Crime & Deliquency Study: Nearly half of black men arrested by age 23

As reported by MSNBC:

Nearly half of all black men and four in ten white men have been arrested for a non-traffic-related crime by the age of 23, according to a new study. 

The study published in “Crime & Delinquency” journal comes from criminal justice professors who studied data collected annually from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey between 1997 and 2008, and found that while there were differences between the arrest rates of males across race, those gaps virtually disappeared among females. 

By the age of 18, about three in ten black men, one in four Hispanic men and just over one in five white men reported a prior arrest. By 23, those numbers climbed to 49% for black men, 44% for Hispanic men, and 38% for white men.

Women reported significantly lower arrest rates, with 20% of black women, 16% of Hispanic women, and 18% of white women recording at least one arrest by the age of 23.

Read more here.

Released Inmates Need Programs to Meet Basic, Mental Health Needs, Study Shows

Science News - When inmates with severe mental illness are released from jail, their priority is finding shelter, food, money and clothes. Even needs as basic as soap and a place to bathe can be hard to come by for people leaving jail, according to a new study from Case Western Reserve University's social work school.

Reentering the community after a period of incarceration in jail is a complex situation," said Amy Wilson, who researches jail and prison issues, and even more difficult for inmates who suffer from a major mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.

Read the article here.

& find the full study here.

Despite scandals, nation's crime labs have seen little change

NPR - January 15th

The nation's crime labs are no strangers to scandal. Last year in Massachusetts, bogus testing by former chemist Annie Dookhan called into question tens of thousands of cases and led to the release of more than 300 people from the state's prisons.

There are currently no uniform standards or regulations for forensic labs. Congress could take up legislation this year to improve oversight, but critics are skeptical.

Read and listen to the story here.

'The Poisoner's Handbook' on PBS: Review

Review from LA Times' Television Critic Robert Lloyd

Debuting Tuesday as part of the PBS series "American Experience," "The Poisoner's Handbook" offers a fascinating look back at how the chemical age changed police work.

Based on Deborah Blum's 2010 book "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York," it is divided into toxin-specific "chapters," (cyanide, arsenic, carbon monoxide, lead, radium, denatured alcohol and so on), but there is nothing particularly instructional about it. A certain sort of viewer might get ideas, of course, but should he watch to the end he will learn that poisoning is a hard crime to get away with anymore.

Some credit for this goes to pioneering main characters Charles Norris, a crusading, visionary New York City medical examiner, and Alexander Gettler, who ran his toxicology labs. They were an unlikely pair, Norris from Philadelphia money but with a healthy sense of noblesse oblige (he paid for equipment and subsidized salaries in his department when money was short); Gettler, a Lower East Side Jew who liked bowling and playing the ponies. But both were dedicated to "a medical-legal justice system" and the rule of science.

Read the rest here.

Crime Reporters Pick Their Favorite Crime Stories of 2013

From Slate, a collection of 2013's best crime stories, including...

1. Baltimore Sun: “Faces of Summer Violence.” Justin Fenton and I tried to capture the toll a violent summer left on Baltimore by looking for anecdotes that reached across all spectrums of the population so everyone could feel the magnitude of lives lost. I think it turned out better than we hoped.

2. Baltimore Sun: “Stick-up boys.” My colleague Justin Fenton delves deep into a murder mystery that exposes a small, deadly niche of Baltimore's chaotic and thriving drug trade.

...and more! Find the full list here.

JFK single-bullet theory probed using latest forensics tech

CBS News - Father-and-son team Luke and Michael Haag have used the latest technology to re-examine the idea that one bullet hit President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally. The duo is featured on the PBS series "Nova" in a documentary called "Cold Case JFK."
 
Using 3D laser scanners -- a technology that's come into play in forensics in recent years -- the Haags documented the crime scene of Kennedy's assassination and their proposed trajectory of the single bullet in an effort to debunk popular conspiracy theories, such as the Grassy Knoll shooter theory, that have persisted in the case.

"(We can envision) crime scenes more thoroughly, more completely than we ever have had the capability to do. So we walk away from the crime scene with more information and we can then examine the crime scene over and over again later on, on a computer. So as we get new hypotheses, things about -- people talking about where a shooter might have been at a new revelatory type place, we can go in to that software, take some calculations, take measurements, angles, and it's all right there," Michael Haag said.

Read more here.

When Crime Scene Evidence Crawls Away

From WIRED Magazine

Regular watchers of CSI and other forensic shows might be surprised to learn that forensic entomology is actually a branch of applied ecology. Decomposition is a critical ecosystem service that humans get for free and often take for granted.

Necrophagous animals are critical to the Earth’s healthy functioning. Because of necrophages’ hard work, we aren’t clambering over dead dinosaurs and spelunking past deceased relatives in a world covered with layer after layer of corpses.  A carcass is an empty bit of habitat waiting to be colonized.

Adult blowflies have an astonishing sense of smell for putrescine and cadaverine, molecules¹ that signal a delicious bucket-kicking has occurred. A dead body is conveniently pre-packaged baby food for fly eggs. Flies arrive in large numbers within minutes after someone begins their dirt nap. It’s rather like when a pizza delivery is made to a dorm; undergraduates magically appear out of thin air, summoned by the yummy aroma.

Read more here.

A day in the life of a clinical director of forensic psychiatry

An interview with Mark Earthrowl, from the guardian's 'Day in the Life of' series:

My day begins with a 6.30am rise, when the chaos of a typical morning sets in thanks to our three young boys and hyperactive dog. I wake up to Radio 4 – it's always enjoyable to hear someone getting a roasting from John Humphrys. My commute to work is only a short trip through rural Norfolk; the scenery on my journey contrasts with that of New Zealand, where I recently worked for several years, navigating the aftermath of an earthquake and the tension caused by daily earth tremors.

I normally reach my desk by 8.30am and, as with many roles in the health sector, each day is different. I have an early meeting with the team to go over the previous day's events. As a team, we formally review patients' care plans on a weekly basis, but mornings see me touring the wards, engaging with patients and making assessments.

Lunch is generally snatched at my desk, or not at all: an unhealthy habit but a time-saving one. By that point, if I've caught up on my clinical duties, I will address the managerial aspects of my role which include the strategic development of the service, quality control, governance and liaison with stakeholders including our regulators and commissioners, the patients' local services and their families.

Read the rest of Mark's interview here.

Proposal to boost forensic regulator

BBC News -The government has launched a consultation over plans to strengthen the powers of the forensic regulator's office in England and Wales.

Currently, the regulator sets standards for forensic science services, but has no statutory, or legislative, powers.

Under the proposals, the regulator's office would be placed on a statutory basis and be handed the authority to investigate breaches in quality.

The government plan is outlined in its response to a recent Commons inquiry.

Read more here.

Forensic team identifies Tacloban dead

Reuters -TACLOBAN - A handful of forensic experts raced against time to identify bodies at a mass grave in Tacloban on Monday, after super typhoon Tolanda (international name Haiyan) killed thousands in the Philippines.

 

Over 100 recently found bodies lay in bags along the roadside beside a trench that already held over 700 bodies.

A group of three forensic pathologists from Manila's University of the Philippines worked with three morticians to identify dozens of bodies.

Ten days after the typhoon, forensic pathologists struggled to identify bloated and rotting corpses, taking photographs and noting remaining features, sizes and other details like clothes, jewelry and mobile phones.


Read more here.