Identifying Parkinson’s Patients: A Functional Gradient Boosting Approach

Parkinson’s, a progressive neural disorder, is difficult to identify due to the hidden nature of the symptoms associated. We present a machine learning approach that uses a definite set of features obtained from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study as input and classifies them into one of two classes: PD (Parkinson’s disease) and HC (Healthy Control). As far as we know this is the first work in applying machine learning algorithms for classifying patients with Parkinson’s disease with the involvement of domain expert during the feature selection process. We evaluate our approach on 1194 patients acquired from Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative and show that it achieves a state-of-the-art performance with minimal feature engineering

Police discretion in rape cases

Although policing requires officers to follow policy guidelines when making decisions, these nevertheless leave room for discretion. We used a within-subjects experimental design and idiographic statistical analyses to examine the factors predicting 25 specialist police officers’ decisions to progress rape cases. We found little to no evidence of the influence of some factors (i.e., victim’s criminal history, victim-suspect relationship, time taken to report crime, victim’s prior reports of rape, victim’s alcohol/drug use during offence, and suspect’s previous convictions) on officers’ rape case progression decisions. However, 15 officers were less likely to progress cases involving victims who provided inconsistent accounts. Thus, some types of rape victims may not get access to the justice that they desire and deserve. Although officers also reported that consistency of the victim’s account was important to their decision-making, there was generally a lack of concordance between officers’ self-reported and applied decision-making policies. Thus, officers’ accounts of how they progressed a rape case may be unreliable and invalid

Improving procedural fairness in housing possession cases

This article offers an insight into the context and practice of housing possession hearings in which a social landlord seeks a possession order against a tenant who is in rent arrears. Drawing on the findings of the authors’ empirical research, supplemented by insights from the psychology of decision-making, this article questions whether judges are able to exercise discretion in a manner consistent with the fundamental demands of ‘procedural fairness’. We find that while the legal process requires judges to engage in rational decision-making, and while judges believe that this is what they are doing, the reality is very different: judges are likely to be relying on intuition. It is not that judges eschew engaging in more deliberative decision-making but rather that they are constrained by limits of the human mind as well as the conditions under which they make their decisions. In particular, the practice of housing possession is characterised by information deficits, low levels of legal representation and time constraints, and this does not facilitate decision-making that meets accepted standards of fairness. In response, we propose ways in which to enhance the consistency, transparency and accountability of decision-making while recognising the current climate of reform and diminishing resources within the legal system

Factors predicting conviction in child stranger rape

Background. Public knowledge of child stranger rape is shaped largely by media portrayals of a small number of cases, often marked by sensational trials, which may result in juror misconceptions of this offense. It is important to understand the factors that may influence jury verdicts in order to maximize the chance of guilty defendants being convicted. Objective. The aim is to explore the factors that predict juries’ decisions to convict or acquit in child stranger rape cases. Participants and Setting. The study utilizes a police database of recorded child stranger rape cases from a UK urban force from 2001-2015. Seventy cases that were tried by jury were analyzed. We investigated the extent to which 19 child-, accused- and offense-related factors predict jury verdicts. Methods. A four stage analytic process was employed: (a) Kendall’s tau-b measured inter-correlations among the factors; (b) Chi-Square and Welch t-tests measured associations between factors and verdicts; (c) binary logistic regression measured the power of factors in predicting verdicts; and (d) Stein’s formula was used to cross-validate the model. Results. Verdicts were predicted by two offense-related factors. A weapon increased the odds of conviction by 412%. An outdoor location increased the odds by 360%. Conclusions. The findings have potential implications for prosecution case building and courtroom policy. Prosecutors could gather as much information as possible from victims about the factors found to be of importance to juries. Judges could challenge incorrect beliefs and stereotypes by instructing juries

Factors predicting jury convictions in stranger rape cases

Background: Despite there being no legal distinction between different types of rapes (e.g., those committed by strangers to the victim versus those committed by perpetrators known to the victim), stereotypical beliefs about rape have meant that these can be treated differently by the justice system. The aim is to explore the factors that predict juries’ decisions to convict or acquit in stranger rape cases. Methods: We measured the importance of a range of 20 perpetrator-, victim-, and offense-related factors in predicting outcomes for 394 stranger rape cases tried by a jury. A four-stage analytic process was employed: (a) Kendall’s tau-b measured intercorrelations among the factors (predictors); (b) Chi-square and Welch t-tests measured associations between factors and verdicts; (c) binary logistic regression measured the power of factors in predicting verdicts; and (d) Stein’s formula was used to cross-validate the model. Results: Jury verdicts were predicted by five offense-related factors and one victim-related factor. None of the perpetrator-related factors were significant predictors of convictions for stranger rape. Conclusion: The findings have potential implications for victims of stranger rape, as well as prosecution and courtroom policy. We show that if a perpetrator is identified and charged, the likelihood of securing a conviction by a jury is high for victims of stranger rape. We suggest that prosecutors could gather as much information as possible from victims about the factors found to be of importance to juries, and judges could instruct juries on assumptions about the characteristics of the offense in order to challenge incorrect beliefs and stereotypes. Ultimately, this could be used to encourage victims of stranger rape to report and testify in court