Forensic Science International Mind and Law最新文献

Sexual minority rights in contemporary Africa is a contentious issue, where in some countries, same-sexuality is portrayed by media and politicians as “un-African” and a “white disease” imported from the West. Same-sex sexual activity is criminalised in 31 African countries. Political, legal and religious frameworks exacerbate homophobic attitudes, and related discrimination and hate crimes toward individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). We focus here on the rights of people in prison to protection from harm (same-sex sexual violence and sexually transmitted diseases), and who (in many African countries) are ignored in national HIV prevention programming. Prison conditions in Africa are harsh and congested, with inadequate basic needs provisions and this fuels exposure of the vulnerable to sexual violence and engagement in survival sex. HIV rates in prisons are also disproportionately higher than in the community. We present a socio-legal assessment on Malawi where same-sex sexual behaviours are criminalised. The assessment highlights how inmates’ exposure to sexual violence is invisible in political, legal, human rights and public health/HIV agendas in Malawi. Notwithstanding that the Malawi Penal Code and Prison Act prohibits same-sex sexual activity, there are enormous complications with victim disclosure, as claims of rape infer that sodomy has occurred, resulting in victim arrest. We focus here on tackling sexual violence and HIV, and advocate for broad based torture prevention initiatives in prisons to protect the vulnerable from inter-personal sexual violence, and consequent acquisition and onward transmission of HIV. The voices of people in prison in Malawi are regrettably still kept out of societal and public health discourses.

Filicide has always remained a mystery in forensic psychiatry because of its complex medico-legal factors. In this report, we present a case of filicide in Kashmir where a woman killed her two children and later committed suicide. The case is reported within the context of mental health provision in Kashmir and highlights the need for a comprehensive suicide prevention strategy. Holistic prevention measures are discussed, along with the challenges of implementing these measures and the need for comprehensive liaisons between stakeholders.

Correctional clients frequently have extensive trauma and abuse experiences and the adverse childhood experiences framework is increasingly influential in the criminological and forensic sciences. Unfortunately, most measurement involves binary measures that fail to capture the complexity of this abuse. Using a population of federal offenders who ever perpetrated a sexual offense, the current study introduced new measures of physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and incest abuse that included ordinal-scale measures of the frequency, chronicity, and severity of these experiences. Descriptive, correlational, and ROC-AUC models indicated that the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences depends on its measurement with some clients experiencing frequent and severe abuse across years. Adverse childhood experiences significantly correlated with multiple measures of criminal onset and sexual offending and had excellent classification accuracy for behavioral disorders especially Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD). We encourage further measurement development of adverse childhood experiences so that the ecological validity of research is commensurate with the trauma experiences of offenders who commit sexual crimes.

Those with mental illness, learning disabilities, and speech and language difficulties continue to be over represented in the global criminal justice system, create immense difficulties for these individuals in navigating the system itself, and the prison environment, and contribute to the revolving door of incarceration. Very little is known with regard to the situation of the mentally ill and mentally incapacitated in African criminal justice systems. In this Commentary we discuss how the Criminal Procedure Act in South Africa still does not fully comply with the or the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Person with Disabilities in criminal proceedings. An urgent review of due process is warranted where the existence of capacity based defense needs are to be considered. It is vital to distinguish between intellectual and psycho-social disability, regarding assessment and issuance of appropriate court orders to the specific needs of the person, the identified disability and the interest of justice. Consistency in mental capacity or illness assessment using validated screening tools and specialist expert reports provided to the court should comply with the general requirements of expert evidence.

Research regarding stress in the workplace and its potential impact upon forensic expert decision-making and wellbeing is scarce. In this study, 41 forensic examiners were surveyed about the sources of their stress, the support they receive, and the potential influence of stress on their decisions. Stress from managers, supervisors and case backlogs were identified as significant factors that contributed to stress in the workplace. Neither the type of case nor working in high-profile cases were reported to be major sources of stress. Crime scene examiners reported feeling higher levels of stress from personal reasons and from the nature of their cases than analytical examiners. Female examiners reported feeling more stressed than male examiners from both general stressors and workplace stressors. Examiners in the 11–15 years of experience group felt more pressure as a result of circumstances at work than examiners in the 7–10 years group. The level of management support was not associated with either the feelings of general stress or stress in the workplace. Examiners varied in their perceptions of whether stress affected their judgements: 39% felt that their judgments were influenced by stress, while 22% did not and 39% were unsure.