Not Just a Boy's Club

Abstract

The extant literature suggests that habitual criminality among women is rare and that female career criminals are ostensibly nonexistent. Using the criminal records of 500 male and female adult recidivists, this study applies the concept of career criminality to women and describes how this application has specific gendered elements. Like their male peers, women are chronic, versatile offenders engaged in violent, property, and public-order offending. Women are disproportionately engaged in forgery, fraud, and prostitution whereas men are disproportionately engaged in rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. No gender differences existed for a variety of additional offenses and criminal justice system statuses. However, significant gender differences exist for social demographic characteristics, such as age and timing of onset, and criminal career parameter indicators, such as span of criminal career. These data and analyses indicate that the career criminal classification has important implications for criminal career research and gender-based criminology.     

基于腰椎高度X线测量技术推断四川汉族女性身高

目的通过腰椎高度X线测量技术,建立四川汉族女性身高的数学模型,为法医人类学研究积累基础数据。方法收集206例四川汉族女性个体按年龄分为A、B、C 3组,其中A组(206例)不分年龄,B组(116例)为20~45岁,C组(90例)为45岁以上,并应用计算机X线摄影(computer radiography,CR)技术分别测量所有样本腰椎CR片中5个椎体(L1~L5)前缘、后缘、中央高度(x1~x15),脊柱腰段中央总长度(x16),同时测量每个个体真实身高,对各测量指标联合与身高的相关性进行线性回归分析,建立推断身高的数学模型,并重新选取62例样本代入数学模型,检验模型的准确性。结果所建立的数学模型经线性回归模型假设检验,均具有统计学意义(P0.05),回归方程的推断标准误为2.982~5.004cm,相关系数为0.370~0.779,复相关系数为0.533~0.834。对每组相关系数、复相关系数最高的方程进行回代检验,其中A组的y=100.33+1.489 x3-0.548 x6+0.772 x9+0.058 x12+0.645 x15的准确率最高,为80.6%(±1SE)、100%(±2SE)。结论本研究建立的数学模型适用于推断四川汉族女性身高。     

Messenger RNA Profiling for Forensic Body Fluid Identification： Research and Applications

Identifying the origin of body fluids left at a crime scene can give a significant insight into crime scene reconstruction by supporting a link betw een sample donors and actual criminal acts. How ev-er, the conventional body fluid identification methods are prone to various limitations, such as time con-sumption, intensive labor, nonparallel manner, varying degrees of sensitivity and limited specificity. Re-cently, the analysis of cell-specific messenger RNA expression （mRNA profiling） has been proposed to supplant conventional methods for body fluid identification. Since 2011, the collaborative exercises have been organized by the European DNA Profiling Group （EDNAP ） in order to evaluate the robustness and reproducibility of mRNA profiling for body fluid identification. The major advantages of mRNA profil-ing, compared to the conventional methods, include higher sensitivity, greater specificity, the ability of detecting several body fluids in one multiplex reaction, and compatibilitywith current DNA extraction and analysis procedure. In the current review ,we provided an overview of the present know ledge and detection methodologies of mRNA profiling for forensic body fluid identification and discussed its possi-ble practical application to forensic casew ork.     

Arts Organizations and Branding: Creating a New Joint Brand for Three Arts Organizations

This article investigates brand architecture by analyzing stakeholder perceptions of brand images when a new joint brand is created for the existing brands of three arts organizations. The theoretical framework is based on previous literature on brand architecture and brand image. The empirical study is based on a quantitative, 418-respondent survey among stakeholders of these three arts organizations. The study makes two major theoretical contributions. First, the results show that the new joint brand can be endorsed by the existing sub-brands, contrary to brand-architecture literature. Second, even in the case of a new brand, stakeholders perceive the functional attributes as important.     

Predicting dropout of court-mandated treatment in a British sample of domestic violence offenders

Abstract

Prior to starting a pro-feminist domestic violence rehabilitation programme, 120 British male domestic violence offenders completed psychometric and attitudinal measures that assessed pro-domestic violence attitudes, anger, locus of control, self-reported emotional and psychological abuse of a partner, interpersonal dependency and social desirability. Offenders who completed the programme were compared to those who dropped out on these measures and demographic variables. Just under one-third (32.5%) of offenders failed to complete the programme. Of those variables that discriminated between completers and dropouts (age, previous custodial sentences, age at first conviction, marital status, self-reported abuse, and diagnosis of depression), only age (being young), having previously received a custodial sentence and self-reported low levels of physical abuse of a partner predicted attrition. These results are discussed with reference to probation supervision.     

Power and inheritance

A widespread inheritance pattern in eastern and southeastern Europe was based on equally partible male inheritance and excluded women from inheritance and dowry. The western transition zone to the other predominant European inheritance systems coincided with the Hajnal line, which divides the distribution of European marriage patterns in historical times. New evidence is added to the historical depth of the cultural–historical transition zone already postulated by Mitterauer. Since the early Middle Ages, this zone also marked the border region of two basic European agrarian systems: the western Grundherrschafts system, which led to the intervention of landlords into inheritance patterns and family structures of the serfs and the non-interventionist tributary systems, which left inheritance practices based on customary laws untouched until the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The above-mentioned inheritance pattern, which was also widespread in Asia, allocated a huge amount of power to the agnatic core of the family and was part of a patriarchal system shaped by patrilineality, patrilocality, low age at marriage, complex family forms, and fragmentation of the soil when demographic transition set in.     

Using context and difference in sex offender treatment: An integrated systemic approach

Summary

The primary objective of this paper is to promote a re-examination of the current use of cognitive-behavioural programmes in work with men who have sexually offended against children or adults and to encourage the application of ideas from the systemic field. In order to support this objective, the paper puts forward and develops the following arguments:

1. That the current content of manualised programmes in this field has been distilled too far and left behind some of the most important principles of the cognitive approach. Returning to the work of Marshall et al (1999), the need for a thorough and broad-based assessment of each individual prior to deciding treatment goals is clearly recommended. Further, there is a need to pay much more attention to differences between, as well as similarities of those who sexually offend.

2. That ideas from within the systemic therapeutic field be integrated within existing approaches to attempt to address some of the limitations of cognitive-behaviour therapy as currently employed. Evidence for the potential benefits of this comes from a broad personal experience of working directly with offenders and consulting to group facilitators.

It is concluded that all therapeutic approaches reach a ‘moment of integration’ (Pinsof, 1994), when their failures are recognised and other approaches are drawn on. It is suggested that this moment may be upon us in this area.     

Attitudes of Dutch citizens towards male victims of sexual coercion by a female perpetrator

ABSTRACT

This vignette study examines the differences in Dutch people's attitudes towards sexual coercion perpetrated by a male against a female versus sexual coercion perpetrated by a female against a male. In total, 583 Dutch citizens (16–86 years, 59.7% female) evaluated a control scenario and three sexually coercive scenarios (verbal coercion, purposeful intoxication and force), in which the sex of perpetrator and victim was purposely varied. The variables studied include: (1) scenario acceptability, (2) victim responsibility, (3) perpetrator responsibility, (4) victim pleasure, (5) victim distress and (6) support for filing a police report. The results indicate that sexual coercion of men is taken less seriously than sexual coercion of women, especially among Dutch men. However, most differences between attitudes towards male and female victims were found only in the physical force scenario. The findings highlight the importance of educational programmes to raise awareness and reduce stereotypical views on male sexual victimisation.     

Walter Benjamin’s Variations of Imagelessness

Abstract

Strongly positive uses of terms that designate an absence, a cognitive or ontological impossibility or a sensory privation are among the persistent conceptual figures of Benjamin’s thought. This article analyses the moves by which Benjamin gave his concept of ‘the expressionless’ (das Ausdruckslose) its intriguing semantic meaning and moral value. Drawing on the poetics and philosophy of the sublime from Greek antiquity through modern times, the article reveals key historical reference points of Benjamin’s concept and, furthermore, his strategy of advocating a novel theory of the sublime as an antithesis to, or an interruption of, the beautiful by selectively integrating older traditions (such as the topos of god’s “imagelessness”) with theorems previously unrelated to these traditions (such as phenomenological reflections on body perception and colour and the twentieth-century discourse on “decision”).     

A Novel Forged Image Detection Method Using the Characteristics of Interpolation

Development of digital image‐editing programs has enabled us to be widely exposed to forged digital images surrounding us. Such forged images have been dispersed through the Internet, newspaper articles, and magazines, and in particular, the information contained in these unverified images happened to be regarded as true. As a result, the forged images provided wrong information for individuals and society, thus sometimes creating social issues. In order to solve such problems, this study was aimed to suggest the methods of identifying the veracity of forged images. In this way, it suggested re‐interpolation algorithm. Namely, the study re‐interpolated in identical arbitrary values both the interpolated and un‐interpolated regions based on the interpolation used a lot in forged, confirmed discrete fourier transform (DFT) characteristics of these two regions, and embodied a detection map for the final forged images, using the subtraction value between two regions in DFT characteristics.