

Annually thousands of insanity acquitees are released from mental hospitals when they are no longer determined to be dangerous. This research examined quality of post-acquittal Conditional Release (CR) reports submitted to the Hawaii Judiciary. Hawaii utilizes a “three panel” system for assessing trial felony competency, criminal responsibility, and conditional release, where typically two psychologists (one Department of Health and one community-based) and one community-based psychiatrist submit independent reports to the Court. One hundred fifty CR reports were rated using a 44-item report quality measure. Interrater reliability trials indicated good to excellent agreement between quality ratings. Overall level of report quality was poor regardless of examiners' professional discipline, employer, or board certification status. Concordance rates for CR opinions were poor. Level of agreement between the judicial determination and majority recommendations was also poor. Reasons for the poor quality and level of agreement are discussed with recommendations for report quality improvement, including standardization of procedures and use of forensic risk assessment instruments.     

On the Relationship between Violent Conflict and Wages in Colombia

We analyse how forced displacements caused by violent conflict are related to the wages of workers in Colombia. Using data from the Quality of Life Survey (2011–2014), we analyse the differences in wages between those forced by violence to move to other regions, and those who moved for other reasons. We apply Propensity Score Matching techniques to compare workers from the two groups, finding that forced displacement is related to decreases of between 10 and 29 per cent in the wages of males, and between 18 and 37 per cent in the wages of females, relative to their counterparts. Thus, forced displacements are related to poorer labour market outcomes in terms of wages.     

Los alcances del control judicial en la expropiación

The declaration of public use in takings is, in most constitutional systems, a guarantee every individual has against the power of the State to seize his or her property. The institute is of fundamental importance for the protection of (other) individual guarantees from the expropriatory power of the State. However, our Supreme Court’s traditional precedents do not allow its judicial control. This paper analyses what is public use and what is the reason for its importance. Then, it shows that the Supreme Court’s criteria have varied the matter, containing in its development an important exception and several ambivalences. Finally, it explains why it is more adequate to our constitutional principles, to the rights our Constitution grants and to the very nature of the institute of takings for the declaration of public use to be subject to judicial control.     

Recovery of DNA and fingerprints from touched documents

This study investigated the various factors affecting DNA profiling from DNA recovered from fingerprints deposited on paper before and after fingerprint enhancement treatments. The DNeasy^® plant mini kit (QIAGEN^®) was found to improve DNA recovery from paper by over 150% compared with the QIAamp^® mini kit. A significant decrease in the amount of DNA recovered was observed following treatment with DFO and/or Ninhydrin. This decrease in yield did not have a comparably significant effect on the quality of the SGM Plus™ profiles. Furthermore, this study found that whilst certain paper types, such as newspaper, magazine and filter paper allowed for the good recovery of DNA, common office paper and white card, strongly interfered with the recovery of DNA resulting in poor quality profiles.     

Institutional Suicide and Elite Coordination: The Spanish Transition Revisited

ABSTRACT

In the literature on democratisation, the Spanish case has a paradigmatic status, especially for the negotiations between the regime and the opposition. While these negotiations did stabilise the new regime, the transition was driven by the regime’s elites. The key event was the approval of the Law for Political Reform in November 1976, when the legislature voted its own demise. The change was done according to the rules of the system. To explain this reform, we offer a formal model of coordination and a statistical analysis of an original dataset of the 531 legislators. The reform was possible because of elites’ belief coordination.     

Intergovernmental Relations in the Reagan Era

This article reviews federal Reagan-era policies that affected grant-in-aid programs to state and local governments. We find the most important developments in federal aid policies of the Reagan years are twofold—the relative decline in the national government's involvement in domestic affairs and the concomitant rise in the role of the states. The administration achieved these effects by devolving federal authority to states and by reducing grant spending. Reagan's biggest cuts in federal aid outlays came in 1981; in subsequent years, total grant outlays began to rebound, increasing in nominal dollars to levels above those in the Carter years, though still below the high-water mark reached in 1978 in real terms. Medicaid, the largest federal aid program, accounts for most of the overall growth, masking cuts in operating and capital grant programs. Reagan's devolutionary and retrenchment policies are one of several factors we see as contributing to the rising role of states in domestic affairs, a trend we think is likely to continue in the next administration.     

Z-line examination by the PillCam~(TM) SB:Prospective comparison of three ingestion protocols

AIM:To evaluate the Z-line visualization by the PillCamTM SB2 using three different ingestion protocols. METHODS:Ninety consecutive patients undergoing small bowel capsule endoscopy(SBCE)between January and May 2008 were included in the study. They swallowed the capsule in the standing(Group A= 30),supine(Group B=30)and right supine positions (Group C=30).Baseline patient characteristics, difficulties in capsule ingestion,esophageal transit times(ETT)and Z-line visualization were noted. RESULTS:No significa...