On the Complexity and Accuracy of Geographic Profiling Strategies

Geographic profilers have access to a repertoire of strategies for predicting a serial offenders home location. These strategies range in complexity—some involve more calculations to implement than others—and the assumption often made is that more complex strategies will outperform simpler strategies. In the present study, we tested the relationship between the complexity and accuracy of 11 strategies. Data were crime site and home locations of 16 UK residential burglars who had committed 10 or more crimes each. The results indicated that strategy complexity was not positively related to accuracy. This was also found to be the case across tasks that ranged in complexity (where complexity was determined by the number of crimes used to make a prediction). Implications for police policies and procedures, as well as our understanding of human decision-making, are discussed.To whom correspondence should be addressed. Phone: +1-709-737-3101; E-mail: bsnook@play.psych.mun.ca     

Co-occurrence and Correlates of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Major Depression in Physically Abused Women

Ninety two women presenting for treatment for marital problems and who were physically victimized by their spouses (e.g., pushing, shoving, punching) within the past year participated in this study. There were three study objectives: (1) document rates and co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), (2) identify predictors of PTSD and depression symptom frequency/severity, and (3) systematically evaluate disorder-specific group differences in marital- and marital violence-related factors. Within the month prior to assessment, 29.8% of the sample met diagnostic criteria for PTSD and 32% for MDD. MDD and PTSD were significantly, but moderately, correlated at both the symptom and diagnosis levels. However, PTSD symptom frequency and depression symptom severity were predicted by different marital- and marital violence-related factors. PTSD symptoms were predicted by spouse's dominance/isolation tactics and intensity of husband-to-wife physical aggression while depressive symptoms were predicted by marital discord and intensity of husband-to-wife physical aggression. Comorbid women and those with PTSD only reported significantly more spousal fear and husband-to-wife physical aggression than those with MDD only or neither disorder. No group differences were found on rate of marital discord or spouse's controlling/isolating tactics. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical and treatment implications for abused women seeking treatment for marital conflict.     

Toward Interest Inarticulation: A Major Consequence of Corporatism for Interest Organizations

The main issue discussed is the difficulties in collective action. Three logics of collective action are identified and discussed in terms of their implications for solidarity within interest organizations and for organizational action. Both solidarity and organizational action are important for successful policymaking. Policies can be decided without the support of the members, but their implementation may thus prove difficult. The theoretical issue of interest articulation by interest organizations is the important one here. The article concludes that encompassing organizations will most likely have difficulty in articulating a definite organizational policy. It is maintained that corporatism and public responsibility-taking can severely hamper the articulation of organized special interests. They lead to interest inarticulation. This may lead to legitimacy problems for the organization and be one explanation for the recent decline in certain established interest organizations in Sweden and recent discussions on the future of corporatism.     

Does Policy Stability Increase the Constitutional Court's Independence? The Case of Italy During the First Republic (1956–1992)

In this paper, we consider thesentences of constitutional illegitimacy bythe Italian Constitutional Court in theFirst Republic (1956–1992) as a measure ofits independence from politicians. We focuson the Court's incidental review and testwhether the Court's independence increaseswhen there is more policy stability, namelywhen politicians are less able to changethe policy status quo by legislation. Wefollow Tsebelis (2002) in assuming thatlegislative policy change is less likelywhen either the number and/or ideologicaldistance of veto players increases. As aproxy for the size of the veto players'Pareto set, we use either the number ofparties in government, or the number ofparties forming a constitutional majorityin Parliament, or the number of effectiveparties in Parliament, or measures ofideological distance based on Laver andHunt (1992). By controlling for the Court'sdegree of internal cohesion, cointegrationanalysis shows that there is a stable andpositive long-run relationship between theCourt's independence and proxy measures ofthe degree of policy stability.     

Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Relationship Abuse across Different Sexual and Gender Identities

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Little is known about the characteristics and context of adolescent relationship abuse victimization across youth of different sexual and gender minority...     

Trusting and Joining? An Empirical Test of the Reciprocal Nature of Social Capital

This article tests a key hypothesis of the social capital literature: voluntary memberships and generalized trust reproduce one another. Panel data from the Michigan Socialization Studies from 1965 to 1982 are used to test the contemporaneous and lagged effects of interpersonal trust on joining groups and the contemporaneous and lagged effects of joining groups on interpersonal trust. We find no evidence supporting the hypothesis that interpersonal trust encourages group memberships and only limited evidence suggesting that belonging to groups makes individuals more trusting.     

Comparison of Different Analytical Methods for the Determination of Carbon Monoxide in Postmortem Blood

The determination of carbon monoxide (CO) and carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) is of utmost importance in forensic toxicology to determine the cause of death in cases of CO poisoning, fire, and explosions. To this end, reliable and updated analytical methods are required. In this paper, four different methods for the determination of carbon monoxide in postmortem blood samples were compared: (i) the spectrophotometric determination of COHb applying the method proposed by Rodkey and modified by Beutler–West, (ii) the spectrophotometric determination of CO using a micro-diffusion-based method, (iii) the determination of CO by gas chromatography coupled to a TCD detector, and (iv) the determination of COHb by blood gas analysis. Three postmortem blood samples were analyzed with all methods, and the results were comparable. The applied methodologies showed different features depending on the sensitivity, sample preparation, and volume. The HS-GC/TCD method in our hand was the most appropriate, on postmortem samples, and versatile to apply. Unfortunately, only a limited number of postmortem blood samples were available for this study due to the rarity of that kind of intoxication in our jurisdiction.