Family Group Conferencing and Re‐Offending Among First‐Time Juvenile Offenders: The Indianapolis Experiment

Restorative justice processes, and family group conferences in particular, have become increasingly common in justice system practices across the globe. There has also been significant scholarly interest. Yet, with several notable exceptions, much of the research has been characterized by relatively weak designs, and questions related to the impact of family group conferences on re‐offending remain unanswered. This research is intended to begin to address these issues. The study is based on an experiment conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana whereby young, first‐time‐offending youths were randomly assigned to either a family group conference or one of a number of court‐ordered diversion programs. Nearly 800 youths participated in the experiment, and the cases were tracked for 24 months following their initial arrest. Survival analysis techniques were used to compare prevalence patterns of re‐offending among the treatment and control groups. The results indicated a significant difference between the two groups with the control group experiencing higher rates of failure (re‐offending). The differences were most pronounced during the period of 3–8 months following the initial arrest. Incidence rates were also compared. Assignment to the treatment group was negatively related to incidence of offending. Given the consistent finding of victim benefits in restorative justice processes, the results suggest that conferences hold promise as an effective intervention, at least for young first‐time offenders, and warrant continued experimentation.     

Juvenile Court Context and Detention Decisions: Reconsidering the Role of Race,Ethnicity, and Community Characteristics in Juvenile Court Processes

The relationship between race/ethnicity, community dynamics, and juvenile court processes has long been established. Prior research has relied on city‐ or county‐level measures of community characteristics (e.g., racial composition, poverty) to examine how racial groups are processed within juvenile courts. To date, no study has utilized finer scale measures of geographic areas to examine how characteristics of juveniles’ communities impact court decisions. By utilizing official juvenile court data from a city in the southwest, this study draws upon attribution theory to examine how economic and crime community‐level measures directly and indirectly influence detention outcomes. Findings reveal that the effect of race and ethnicity in detention outcomes varies across communities, and the effect of ethnicity in detention decisions is mediated by economic community‐level measures. The theoretical and policy implications of the study findings are discussed.     

Community Risk Management of High-Risk Sex Offenders in Canada: Findings From a Quasi-Experimental Study

Although considerable controversy surrounds capital punishment, there is no disagreement about the injustice of executing innocent persons. While critics of the death penalty have cited the risk of executing the innocent as a reason for its abolition, adherents have dismissed the risk of error as negligible, if not inevitable, and insufficient reason to halt capital punishment. Still others have proposed or enacted reforms designed to minimize the risk of erroneous capital convictions and sentences and, hence, allow executions to go forward in deserving cases in which doubts about guilt have largely been eradicated. In this article, we examine the principled tensions that accompany attempts simultaneously to safeguard the innocent from execution while promoting the objectives of capital punishment. We focus, in particular, on reforms recently incorporated into Maryland’s death penalty law. We suggest that the existing tensions between protecting the innocent from execution and promoting the objectives of capital punishment are so pronounced that attempted reconciliation of the competing interests is difficult to defend, either in principle or in practice.     

Correcting Community Service: From Work Crews to Community Work in a Juvenile Court

In 2001, the Clark County Juvenile Court in Washington State implemented the use of “restorative community service” (RCS) as part of its larger adoption of a restorative justice framework. This paper explores the court’s implementation and use of RCS, including: (1) the types of institutional changes made by the court in its development of RCS, (2) the types and qualities of social interactions observed by the researcher through participant observation at several RCS sites, (3) the practical implications of these findings for proponents of restorative justice in the use of community service in youth settings, and (4) the theoretical implications of these findings for sociological and criminological research on community service.     

《唐律疏议》有关女性犯罪规定的梳理

在古代的法典中,有许多关于女性犯罪的法律规定,从中我们可以看出古代法律的性别观念以及女性的法律地位。本文主要就《唐律疏议》中涉及女性犯罪的罪名、刑罚及优恤的制度作了梳理与介绍,以从制度角度了解唐代妇女的法律地位。     

Trigemino‐Cardiac Reflex as Lethal Mechanism in a Suicidal Fire Death Case

In the vast majority of immediate fire deaths, the mechanism of death is inhalation of toxic gases (especially carbon monoxide), direct thermal injury, or neurogenic shock due to the redistribution of the body's blood volume produced by surface heat on the skin. We present a suicidal case that is unusual because the mechanism of immediate fire death could arguably be explained in terms of a primitive autonomic reflex/the trigemino‐cardiac reflex. Although this reflex is well known to surgeons and anesthetists, with possible lethal consequences in the course of invasive surgical procedures on the head and neck region, it is much less familiar to forensic pathologists.     

Radiocarbon Analysis of Human Remains: A Review of Forensic Applications

Radiocarbon analysis of organic materials, with the comparison of values with those of the post‐1950 modern bomb curve, has proven useful in forensic science to help evaluate the antiquity of evidence. Applications are particularly helpful in the study of human remains, especially with those displaying advanced decomposition of soft tissues. Radiocarbon analysis can reveal if the remains relate to the modern, post‐1950 era and if so, also provide information needed to evaluate the death and birth date. Sample selection and interpretation of results must be guided by knowledge of the formation and remodeling of different human tissues, as well as contextual information and the approximate age at death of the individual represented. Dental enamel does not remodel and thus captures dietary radiocarbon values at the time of juvenile formation. Most other human tissues do remodel but at differing rates and therefore collectively offer key information relative to the estimation of the death date.     

The Drowning Index: Implementation in Drowning,Mechanical Asphyxia,and Acute Myocardial Infarct Cases

Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion based on circumstantial and autopsy correlation. Sugimura proposed a threshold value of 14.1 for the Drowning Index (DI), the ratio of lung and pleural fluid to spleen weight, as a surrogate marker to diagnose drowning. We questioned the use of DI in diagnosing drowning. We compared DI between three groups—drowning, mechanical asphyxia, and myocardial infarct—seen at Broward MEO from 2008 to 2009. Only 9.4% of 53 drownings exceeded the DI threshold of 14.1, while 30% of 10 mechanical asphyxias and 40% of 10 myocardial infarcts had DI >14.1. Sensitivity for the DI test was <10% and specificity 60–70%. Median DI values for all groups were <10. Mann–Whitney U‐test was not statistically significant between groups. The DI is neither sensitive nor specific and lacks any utility in the diagnosis of drowning.     

Offending and Early Death in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

Criminal offending has many negative outcomes. Researchers have recently begun to consider the impact offending has on offenders' health, with a few studies focusing on differential mortality risk. Yet, prior research has been limited due to selective samples, restricted range of follow-up time period, limited set of explanatory variables, and lack of theoretical guidance. This paper examines the risk of early death among 411 South London males in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development followed into their late 50s. Attention is paid not only to differential risk of death between nonoffenders and offenders, but also to the risk within the population of offenders and through consideration of theoretical frameworks and associated predictor variables. Results show that high-rate chronic offenders evince the highest risk of death, an effect that continues even after controlling for childhood individual and environmental risk factors as well as participation in a range of analogous behaviors.     

非典型自杀的法医学鉴定

根据辖区内自杀案件的特点,对其中自杀方式较为特殊或复杂的案件进行分析总结,将之归结为非典型自杀,根据其损伤方式,伤口形态等的不同将其分为多种方式自杀和特殊创伤型自杀,分别进行阐述,通过对这些非典型自杀的法医学特点的分析,为非正常死亡案件性质的正确判定提供帮助.