Understanding Elder Sexual Abuse and the Criminal Justice System's Response: Comparisons to Elder Physical Abuse

A great deal of research has considered the dynamics of sexual assault and the way that sexual assault cases are processed and handled in the criminal justice system. Most of this research has focused on sexual assault cases involving younger victims. Very little criminological research has considered the dynamics of elder sexual abuse. To fill this void, the current study uses a sample of 127 elder sexual abuse cases and 314 elder physical abuse cases to shed some light on the dynamics of elder sexual abuse and the way the justice system processes these cases. Attention is also given to the way that the processing of elder sexual abuse cases can be distinguished from the processing of elder physical abuse cases. Results show that a wide range of elder sexual abuse cases are committed and these cases are processed differently than elder physical abuse cases. Implications are provided.     

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.     

Prevalence and Characteristics of Co‐Offending Recruiters

Previous examinations of co‐offending have identified a subset of high‐rate offenders who commit crimes with a large number of co‐offenders, most of whom are younger and less criminally experienced. These so‐called “recruiters” are of particular interest to researchers and practitioners, because of their potential role in facilitating offending onset and recidivism among their co‐offenders. In this paper, data on 61,646 individuals detected by a large UK police force are used to identify offenders who fitted the recruiter profile, and to compare their individual and offending characteristics with those of non‐recruiters. In total, 86 recruiters were identified. In multivariate analyses, recruiters were found to be older than non‐recruiters and were typically involved in property crimes. In addition, they tended to offend in criminal groups that were more heterogeneous and stable than non‐recruiters. These findings suggest that a small but identifiable group of recruiters can be detected using official data and that these individuals may be important targets for police attention and court treatment.     

Collecting and Analyzing DNA Evidence from Fingernails: A Comparative Study,,

Forensic practitioners and crime laboratories regularly collect and analyze fingernail evidence; however, the best techniques for processing such evidence have not been established. In this study, numerous aspects of fingernail evidence processing—collection of exogenous cells, transportation, purification of DNA, and STR analysis—were analyzed using fingernails harboring applied blood or epithelial cells from scratchings. Autosomal STR mixtures resulted when fingernails were soaked or swabbed, while scrapings rarely generated mixtures but exhibited allelic dropout. Y‐STRs yielded single source profiles, with scrapings again showing dropout. A silica‐based kit extraction recovered significantly more exogenous DNA than did organic extraction, neither of which was affected by nail polish. Swabbing nails in succession resulted in some cross‐contamination from exogenous material, while transporting nails together did not, although there was loss of exogenous cells. Optimized nail processing produced complete Y‐STR profiles of male volunteers from female fingernails following scratchings.     

Sexual Dimorphism in Finger Ridge Breadth Measurements: A Tool for Sex Estimation from Fingerprints

Previous research has demonstrated significant sexual dimorphism in friction ridge skin characteristics. This study uses a novel method for measuring sexual dimorphism in finger ridge breadths to evaluate its utility as a sex estimation method from an unknown fingerprint. Beginning and ending in a valley, the width of ten parallel ridges with no obstructions or minutia was measured in a sample of 250 males and females (N = 500). The results demonstrate statistically significant differences in ridge breadth between males and females (p < 0.001), with classification accuracy for each digit varying from 83.2% to 89.3%. Classification accuracy for the pooled finger samples was 83.9% for the right hand and 86.2% for the left hand, which is applicable for cases where the digit number cannot be determined. Weight, stature, and to a lesser degree body mass index also significantly correlate with ridge breadth and account for the degree of overlap between males and females.     

Accommodating Religious Beliefs: Harm,Clothing or Symbols,and Refusals to Serve Others

Is there a middle path between the existing case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which rarely requires accommodation of a religious individual's beliefs, and a ‘general right to conscientious objection’, which would exempt religious individuals from all anti‐discrimination and other rules interfering with manifestations of their beliefs? The author argues that failure to accommodate is better analysed as prima facie indirect discrimination, to highlight the exclusionary effects of non‐accommodation on religious minorities, and that the presence or absence of direct or indirect harm to others (or cost, disruption or inconvenience to the accommodating party) could guide case‐by‐case assessments of whether the prima facie indirect discrimination is justified. The author then applies a harm analysis to the examples of religious clothing or symbols and religiously motivated refusals to serve others, recently considered by the European Court of Human Rights in Eweida and Others v United Kingdom.     

职场性骚扰与女性劳动者权益的法律保障

近年来,职场性骚扰日益成为一个严重的社会问题,不仅直接损害了女性的身心健康,而且从根本上威胁到了女性劳动者的人权.职场性骚扰是两性不平等的产物,它的存在反过来又强化了这种不平等.我国目前在处理职场性骚扰案件方面还存在诸多不足,应该以明确性骚扰概念为起点,建立完善的性骚扰处理机制,以有效应对职场性骚扰的不良影响,确实保护女性劳动者权益.     

Early maladaptive schemas in convicted sexual offenders: Preliminary findings

Core cognitive schemas may play a role in the vulnerability for sexual offending. Identifying these schemas could help to conceptualize sexual crimes and rehabilitate convicted sexual offenders. The aim of this preliminary study was to explore the relationship between early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) and sexual offending, as well as how rapists and child sex molesters differ in terms of these schemas. Thirty-two men convicted for rape, 33 convicted for child sexual abuse, and 30 non-offenders were evaluated using the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ-S3) and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Results showed that participants convicted for child sexual abuse presented significantly more schemas from the disconnection/rejection, impaired autonomy/performance, other directness, and over vigilance/inhibition domains than non-offenders, whereas rapists presented more schemas from the impaired autonomy/performance domain than non-offenders. Differences between sex offenders showed that child molesters presented more schemas of pessimism than rapists. Preliminary findings suggested that EMSs may impact sex offender's perceptions about themselves and about the world. Schema-focused therapy (Young, 1990, 1999) may thus be an acceptable approach to sex offender's psychological assessment and intervention.     

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.