Procedural Justice and Order Maintenance Policing: A Study of Inner‐City Young Men’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

There is tension between the core tenets of procedural justice and those of order maintenance policing. Research has shown that citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice influence their beliefs about police legitimacy, yet at the same time, some order maintenance policing efforts stress frequent stops of vehicles and persons for suspected disorderly behavior. These types of programs can threaten citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy because the targeted offenses are minor and are often not well‐defined. Citizens stopped for low‐level offenses may view such stops as a form of harassment, as they may not believe they were doing anything to warrant police scrutiny. This paper examines young men’s self‐described experiences with this style of proactive policing. Study findings highlight that order maintenance policing strategies have negative implications for police legitimacy and crime control efforts via their potential to damage citizens’ views of procedural justice.     

Private Military Contractors,Crime, and the Terrain of Unaccountability

Criminological research has traditionally attempted to explain the etiological factors of crime and then suggest appropriate controls. More often than not, the foci of this kind of work have remained on “street crime.” Since the 1990s, however, some scholars have turned their attention to the causal factors of corporate crime, state crime, crimes of globalization, supranational crimes, and their various permutations and interconnections. Clearly missing from this literature is the growing phenomenon of private military contractors (PMCs) and the crimogenic culture of and atmosphere within which they operate. Specifically, while the use of PMCs is rapidly growing, the increasing propensity for PMC's crimogenic culture and the unregulated nature of what has become a global industry is rarely studied by social scientists. Further, few criminologists have examined this area of research by applying criminological theory to explain the growth and emergence of PMCs. Our goal is to help fill this gap. Through the process of theory building and refinement we identify factors that facilitate the criminogenic environment within which PMCs operate. Additionally, without attempting to expand explanatory and causal mechanisms, policies aimed at reducing PMC criminality and social justice for their victims cannot be developed. As such, we draw from theoretical developments in state and state‐corporate crime, social disorganization, and anomie literature to shed light on key factors associated with PMCs, namely, the crimogenic atmosphere within which they operate.     

The identification of two unusual types of homemade ammunition

Illegal homemade ammunition is commonly used by criminals to commit crimes in Taiwan. Two unusual types of homemade ammunition that most closely resembling genuine ammunition are studied here. Their genuine counterparts are studied as the control samples for the purpose of comparison. Unfired ammunition is disassembled, and the morphological, dimensional, and compositional features of the bullet and cartridge case are examined. Statistical tests are employed to distinguish the dimensional differences between homemade and genuine ammunitions. Manufacturing marks on head stamps of the cartridge case are carefully examined. Compositional features of propellant powders, primer mixtures, and gunshot residues are also analyzed. The results reveal that the morphological, dimensional, and compositional features of major parts of the ammunition can be employed to differentiate homemade cartridges from genuine ones. Among these features, tool marks on the head stamps left by the bunter can be used to trace the origin of ammunition.     

Radiographic comparison of a fractured clavicle exhibiting a pseudo-arthrosis

Bone remodeling is a natural process that is potentially problematic for radiographic comparisons because it can occur after antemortem (AM) imaging, thus interfering with the comparability of AM and postmortem (PM) radiographs from the same individual. While the effects of age-related remodeling have been studied, limited attention has been given to trauma-related remodeling with respect to radiographic comparisons. This report adds to the latter topic by presenting a case of AM clavicle fracture that developed into a pseudo-arthrosis over a 12-month period prior to the individual's death. Even though remodeling was discernable along the fracture margins, adjacent skeletal features on the PM radiograph remained unaltered and constituted compelling evidence for the identification. This case illustrates the potential of using both normal and pathological anatomy concurrently to maximize the surety of findings from radiographic comparisons.     

Postmortem vitreous Beta-hydroxybutyrate: interpretation in a forensic setting*

Abstract: Vitreous beta‐hydroxybutyrate (BHB) was retrospectively analyzed in 1795 forensic cases using the Pointe Scientific method. Comparison of vitreous BHB with vitreous glucose in 1781 of the cases showed moderately good correlation r = 0.731. Comparison with blood alcohol levels in 1561 of the cases showed no correlation r = ?0.053. Vitreous BHB was a marker of diabetic ketoacidosis when above 6.0 mM with a vitreous glucose over 200 mg/dL. It was an indicator (>50%) for alcoholic ketoacidosis when above 6.0 mM with a vitreous glucose below 200 mg/dL. Recommendations for interpretation of vitreous BHB: <0.4 mM normal; 0.41–1.2 mM slightly elevated, rarely (<1%) of concern; 1.21–2.0 mM moderately elevated, less rarely (2.5%) of concern; 2.01–6.0 mM significantly elevated, frequently of concern (12–48%); >6.0 mM usually (100% in this study) indicated life‐threatening conditions. Vitreous BHB was helpful evaluating cases with ketogenic conditions, especially diabetes and alcoholism.     

Development of a real-time method to detect DNA degradation in forensic samples

Abstract: Knowledge of the degradation state of evidentiary DNA samples would allow selection of the appropriate analysis method (standard short tandem repeats [STRs] vs. mini STRs vs. mtDNA). This article describes the development of a Plexor® technology/real‐time PCR DNA degradation detection assay, which uses a common forward primer and two reverse primers (different fluorophores) to generate two Alu amplicons (63 and 246 bp). This very sensitive assay was optimized for reaction volume, cycle number, anneal/extend time, and temperature. Using DNA samples degraded with DNaseI, the ratio of the concentration of the short amplicon to the concentration of the long amplicon (degradation ratio) was increased versus time of degradation. Experiments were performed on a variety of environmentally degraded samples (age, sunlight, heat) and with seven commonly encountered forensic inhibitors. The degradation ratio was found to predict the observed loss of larger STR loci seen in the analysis of comprised samples.     

Bayesian networks and the value of the evidence for the forensic two-trace transfer problem*

Forensic scientists face increasingly complex inference problems for evaluating likelihood ratios (LRs) for an appropriate pair of propositions. Up to now, scientists and statisticians have derived LR formulae using an algebraic approach. However, this approach reaches its limits when addressing cases with an increasing number of variables and dependence relationships between these variables. In this study, we suggest using a graphical approach, based on the construction of Bayesian networks (BNs). We first construct a BN that captures the problem, and then deduce the expression for calculating the LR from this model to compare it with existing LR formulae. We illustrate this idea by applying it to the evaluation of an activity level LR in the context of the two-trace transfer problem. Our approach allows us to relax assumptions made in previous LR developments, produce a new LR formula for the two-trace transfer problem and generalize this scenario to n traces.     

Implementation: Making Hard Work of Something Simple

Early in 2012 the Rural Property Addressing Project in South Australia announced that it had substantially met its outcomes, and that the whole of the project was soon to be completed. In 2003, one of the recommendations to cabinet from the South Australian Premier's Bushfire Summit was to endorse the development of a standard property addressing system for rural properties across the state. This was formally endorsed by cabinet, and was a direct response to the fact that essential services such as ambulance, medical and social care were hindered in providing services to the residents of Eyre Peninsula during and after the bushfires. Overall, this was not a controversial decision, nor was it a huge implementation challenge, yet it took nine years to come into effect. This is a classic case of the tyranny of small decisions. This article outlines some of the implementation challenges faced by this apparently simple project, and provides some thoughts for implementation challenges of the future. The take‐away message is that if something so comparatively simple was made so complex, how can we adapt our public services to the cross‐cutting challenges of the future?     

A psycho‐political profile of party activists and left‐wing and right‐wing extremists

Previous studies comparing ideological groups have been restricted to tests of between‐group differences in the means of relevant political psychological variables, thereby neglecting group differences in the variances, meanings and nomological networks of the tested variables. A first exploratory study used data from the European Social Survey (N = 7,314) comparing groups of political party members on the basis of their scores on a self‐placement left–right scale. The second study (N = 69) constituted an in‐depth test for the presence of differences between samples of political activists of moderate parties, communists, anarchists and right‐wing extremists. The results revealed that there is a fair amount of heterogeneity within left‐wing and right‐wing extremists, indicating a substantial amount of within‐group variance of social attitudes, values and prejudice. Moreover, the extremist ideologies are best approached as distinct ideologies that cannot be reduced to extreme versions of moderate ideology, and differences in the meanings and nomological networks of the various extremist ideologies were also obtained. It is erroneous to consider members of extremist groups as being ‘all alike’. The findings obtained from samples of political moderates are not a particularly solid basis for theories about extremism.     

Do voters reward rebellion? The electoral accountability of MPs in Britain

To hold their Members of Parliament individually accountable for their legislative behaviour, British voters would need to base their decision to vote for an MP at least partially on the extent to which the MP's legislative voting behaviour deviated from that of the MP's party leadership. Voters should evaluate this deviation contingent on their views of the party leadership. MP rebellion can signal that voter–MP congruence is greater than that of the voter and the MP's party leadership. In this article it is found that only constituents with negative attitudes toward the Labour government reward rebellious Labour MPs, albeit to a limited extent. A similar conditional association is not observed on a single issue: Iraq. The policy accountability of MPs is relatively weak and general rather than issue‐specific.