Is there a “lost world” of criminal investigation?

This article is a critical examination of current investigation textbooks. It argues that they, like urban government textbooks of years ago, are deficient in many ways. For instance it is asserted that in a number of respects current texts present an inaccurate depiction of the criminal investigation process. This comes about in a number of ways. For example, at least by implication, many texts appear to present an inaccurate portrayal of how investigators spend their time. Moreover, they also present a highly simplistic picture of both the inter- and intra-organizational context within which investigators must operate. In addition to these deficiencies, the texts under consideration are also guilty of over-emphasizing the role that criminalistics play in the investigative process, while at the same time under-emphasizing the role of informants. Furthermore, most texts put a heavy emphasis on describing the ideal investigator while ignoring the characteristics that actual investigators exhibit. Finally, it is suggested that because criminal investigation texts do not present typologies or categories of crime, the student is faced with a mass of facts that are difficult to learn and retain.The article concludes by suggesting a different framework for criminal investigation texts, a framework that emphasizes that investigators actually operate in an organizational setting which sets contsraints on their actions and a framework which uses a typology of investigative strategies.     

Allele frequency distributions of four variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) loci in the London area.

Allele frequency distributions of four hypervariable minisatellite loci were obtained from a large sample of individuals in the London area. The sample is subdivided into three major ethnic groups; Caucasian, Afro-Caribbean and Asian, and histograms for these groups are displayed for comparison. The distributions are discussed in relation to mutation rates, heterozygosity and the computer analysis and processing of results.     

Report of a European collaborative exercise comparing DNA typing results using a single locus VNTR probe

A collaborative exercise was carried out in 1989 among 12 European forensic laboratories using the single locus VNTR probe pYNH24, the restriction enzyme HinfI, the same set of human genomic DNA samples, and a standardized DNA size marker. The objectives of the exercise were: (1) to study the degree of variation within and between laboratories, (2) to obtain information on requirements for technical standardization allowing the exchange of typing results and (3) to compare different approaches for the identification of allelic DNA fragments of unknown size. Each laboratory carried out up to 10 independent typing experiments using the same DNA samples. The results were analysed independently by two laboratories using three different methods. The results of the exercise demonstrate the correlation of typing that can be achieved within and between laboratories under conditions of minimal standardization.     

Assessing the public's understanding of constitutional reform: Evidence from Argentina

Constitutional and institutional reform is occurring at an impressive rate throughout the world. To explain the dynamics of reform the scholarly literature has focused almost exclusively on political elites. Analyses of the role played by public opinion in the constitutional reform process have been largely missing. This study takes an initial first step toward understanding the role played by public opinion through an analysis of public understanding of selected constitutional reform issues in Argentina. The evidence indicates that the Argentine public has a fairly sophisticated understanding of the issues involved in constitutional reform. This finding suggests that current elite-based explanations of constitutional and institutional reforms are incomplete. The article also provides a point of departure for future studies of the complex elite-mass interaction that occurs during reform.     

Which articles and which topics in the forensic sciences are most highly cited?

Forensic science is a multidisciplinary field, which covers many branches of the pure, the applied and the biomedical sciences. Writing-up and publishing research findings helps to enhance the reputation of the investigators and the laboratories where the work was done. The number of times an article is cited in the reference lists of other articles is generally accepted as a mark of distinction. Indeed, citation analysis has become widely used in research assessment of individual scientists, university departments and entire nations. This article concerns the most highly cited papers published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences (JFS) between 1956 and 2005. These were identified with the help of Web-of-Science, which is the on-line version of Science Citation Index, produced by Thomson Institute for Scientific Information (Thomson ISI) with head offices in Philadelphia, USA. This database tracks, among other things, the annual citation records of articles published in several thousand scientific journals worldwide. Those JFS articles accumulating 50 or more citations were identified and rank-ordered according to the total number of citations. These articles were also evaluated according to the name of first author, the subject category of the article, the country of origin and the pattern of co-authorship. This search strategy located 46 articles cited between 50 and 292 times since they first appeared in print. The most highly cited paper by far was by Kasai, Nakamura and White (USA and Japan) concerning DNA profiling and the application of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in forensic science. Some forensic scientists appeared as first author on two to three highly cited articles, namely Wetli (USA), Budowle (USA) and Comey (USA). When the highly cited articles were sub-divided into subject category, 15 were identified as coming from toxicology, closely followed by criminalistics (14 articles), pathology (nine articles), physical anthropology (five articles), forensic psychiatry (two articles) and one from odontology. The number of co-authors on these highly cited articles ranged from one to nine and the names of some investigators appeared on as many as four highly cited papers. The vast majority of papers originated from US laboratories although five came from Japan, two each from Sweden and Canada and there was also a joint USA-Swiss collaboration. The Thompson ISI citation databases provide unique tools for tracking citations to individual articles and impact and citation records of scholarly journals.