Fatal accidents on glaciers: forensic, criminological, and glaciological conclusions

The rare event of a corpse immersed in glacier ice becoming exposed on a glacier surface is closely connected with the glaciological conditions at the scene and the site of the accident. Provided that the time since death is known, certain questions relative to the circumstances of a mountain accident can only be answered by considering glaciological aspects. How the scene of an accident can be reconstructed by inference from the site of discovery is discussed by means of three exemplary cases that occurred on Tyrolean glaciers (Austria) during the past 40 years: (1) Two corpses were discovered close above the equilibrium line in the accumulation area after 25 years. The two victims had fallen down a rock face after the breaking off of a cornice and had come to rest in the uppermost part of the accumulation area. (2) A victim was discovered in the lower ablation area 8 years after falling down a crevasse in the middle part of the ablation area. (3) A female alpinist was discovered at the very end of the glacier after 29 years; it was concluded that the accident must have happened in the accumulation area.     

Newspaper juries

This article reports on a field experiment on the effect of media information on people’s attitudes towards the justice system. For the duration of a year a Dutch local newspaper took small groups of readers, called ‘newspaper jurors’, to court sessions of criminal cases and subsequently reported on their experiences and perceptions. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined whether an attitude change in the general reader population of this particular local newspaper occurred as a result of the jury’s newspaper reports. Findings show that, after the treatment interval of 1 year, no attitude change in the general reader population could be identified that was absent in the control group.     

Lawyers of the Right: Networks and Organization

Lawyers for conservative and libertarian causes are active in organizing and mobilizing interest groups within the conservative coalition, and networks of relationships among those lawyers help to maintain and shape the coalition. Using data gathered in interviews with seventy-two such lawyers, this article analyzes characteristics of the lawyers and the structure of their networks. The findings suggest that the networks are divided into segments or blocks that are identified with particular constituencies, but that a distinct set of actors with extensive relationships serves to bridge the constituencies. Measures of centrality and brokerage confirm the structural importance of these actors in the network, and a search of references in news media confirms their prominence or prestige. This "core" set of actors occupies the "structural hole" in the network that separates the business constituency from religious conservatives. Libertarians, located near the core of the network, also occupy an intermediate position. Regression analysis of ties within the network suggests that the Federalist Society plays an important role in bringing the lawyers together.     

The Relationship Between Religious and Spiritual Factors and the Perpetration of Intimate Personal Violence

Despite some understanding of general correlates and possible antecedents to intimate partner violence (IPV) within the Christian community, the impact of religious and spiritual factors tends to be confounded by other factors and is often misjudged. Archival data from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) were used to examine the impact of nine religious and spiritual factors on the probability of IPV perpetration by males, aged 18 to 26, who nominally classified themselves as Catholic, Protestant, or Christian. Logistic regression results indicated that IPV perpetration could not be adequately predicted from the religious and spiritual factors. Given the geographic breadth and the size of the Add Health sample, no finding of a predictive model for Christian male-perpetrated IPV challenges the paradigm that religious and spiritual factors should be overtly addressed in faith-based batterers’ programs targeting young adult males.     

Using the state to change society: The example of ‘domestic violence’

North American research on the policing of ‘domestic violence’ has been very influential among policy makers in Great Britain. In particular, research which purports to verify the deterrence value of arrest has prompted the establishment of over thirty domestic violence units in London and similar initiatives elsewhere in Britain. The paper will outline the nature of the traditional police response to ‘family violence’ in London and the nature of the experimental innovations. Changes in police practice with regard to this type of violence will be put in the context of the organizational constraints and possibilities of policing. Finally, changing police responses to domestic violence will be evaluated in terms of the debate over the possibility of using the state or its organs to achieve social change.     

The Australian Welfare State: Has Federalism Made a Difference?

This paper examines the historical development of the Australian welfare state with a view to identifying the role that Australia's federal constitutional arrangements have played in shaping that development. Theoretical paradigms have been unanimous in their prognoses: that federal states are likely to be slow in developing welfare state programmes and typically spend less on them than unitary states. But recently it has been argued that federal institutions may have a “ratchet effect” of slowing down the pace of change, irrespective of its direction. The purpose of this chronological account of significant stages in the development of the Australian welfare state is to use the unfolding of historical events — far too rich in nuance and detail to be captured in quantitative modelling — as a test‐bed for establishing whether, and, if so, to what extent, federalism has impacted on the trajectory of Australian welfare state development.     

The view from below: Local government and Putin's reforms

Local government reforms in contemporary Russia are placed in the broader contexts of political reform under Putin and the historical relationship between local administration and the state. Reforms of local government thus help illuminate the architecture of contemporary state building in Russia and the degree to which contemporary Russia perpetuates political traditions. This study reviews the antecedent action in local government prior to the Putin era. It then examines the Kozak Commission and the new law on local government, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of these reforms. Finally, this study examines the challenges of implementing the reforms and what these challenges tell us about devolution and centralisation under Putin.