DNA profiling from heroin street dose packages

A large amount of heroin street doses are seized and examined for drug content by the Israel police. These are generally wrapped in heat-sealed plastic. Occasionally it is possible to visualize latent fingerprints on the plastic wrap itself, but the small size of the plastic item and the sealing process makes the success rate very low. In this study, the possibility of extracting and profiling DNA from the burnt edge of the plastic wrap was investigated. The idea was based on the assumption that epithelial cells might be trapped during the sealing process. The results show that there are sufficient quantities of DNA deposited at the "amorphic" burnt edges of sealed street doses for DNA profiling to be carried out. A controlled experiment using a known donor was performed. This subject carried out sealing of "street drug" packages and consequent DNA extractions were performed to show that known DNA profiles could be recovered from such packages, as a result of handling by the "packer." "Square-like" burnt edges did not yield DNA profiles, probably because of differences in the sealing process. It was also shown that DNA could be recovered from the plastic wrap itself and not only from the amorphic burnt edges. As heroin dealers and drug users are often involved in other crimes and run-ins with the law, the effective extraction and addition of their DNA profiles from such items of evidence to the newly established DNA database in Israel provides new avenues in the continued fight against crime and drug traffickers.     

氯胺酮滥用的毛发分析研究

目的建立毛发中氯胺酮及其代谢物的分析方法并探索氯胺酮进入毛发的机理。方法通过建立豚鼠连续给药(不同剂量)实验模型获取阳性头发和采集氯胺酮滥用者头发,经处理后用GC/MSscan和SIM法分析,以鉴别、确认毛发中氯胺酮及其代谢物。结果豚鼠毛发中氯胺酮的质量分数与给药剂量存在明显的正相关性。毛发中氯胺酮质量分数依白色、棕色、黑色毛发顺序随毛发中黑色素的质量分数增加而增加。豚鼠毛发中氯胺酮与代谢物NK质量分数之比为2.33～12.94,仅在高剂量组的豚鼠毛发中才检测到DHNK,其质量分数与NK接近。15名氯胺酮滥用者黑色头发中均检出原体和代谢物NK,但DHNK少见。豚鼠毛发中代谢物相对质量分数明显高于人。结论本实验结果很好地反映了药物进入毛发代谢过程与药物和黑色素亲和力以及药物的亲脂性密切相关这一规律,但人和动物在药物代谢及进入毛发的难易程度上存在差异。本方法可以用于法庭毒物分析领域头发中氯胺酮的检测。     

DOES THE TIME CAUSE THE CRIME? AN EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TIME SERVED AND REOFFENDING IN THE NETHERLANDS*

This work uses a sample of Dutch offenders, serving an average of 6.7 months of confinement, to examine the relationship between time served in prison and future criminality. To overcome the selection issues inherent in this examination, this article introduces a new method to the criminological literature that relies on a generalization of the propensity score to control for observed differences in offenders sentenced to different periods of confinement. On the whole, very little evidence of a relationship between time served and future offending was found. In particular, 3‐year reconviction rate and the proportion of offenders reconvicted in the next 3 years do not seem to depend on incarceration length. Although a relationship between time served and future sentence length was found, the evidence is modest.