Police Shootings and the Role of Tort

In Ashley v Chief Constable of Sussex , the House of Lords ruled that a civil claim in trespass to the person may be sustained against an individual police officer in respect of a fatal shooting, in circumstances where the officer had already been acquitted in criminal proceedings and where liability to compensate in respect of all losses had been conceded. Two members of the majority clearly ruled that trespass torts may have a vindicatory purpose which survives a concession of liability to compensate, thus deepening the connection between tort, and the protection of fundamental rights, and suggesting an intriguing distinction between the functions of civil and criminal law.     

The Economics of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

It has sometimes been argued that one way to reduce the costs of law enforcement would be to reduce the probability of detection and conviction (hence saving those costs), while at the same time increasing the size of the punishment. Following this strategy would keep the expected costs (to a risk neutral criminal) of committing a crime constant and hence keep the deterrence level constant; it would have the benefit, though, of reducing costs to the rest of society.There are some well-known objections to such a policy. One such objection deals with marginal deterrence: A convicted murderer serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in a jurisdiction which bans capital punishment has nothing to lose from killing a prison guard—there is no marginal deterrence to the commission of a more serious crime or any additional crime for that matter. In fact, so long as there remains any upper limit to the amount of punishment that can be inflicted upon a convicted criminal, the only ways to create some type of marginal deterrence are to reduce the punishments for less serious crimes, which will either reduce the deterrence of those less serious crimes, or alternatively to require the use of more of society's scarce resources to increase the probabilities of apprehension and conviction.It is possible to reduce this marginal deterrence problem, however, by practicing cruel and unusual punishment on perpetrators of serious crimes, i.e. by raising the limits of allowable punishment. Anecdotal evidence suggests this practice is followed unofficially with child molesters and killers of prison guards and hence provides some additional deterrence against these crimes.Despite the theoretical validity of this argument, our society has chosen to impose a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Furthermore, over time we seem to have lowered the threshold of what is considered cruel and unusual. Following Dr. Pangloss, the concluding section of the paper examines why rational maximizers would choose to give up this additional potential deterrence. The explanations depend upon an assumed positive income elasticity of demand for humanitarianism or for insurance against the costs of punishing the innocent. While there are some reasons to accept the humanitarianism argument, the insurance argument seems more persuasive.     

An investigation into the use of calculating the first derivative of absorbance spectra as a tool for forensic fibre analysis.

A range of fibre samples was measured using J&M MSP400 and J&M MSP800 microspectrophotometers across the visible and UV/visible wavelength ranges respectively. The first derivative of the absorbance spectra was then calculated and studied. When the absorbance spectra produced for some samples were broad and featureless, the first derivative spectra provided more points of comparison that facilitated discrimination. For many of the samples, calculating the first derivative did not result in any additional discrimination due to the high number of points of comparison present in the absorbance spectra. However, for the samples that exhibited a high level of intra-sample colour variation (e.g. through uneven dye uptake common in cotton and wool, etc.), which was evident in the absorbance spectra, the associated first derivative spectra highlighted this variation between the fibres and could potentially have resulted in false exclusions. The results show that whilst calculating first derivative can be a useful aid in the comparison of spectra, a high degree of caution is required when applying this method to fibres which exhibit a large intra-sample variation in colour.     

Advancing police use of force research and practice: urgent issues and prospects

Leading police scholars and practitioners were asked to reflect on the most urgent issues that need to be addressed on the topic of use of force. Four themes emerged from their contributions: use of force and de-escalation training needs to improve and be evaluated; new ways of conceptualizing use of force encounters and better use of force response models need to be developed; the inequitable application of force, and how to remediate biases, needs to be more fully understood; and misconceptions about police use of force need to be identified and corrected. The highlighted topics serve as an agenda for future research. Such research should provide greater insight into when, where, and why force is used by police officers, and how it can be applied appropriately. If implemented, the practical recommendations included in the contributions should have a positive impact on police performance, public trust and confidence in the police, and citizen and officer safety.