Treatment Fidelity in Sex Offender Programming: Assessing Delivery across Community Providers

In an effort to focus on treatment fidelity in the sex offender field, this study evaluated the treatment delivery of ten clinicians who provided treatment to sex offenders under community supervision. Data collection and analysis involved a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Results revealed that treatment providers varied in their use of empirically-supported treatment techniques, their participation in the community containment approach, and their adherence to the treatment contract. These findings provide support for the continued study of treatment fidelity in the corrections literature. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

‘Good soldiers are made,not born’⊥: the dangers of medicalizing ability in the military use of genetics

Advances in genetic and genomic science are of particular interest to the United States military. Responding to Maxwell J. Mehlman''s and Tracy Yeheng Li''s article Ethical, Legal, Social, and Policy Issues in the Use of Genomic Technology by the U.S. Military, this Commentary explores the social consequences of medicalizing what it means to be a good soldier. It begins by reviewing the well-documented consequences of medicalization in the contexts of the eugenics movement and modern genetic and genomic science. It then applies that analysis to the military use of genetics and genomics, focusing on the ways in which genetic or genomic accounts of military ability could entrench existing gender and racial disparities.     

The existing tensions in the defining of human trafficking at a UK and international level: a critical overview

Human trafficking is an ancient trade that took several forms over the centuries, from full blown state-perpetrated slavery through to illegal exploitative employment of migrants in the sex and other labor industries. At the start of the twenty-first century, a new definition of human trafficking was produced by the United Nations, within which are contained terms such as “coercion,” “deception,” “abuse of power” and “consent.” While the definition itself has largely been agreed upon, deep divisions – about the interpretation of those terms within the definition – continue to polarize the views of antagonizing political and feminist lobbying groups. The agreement on the definition seems to have served little in ironing the differences and the debates continue to be fuelled. In this article, the author elaborates on the tensions that surround the interpretation of the definition and argues that the main group to have fallen victim to the relevant yet inept international and individual state regulations is the trafficked people, while the traffickers tend to largely escape punishment. Rectifying the situation can be extremely challenging and requires sustained and large scale multinational collaborative work. So far, only little is being done to address the problem and the expectation is that it will become significantly worse before it eventually gets better.     

The Use of Femoral Neck Axis Length to Estimate Sex and Ancestry

Having multiple reliable methods of estimating sex and ancestry from various skeletal features increases the likelihood of identifying skeletal remains. Femoral neck axis length (FNAL), as measured in living individuals, has been shown to vary by sex and ancestry. FNAL has not, however, been previously measured directly from skeletonized remains and investigated for its potential use in forensic anthropological applications. This research proposes a method for measuring FNAL from skeletal remains, determines the reliability and repeatability of the measurement, and assesses the validity of FNAL in sex and ancestry estimation. Results showed low interobserver error in the measurement of FNAL (TEM = 0.33 mm, R = 0.99). Significant differences in FNAL were found between sexes as well as between American Black, American White, and Native American groups. FNAL can correctly classify sex in ~86% of all cases and is considered valuable to sex estimation. The value of FNAL to ancestry estimation, however, is considered limited.     

性贿赂现象及其界说与遏制对策

以性贿赂谋取非法经济利益与谋取政治利益,这是当前性贿赂突出的表现,危害大。从国家工作人员接受性服务为他人谋取利益及为谋取不正当利益对国家工作人员提供性服务两方面来界说性贿赂。遏制性贿赂必须加强党风政风建设,加强对国家工作人员的监督,加强舆论宣传、揭示性贿赂可耻行为,加强打击卖淫嫖娼活动。     

Photographing Children in Mexico City's Red‐Light Districts

This paper analyses Mexican photographer Maya Goded's representations of children living in one of Mexico City's red‐light districts. Drawing on interviews with the photographer, the practical and ethical difficulties in portraying vulnerable children are analysed to examine the representational limitations of photography in confrontation with child sex exploitation. Through close visual analysis of the images, the paper examines the children's representations as both externalised repositories of their parents' aspirations and their keen imitators. The figure of the child becomes a locus for interpolating critiques of sex work, demonstrating how photographs forge a cultural space where they become politically salient records of vulnerability in the face of neoliberal deregulation and economic rationality.     

“Walls made out of paper”: Witnessing wit and how I learned to drive

The article proposes an alternative performative methodology for displaying sexuality in public spaces called queer curatorship. Specifically, it examines Isaac Julien's film The Attendant and a Chicago leathersex museum (The Leather Archives &; Museum) wherein histories of sadomasochistic sex practices and slavery dangerously crisscross on the surface of objects. Tyburczy posits that sites that feature materials such as real Antebellum slave whips alongside objects used as instruments of consensual pleasure and pain offer unique opportunities to reconfigure, recode, and reanimate epistemological frameworks for understanding the history of sexual equipment, the perversion and eroticization of power exchange, and the mutually constitutive relationship between histories of eroticism and histories of discipline. Cultivating the visual lessons learned from The Attendant into new curatorial models enacted during her tenure as a museum curator at the Leather Archives &; Museum, Tyburczy ultimately proposes queer curatorship as an experimental museum practice that stages alternative configurations between objects and bodies in space to alter the historical relationship of race, sex, and power as they relate to particular objects and acts, in this instance the use of whips in interracial scenes of sex and violence.     

羊驼副性腺结构的组织化学研究

为了解羊驼的生殖生理特性,采用大体解剖与组织学方法对羊驼副性腺的形态结构进行了研究。结果显示,羊驼副性腺有前列腺和尿道球腺,没有精囊腺。尿道球腺呈圆形,位于坐骨弓处,前列腺位于尿生殖道起始部的背侧,每一腺体都有腺管开口于尿生殖道;羊驼副性腺的基本组织结构和其他哺乳动物相似,但有较小的差异。尿道球腺为有许多弯曲分枝的复管泡状腺,分泌物较为黏稠,PAS染色强阳性,呈鲜红色;前列腺为复管泡状腺,前列腺的分泌物是一种稀薄的蛋白样液,PAS染色阳性,染色较浅。结果证实,羊驼前列腺和尿道球腺可分泌较多的糖物质,使精子生存较长时间;羊驼繁殖慢的特点可能与其生存环境差,易造成流产或妊娠期长且为单胎有关,而并不是精液本身的问题。     

THE IMPACT OF MEGAN'S LAW ON SEX OFFENDER RECIDIVISM: THE MINNESOTA EXPERIENCE*

Although Megan's Law was passed more than 10 years ago, very little is known as to whether it reduces sex offender recidivism significantly. Using a retrospective quasi‐experimental design, we examine whether community notification has a deterrent effect by comparing the recidivism rates of 155 level 3 (“high public risk”) sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 1997 and 2002 who were subject to broad notification with two separate control groups who were not. The first control group (referred to as the prenotification group) contained 125 sex offenders released between 1990 and 1996 (the 7 years preceding the implementation of the Community Notification Act) who likely would have been subject to broad community notification had the law been in effect at the time of their release. The second control group (referred to as the non‐notification group) was composed of 155 offenders (37 level 1 and 118 level 2) released between 1997 and 2002 who were not subject to broad community notification. The results from the Cox proportional hazards models reveal that broad community notification significantly reduced the risk of time to a sex reoffense (rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration) compared with both control groups. The findings were mixed, however, for both non‐sex and general reoffending. Whereas broad community notification significantly reduced the risk of timing to both non‐sex and general recidivism compared with the prenotification group, no such effects were found in the non‐notification group analyses. We discuss the implications of these results and attempt to explain why Megan's Law seems to reduce sex offense recidivism in Minnesota.     

Multiplex PCR electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS): Application to forensic mitochondrial DNA examinations

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) examinations play an important role in criminal investigations, identification of victims of mass disasters, and association of unidentified remains with family members. Typically, HV1 and HV2 are amplified via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by fluorescent sequencing. While this method produces the highest level of resolution, it is labor intensive and unable to distinguish components of a mixture. Previously, an electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) method was described to determine the base composition profile of enzymatically digested PCR amplified fragments derived from the HV1 and HV2 regions. Advantages of ESI-MS compared to sequencing include speed of analysis, automation, and increased sensitivity, while retaining a high degree of resolution. Here, we report the next generation of this method in which a base composition profile is determined from 24 overlapping PCR reactions. Because ESI-MS provides the relative abundance of each component present, this method allows for the quantitative typing of mixtures. This ESI-MS method does not rely on a priori knowledge of variable sites, allowing the capture of private mutations and individual-specific variation. Due to the multiplex design, automation, speed of analysis, and ability to interrogate mixtures, this method provides a powerful and rapid tool for forensic mtDNA examinations.