Needs Assessment of Forensic Laboratories and Medical Examiner/Coroner Offices: A Report to Congress

Report to Congres

Archibald Reiss Days : thematic conference proceedings of international significance : International Scientific Conference, Belgrade, 7-9 November 2017.

In front of you is the Thematic Collection of Papers presented at the International Scientific Conference “Archibald Reiss Days”, which was organized by the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies in Belgrade, in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University in USA, School of Criminal Justice University of Laussane in Switzerland, National Police Academy in Spain, Police Academy Szczytno in Poland, National Police University of China, Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, Volgograd Academy of the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry, Faculty of Security in Skopje, Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security in Ljubljana, Police Academy “Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ in Bucharest, Academy of Police Force in Bratislava, Faculty of Security Science University of Banja Luka, Faculty for Criminal Justice, Criminology and Security Studies University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Law in Montenegro, Police Academy in Montenegro and held at the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, on 7, 8 and 9 November 2017.The International Scientific Conference “Archibald Reiss Days” is organized for the seventh time in a row, in memory of the founder and director of the first modern higher police school in Serbia, Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, after whom the Conference was named. The Thematic Collection of Papers contains 131 papers written by eminent scholars in the field of law, security, criminalistics, police studies, forensics, informatics, as well as by members of national security system participating in education of the police, army and other security services from Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Bangladesh, Abu Dhabi, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Italy, Australia and United Kingdom. Each paper has been double-blind peer reviewed by two reviewers, international experts competent for the field to which the paper is related, and the Thematic Conference Proceedings in whole has been reviewed by five competent international reviewers.The papers published in the Thematic Collection of Papers provide us with the analysis of the criminalistic and criminal justice aspects in solving and proving of criminal offences, police organization, contemporary security studies, social, economic and political flows of crime, forensic linguistics, cybercrime, and forensic engineering. The Collection of Papers represents a significant contribution to the existing fund of scientific and expert knowledge in the field of criminalistic, security, penal and legal theory and practice. Publication of this Collection contributes to improving of mutual cooperation between educational, scientific and expert institutions at national, regional and international level

Race in the Life Sciences: An Empirical Assessment, 1950 - 2000

The mainstream narrative regarding the evolution of race as an idea in the scientific community is that biological understandings of race dominated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up until World War II, after which a social constructionist approach is thought to have taken hold. Many believe that the horrific outcomes of the most notorious applications of biological race-eugenics and the Holocaust-moved scientists away from thinking that race reflects inherent differences and toward an understanding that race is a largely social, cultural, and political phenomenon. This understanding of the evolution of race as a scientific idea informed the way that many areas of law conceptualize human equality, including civil rights, human rights, and constitutional law. This Article provides one of the first large-scale empirical assessments of publications in peer-reviewed biomedical and life science journals to examine whether biological theories of race actually lost credibility in the life sciences after World War II. We find that biological theories of race transformed yet persisted in the dominant academic discourse up through modern times-a finding that contradicts the central narrative that the life sciences became color-blind or post-racial several decades ago. The continued salience of biological race in the life sciences suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the questionable assumptions driving this research on biological race and its potential spillover effects, i.e., how persisting claims of biological race in the scientific literature might reconstitute its significance in law and society in a manner that may be harmful to racial minorities

UK legal approach to disease causation: examining the role for epidemiological evidence

The main aim of this thesis is to advocate a more scientifically informed approach towards epidemiological evidence in disease litigation. It analyses the judicial scepticism about epidemiology in UK tort law, and finds that the myth of scientific certainty lies at the heart of the devaluation of epidemiology as proof of specific causation. It traces misconceptions about epidemiology to broader misconceptions about science as a whole (including medical science and disease), and confused legal approaches to causation. To explain why legal objections to epidemiology are erroneous, the thesis clarifies fundamental aspects of science and disease causation that lawyers need to better grasp. Scientific reasoning is inherently probabilistic. Further, medical research indicates that disease causation is usually multifactorial and stochastic. Rigid and deterministic ‘but for’ questions are thus fundamentally unsuited for assessing disease causation. The mismatch between legal and medical causal models makes courts resort to normative, ‘backwards’ causal reasoning or haphazard exceptional approaches to disease causation, where the most difficult dilemmas around causation arise. This thesis argues that courts need a better test for causation for disease that can take account of probabilistic scientific and epidemiological evidence, and suggests one such principled approach. Epidemiology can be invaluable in such an assessment of disease causation

Forging a Stable Relationship?: Bridging the Law and Forensic Science Divide in the Academy

The marriage of law and science has most often been represented as discordant. While the law/science divide meme is hardly novel, concerns over the potentially deleterious coupling within the criminal justice system may have reached fever pitch. There is a growing chorus of disapproval addressed to ‘forensic science’, accompanied by the denigration of legal professionals for being unable or unwilling to forge a symbiotic relationship with forensic scientists. The 2009 National Academy of Sciences Report on forensic science heralds the latest call for greater collaboration between ‘law’ and ‘science’, particularly in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) yet little reaction has been apparent amid law and science faculties. To investigate the potential for interdisciplinary cooperation, the authors received funding for a project: ‘Lowering the Drawbridges: Forensic and Legal Education in the 21st Century’, hoping to stimulate both law and forensic science educators to seek mutually beneficial solutions to common educational problems and build vital connections in the academy. A workshop held in the UK, attended by academics and practitioners from scientific, policing, and legal backgrounds marked the commencement of the project. This paper outlines some of the workshop conclusions to elucidate areas of dissent and consensus, and where further dialogue is required, but aims to strike a note of optimism that the ‘cultural divide’ should not be taken to be so wide as to be beyond the legal and forensic science academy to bridge. The authors seek to demonstrate that legal and forensic science educators can work cooperatively to respond to critics and forge new paths in learning and teaching, creating an opportunity to take stock and enrich our discipline as well as answer critics. As Latham (2010:34) exhorts, we are not interested in turning lawyers into scientists and vice versa, but building a foundation upon which they can build during their professional lives: “Instead of melding the two cultures, we need to establish conditions of cooperation, mutual respect, and mutual reliance between them.” Law and forensic science educators should, and can assist with the building of a mutual understanding between forensic scientists and legal professionals, a significant step on the road to answering calls for the professions to minimise some of the risks associated with the use of forensic science in the criminal process. REFERENCES Latham, S.R. 2010, ‘Law between the cultures: C.P.Snow’s The Two Cultures and the problem of scientific illiteracy in law’ 32 Technology in Society, 31-34. KEYWORDS forensic science education legal education law/science divid

Literature and Cognitive Science

The field of Literature and Cognitive Science is an emergent one. This thesis investigates ways in which knowledge generated about the brain and mind in the field of Literature can complement knowledge generated about the brain and mind in the field of Cognitive Science. The work of a representative selection of literary critics who identify themselves as working within and shaping the field of Literature and Cognitive Science will be examined, and the representation of brain-mind states in two contemporary novels, Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and Pat Cadigan's Tea from an Empty Cup, will be closely analysed. A principal aim of this investigation is to affirm the power of literary and literary critical texts as potent and relevant knowledge sources about the brain and mind that must be included in our understanding of cognition. In this respect it will support the position of those in the field of Literature and Cognitive Science who argue that knowledge created in the field of Literature can enrich the new understanding of human cognition being developed in the field of Cognitive Science