Attitudes Toward the Way Courts Deal with Criminals

The way courts treat criminals depends on a variety of factors. This paper examines how age, sex, and race affect an offender’s treatment during sentencing. These variables were collected using the 2010 General Social Survey and were tested using the SPSS 20.0 Student Version Statistical Software. The independent variables include age, race, and sex, while the dependent variable is the way courts deal with criminals. The hypotheses that were tested stated that older individuals, nonwhite persons, and men would believe that courts deal too harshly with criminals. The conclusion found that none of the variables showed a significant correlation; therefore, further research must be completed to determine if a correlation has occurred over time

The Use of Criminal Profilers in the Prosecution of Serial Killers

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of criminal profiling in terms of serial killers in the United States. The research provided in this paper was found using the most recent research available on the topic. The FBI’s Behavioral Unit, or National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), is the current leading law enforcement agency that investigates these types of crimes. They utilize definitions, typographies, and motives to create a criminal profile to investigate serial killings. Ultimately, these profiles are inadequate because they are inconclusive and exclude multiple suspects that are potentially dangerous. Therefore, criminal profiling should be merely utilized as an investigative tool, rather than a prosecutorial tool. Ultimately, the F.B.I.’s NCAVC must create a universal definition, as well as a more detailed list of typographies to help law enforcement more accurately identify and investigate serial killers

Solitary By Any Other Name: Silence to Segregation in American Prisons

This thesis examined the United States’ ability to circumvent international and constitutional law in regards to solitary confinement in American prisons. Drawing on scholarship examining inmates’ rights and inmates’ resistance movements, international human rights doctrine, United States constitutional law, activist led movements, and inmate testimony, the thesis demonstrates that the United States is able to simultaneously claim that it is meeting its human rights violations while resisting reforms to both state and federal current policy of warehousing inmates in solitary confinement for decades at a time through two strategies. First, the United States utilizes framing strategies to deny the use of solitary confinement by framing it as a necessary housing policy to guarantee safety and security within the prison. Second, the United States uses continually changing rhetoric to label solitary confinement as segregation. These two strategies allow the United States to avoid both constitutional challenges to the use of solitary confinement and meeting its obligations under international human rights agreements

Expanded encyclopaedias of DNA elements in the human and mouse genomes

AbstractThe human and mouse genomes contain instructions that specify RNAs and proteins and govern the timing, magnitude, and cellular context of their production. To better delineate these elements, phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project has expanded analysis of the cell and tissue repertoires of RNA transcription, chromatin structure and modification, DNA methylation, chromatin looping, and occupancy by transcription factors and RNA-binding proteins. Here we summarize these efforts, which have produced 5,992 new experimental datasets, including systematic determinations across mouse fetal development. All data are available through the ENCODE data portal (https://www.encodeproject.org), including phase II ENCODE1 and Roadmap Epigenomics2 data. We have developed a registry of 926,535 human and 339,815 mouse candidate cis-regulatory elements, covering 7.9 and 3.4% of their respective genomes, by integrating selected datatypes associated with gene regulation, and constructed a web-based server (SCREEN; http://screen.encodeproject.org) to provide flexible, user-defined access to this resource. Collectively, the ENCODE data and registry provide an expansive resource for the scientific community to build a better understanding of the organization and function of the human and mouse genomes.11Nsciescopu

Perspectives on ENCODE

The Encylopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project launched in 2003 with the long-term goal of developing a comprehensive map of functional elements in the human genome. These included genes, biochemical regions associated with gene regulation (for example, transcription factor binding sites, open chromatin, and histone marks) and transcript isoforms. The marks serve as sites for candidate cis-regulatory elements (cCREs) that may serve functional roles in regulating gene expression1. The project has been extended to model organisms, particularly the mouse. In the third phase of ENCODE, nearly a million and more than 300,000 cCRE annotations have been generated for human and mouse, respectively, and these have provided a valuable resource for the scientific community.11Nsciescopu