Agenda-Setting and Priming in Prime Time Television: Crime Dramas as Political Cues

The effects of agenda-setting and priming are well established in regard to the news media. Considerably less attention has been paid to these phenomena in entertainment media, in spite of the fact that entertainment media enjoy larger audiences than do news media and often address political topics. This article argues that the psychological mechanism hypothesized to lead to agenda-setting and priming effectsthat is, changes in construct accessibilityapplies as equally to entertainment media as it does to news media. Moreover, we contend that the frequency, consistency, and duration of entertainment media treatments of political issues encourage chronic accessibility of those issues. We test these hypotheses looking at television crime dramas as a source of political information. Using data from two controlled laboratory experiments and the 1995 National Election Study Pilot Study, we demonstrate that viewing crime dramas significantly increases concerns about crime and that these concerns significantly affect viewers' opinions of the president. The NES Pilot Study data suggest that these effects are restricted to frequent viewers of crime dramas, supporting a chronic accessibility model of agenda-setting and priming. These findings extend our growing understanding of how non-news sources of political information contribute to the construction of political attitudes.     

“Worth It If It Saves Just One Life”? Ethical Reservations Regarding AMBER Alert

This article provides an exploratory ethical critique of the AMBER Alert system. Using illustrative examples of actual AMBER Alerts and the public discourse regarding them, it notes potentially problematic impacts on victims and/or offenders, and investigation of child abduction cases, as well as the public discourse about the system in particular and threats to children in general. None of these issues have been adequately addressed either by system operators in their public portrayals of the system or rigorous research as to their practical impacts, or in the suggestion of possible remedies. At the heart of the open and unresolved ethical quandaries confronting the AMBER Alert system lies a failure on the part of system operators and supporters to acknowledge apparent limits to the system's effectiveness, and an exaggeration of its capacities in the absence of adequate evidence, which should be sought in earnest through rigorous research. The article argues that system operators should discuss AMBER Alert more candidly and downplay expectations to avert at least some of the problems its facile portrayal can engender. The article also provides directions for future research on the system—research which could either show some of the ethical reservations that are cited to be moot, or reveal ways they could be resolved.     

Police Sexual Misconduct: Female Police Officers' Views Regarding Its Nature and Extent

Sexual misconduct among on-duty police officers has received little scholarly attention. Existing research that has attempted to provide police officers' views on this matter has been dominated by the male perspective. The present study focuses on female officers' perspectives and provides insight into the nature and extent of such behavior. The findings show that female officers report that police sexual misconduct is common. Differences in perceptions about such behavior between female and male officers are identified. Theoretical explanations for police sexual misconduct are explored. Policy implications of how police sexual misconduct might be better controlled are discussed.     

Sexual Homicide by Older Male Offenders

Recent research has expanded our understanding of sexual homicide offenders (SHOs). However, little exists beyond case reports for older SHOs. We characterized male SHOs ≥ 55 years, comparing them to typical adult male SHOs who are in their 20s. Analysis of 37 years (1976–2012) of US Supplementary Homicide Reports data provided a large SHO sample (N = 3453). Three case reports provide clinical context for the diverse nature and patterns of older SHOs. Only 32 older male SHOs and no older female SHOs were identified. Murders by older SHOs accounted for only 0.5% of US sexual homicides. Unlike typical SHOs that generally target young adult females, over two‐thirds of older SHO victims were ≥40 years, and one‐third were ≥55 years. Sexual homicides by older SHOs, like sexual homicide in general, decreased over the study period. These crimes, while exceedingly rare, do occur, warranting special consideration.     

Measuring Legislative Power: An Expert Reweighting of the Fish‐Kroenig Parliamentary Powers Index

The Parliamentary Powers Index (PPI) developed by Fish and Kroenig (2009) is the most important effort to date to measure legislative power in cross‐national perspective, but it has been criticized on both theoretical and methodological grounds. We build on the 32‐item PPI to develop an alternative indicator of legislative strength that is based on an expert survey of 296 political scientists in 2014. We reweight each of the powers by expert opinion, creating a new Weighted Legislative Powers Score (WLPS) for the 158 national legislatures in the Fish and Kroenig data set. In addition, the article reports the expert‐assigned weight factors for the entire set of 32 powers contained in the original PPI, thus allowing researchers to innovate alternative, disaggregated indicators of legislative power.     

Maggot development during morgue storage and its effect on estimating the post-mortem interval

When insect evidence is obtained during autopsy, forensic entomologists make decisions regarding the effects of low-temperature (-1 degrees C to 4 degrees C) storage of the body and associated insects when estimating the post-mortem interval (PMI). To determine the effects of storage in a morgue cooler on the temperature of maggot masses, temperatures inside and outside of body bags containing a human cadaver and porcine cadavers (seven replicates) were measured during storage. Temperatures remained significantly higher (p<0.05) inside of the body bags relative to the cooler, and remained at levels sufficient for maggot feeding and development. If the assumption that no insect development takes place during preautopsy refrigeration is made, potential error rates in PMI estimation of 8.6-12.8% occur. The potential for blow fly larvae to undergo significant development while being stored in the morgue is a possibility that forensic entomologists should consider during an investigation involving samples collected from autopsy. Case and experimental evidence also demonstrate that substantial tissue loss can occur from maggot feeding during morgue storage.     

Characteristics and Prediction of Cranial Crush Injuries in Children*†

Abstract: This study documents four clinical cases of fatal crush injuries to children between 1.5 and 6 years of age with correlations between modeled stress and clinically observed fracture patterns. The clinical case fractures were concentrated in the basicranium, bridged the impact sites, and traversed the middle cranial fossa in the area of the spheno‐occipital synchondrosis. The crushing forces from these cases were recreated on a simplified finite element model of a cranium by applying bilateral pressures to corresponding regions. Numerous trials were run to develop a representative pattern of principal stress directions. In all cases, the highest tensile stresses were located on the basicranium and corresponded to the observed fracture path(s). These results suggest that prefailure stress field diagrams may predict fracture propagation paths, although these will not be exact. Also, these analyses indicate that quasi‐static bilateral loading of the cranium may lead to predictable fracture of the basicranium.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Random Activities Theory</Emphasis>: The Case for ‘Black Swan’ Criminology

In the United States, infamous crimes against innocent victims—especially children—have repeatedly been regarded as justice system “failures” and resulted in reactionary legislation enacted without regard to prospective negative consequences. This pattern in part results when ‘memorial crime control’ advocates implicitly but inappropriately apply the tenets of routine activities theory, wherein crime prevention is presumed to be achievable by hardening likely targets, increasing the costs associated with crime commission, and removing criminal opportunity. In response, the authors argue that academic and public policy discourse will benefit from the inclusion of a new criminological perspective called random activities theory, in which tragic crimes are framed as rare but statistically inevitable ‘Black Swans’ instead of justice system failures. Potential objections and implications for public policy are discussed at length.