Informativeness of NGS Analysis for Vaginal Fluid Identification

The identification of vaginal fluids in forensic examinations plays an important role in crime scene reconstruction. Molecular detection of vaginal bacterial communities can lead to the correct discrimination of body fluids. These kinds of studies can be performed through multiplex real‐time PCR using primers for a specific selection of bacteria. The availability of next‐generation sequencing (NGS) protocols provided for the extension of the analysis to evaluate the prokaryotes present in specimens. In this study, DNA was extracted from 18 samples (vaginal, oral, fecal, yoghurt) and analyzed by real‐time PCR and NGS. The comparison between the two approaches has demonstrated that the information developed through NGS can augment the more conventional real‐time PCR detection of a few key bacterial species to provide a more probative result and the correct identification of vaginal fluid from samples that are more forensically challenged.     

THE LANGUAGE OF STIGMATIZATION AND THE MARK OF VIOLENCE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF CRIMINAL RECORD STIGMA

After years of stagnation, labeling theory has recently gained new empirical support. Simultaneously, new policy initiatives have attempted to restructure criminal record stigma to reduce reintegration barriers, and subsequent recidivism, driven by labeling. For example, in a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) language policy, person‐first terms (e.g., “person with a conviction”) were substituted for crime‐first terms (e.g., “offender”). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has also issued guidelines to structure how decision‐makers use criminal records. Unfortunately, little is currently known about the social construction and use of criminal record stigma or the potential effects of such policy changes. In the current study, we provide two unique empirical tests. In study 1, we examine the social construction of stigma by testing DOJ's language policy with experimental data from a nationally representative sample of American adults (N = 996). In study 2, we use a separate nationwide experiment (N = 1,540) to examine how the contextualization of criminal records influences social exclusion decisions. Across both studies, we find consistent evidence of a “mark of violence.” The public perceives that individuals with violent convictions are the most likely to commit future crimes, and it is more supportive of excluding these individuals from employment. Crime‐first terms exacerbate perceived recidivism risk for individuals with violent convictions.     

Enhancing Information Sharing in Family Drug Courts: A Lean Six Sigma Case Study

Given the variety of stakeholders involved in cases within family drug courts, efficient communication and information sharing, which are needed to support decision‐making, can be quite challenging. Through a case study in one family drug court system, this research employed an action research approach to improve the information sharing process following the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The solutions implemented through this study contributed to improving the quality of the services provided by this court system and its overall productivity. In addition, this research extends our knowledge about methods for improving court systems from which others can learn to guide future improvement efforts.     

Humanitarian Assistance and Changing Notions of State Sovereignty

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Polarization and Policy: The Politics of Public‐Sector Pensions

For decades, America's state and local governments have promised their workers increasingly generous pensions but failed to fully fund them, producing a fiscal problem of staggering proportions. In this article, we examine the politics of public pensions. While mainstream theoretical ideas in the American politics literature would suggest the pension issue should be polarized, with Democrats pushing for generous pensions over Republican resistance, we develop an argument—rooted in more traditional theoretical work by Schattschneider, Lowi, Wilson, and others—implying that both parties should be expected to support generous pensions during normal times and that only after the onset of the Great Recession, which expanded the scope of conflict, should the parties begin to diverge. Using a new data set of state legislators' votes on hundreds of pension bills passed between 1999 and 2011, we carry out an empirical analysis that supports these expectations.     

The Burglary Boost: A Note on Detecting Contagion Using the Knox Test

Objectives

A large body of literature in quantitative criminology finds that the spatio-temporal clustering of burglary is greater than one would expect from chance alone. This suggests that such crimes may exhibit a “boost” effect, wherein each burglary increases the risk to nearby locations for a short period. In this study, we demonstrate that standard tests for spatio-temporal dependence have difficulty distinguishing between clustering caused by contagion and that caused by changing relative risks. Therefore, any estimates of the boost effect drawn from these tests alone will be upwardly biased.

Methods

We construct an agent-based model to generate simulated burglary data, and explore whether the Knox test can reliably distinguish between contagion (one burglary increases the likelihood of another burglary nearby) and changes in risk (one area gets safer while another gets more dangerous). Incorporating insights from this exercise, we analyze a decade of data on burglary events from Washington, DC.

Results

We find that (1) absent contagion, exogenous changes in relative risk can be sufficient to produce statistically significant Knox ratios, (2) if risk is changing over time, estimated Knox ratios are sensitive to one’s choice of time window, and (3) Knox ratios estimated from Washington, DC burglary data are sensitive to one’s choice of time window, suggesting that long-run changes in relative risk are, in part, driving empirical estimates of burglary’s boost effect.

Conclusions

Researchers testing for contagion in empirical time series should take precautions to distinguish true contagion from exogenous changes in relative risks. Adjusting the time window of analysis is a useful robustness check, and future studies should be supplemented with new approaches like agent-based modeling or spatial econometric methods.

     

The Impact of Child Abuse Severity on Adult Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance in College Women: The Role of Emotion Dysregulation

Recent evidence suggests a significant and unique effect of child abuse experiences on attachment-related anxiety and avoidance in adult romantic relationships, although mechanisms underlying this relationship have yet to be identified. The current study examined the relation between three forms of child abuse (sexual, physical, and psychological) severity, emotion dysregulation, and attachment-related anxiety and avoidance among 830 college women. Results indicated that emotion dysregulation significantly mediated the relationship between child abuse severity and attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. Future directions for research and implications for intervention are discussed.     

The Role of Site Variance in the American Judicature Society Field Study Comparing Simultaneous and Sequential Lineups

Objectives

Police departments often use photo lineups for eyewitness identification purposes. A widely adopted lineup reform designed to reduce eyewitness misidentifications involves switching from the standard simultaneous photo presentation format to a sequential format. These two lineup procedures were recently tested in the American Judicature Society (AJS) field study, which was conducted in four different police jurisdictions. The results from two phases of that investigation reached opposite conclusions as to which lineup procedure is superior, and the purpose of our current investigation was to elucidate the role of site variance in shaping those contrasting conclusions.

Methods

In previous analyses, the field study data were either (1) aggregated across all four study sites or (2) drawn from only one study site (Austin, Texas). Here, we analyze the data separately for the Austin study site, where 69 % of the eyewitnesses were tested, and the other three study sites combined, where 31 % of the eyewitnesses were tested.

Results

The results indicate significant site variance between the Austin and non-Austin study sites. In addition, the results suggest that aggregating the data across sites played a determinative role in creating the apparent disagreement about which lineup procedure is diagnostically superior.

Conclusions

Once large differences across the AJS study sites are taken into consideration, there is no longer any disagreement about which lineup procedure is superior. The simultaneous procedure is diagnostically superior to the sequential procedure, but the sequential procedure sometimes induces more conservative responding (a result that can and often does masquerade as diagnostic superiority).