Southeast Asian Refugee Youth: Implications for Juvenile Justice

Abstract Southeast Asian refugees have been arriving in the U.S. in significant numbers since 1975. While they have had a history of a seemingly smooth resettlement and acculturation to this country, the number of Southeast Asian youthful offenders has increased dramatically since 1984. Factors common among refugee youth which have contributed to this rise include: problems of acculturation; role reversal with parents; lack of shared values, parental guidance and school success; and mental health problems often stemming from their history of war, traumatization, and loss before coming to this country. This article will discuss these factors and the implications for the juvenile justice system. The discussion will also highlight culturally appropriate intervention strategies for personnel working with these youth and their families.     

Individual identification of disguised faces by morphometrical matching

The reliability of a morphometrical matching method for identifying disguised faces was examined experimentally using a computer-assisted facial image identification system. The 2D right oblique facial images of three target persons disguised with sunglasses, cap and gauze mask were each compared with each of the 3D facial images of 100 subjects, yielding 900 face-to-face superimpositions. The average perpendicular distance between the facial outlines and the average point-to-point distance of the corresponding landmarks in the 2D image of the disguised face and the 3D facial image, were calculated. As a matching criterion, the sum of the values of the average perpendicular difference of the facial outlines and the average point-to-point difference between the corresponding landmarks was used (abbreviation: average difference).The range of the average difference was 2.3-2.8mm for the same person (a match) and 4.0-14.6mm for different (non-matching) people, respectively. The ranges for matching and non-matching faces did not overlap. Even the 3D facial images of the non-matching person showing the closest value of average difference to the average difference for the matching person could be excluded easily. It was concluded that the morphometrical matching method can reliably identify disguised faces and the results produced by this method could be easily understandable by a court of law.