A Model for Managing Crime Scene Examiners

Police forces in the UK employ specially trained Crime Scene Examiners (CSEs) to provide forensic science support to the investigation of crime. Previous research (Bradbury and Feist 2005; Williams 2004) has shown wide variations in the management, deployment, and performance of this staff group and, as such, there is a need to develop performance indicators as a measure of effectiveness. This paper looks at the performance and management of CSEs in Durham Constabulary and discusses a model which focuses on the quality of the work of CSEs rather than the quantity of scenes visited, fingermarks lifted or DNA samples collected. Durham Constabulary focus on three main areas of performance to manage their crime scene examiners: level of activity, quality of materials collected, and the conversion of forensic materials into intelligence matches. In this paper we explore a model of performance management which demonstrates how activity measures and review processes can be implemented and utilised to provide insight into the effectiveness of forensic science. Performance management data collected from 24 CSEs over a one-year period (January to December 2011) is used to discuss the role of forensic performance measures in a scientific support unit, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the measures collected

Jewish Youth in the Minsk Ghetto: How Age and Gender Mattered

Explores how young Soviet Jews survived the German occupation of Soviet territories, specifically ghettoization and mass murder

Memories of an Unfulfilled Promise: Internationalism and Patriotism in Post-Soviet Oral Histories of Jewish Survivors of the Nazi Genocide

Memories of Soviet Jews who were born during the first two decades of the existence of the USSR show that the destruction of the Soviet society and its ideological tenets is central to their experience of the Nazi genocide. Elderly survivors of the Nazi genocide remember their lives based on comparative evalu- ations of their lives in the Soviet Union and under the Nazi regime, making a strong case for understanding memory as a relational construct. Interrogating the significance of growing up secular and Soviet for experiencing and remembering the Nazi genocide reveals that in order to understand Soviet Jews’ responses to German occupation and genocide and how they remember them, we must turn to their prewar socialization as Soviet internationalists and patriots

Ready, Aim, Feminism: When Women Went Off to War

I like to imagine that if Sarah Emma Edmonds were my contemporary she would often sport a t-shirt saying, This is what a feminist looks like. Edmonds was a patriot, a feminist, and, along with an estimated 400 other women, a soldier in the American Civil War. Fed up with her father’s abuse and appalled at the prospect of an arranged marriage Edmonds left her New Brunswick home at the age of fifteen and soon adopted a male identity to become a successful worker. When the war erupted, she was compelled by a sense of patriotism and adventure to join the fight and was soon mustered into Company F of the Second Michigan Volunteers. The newly dubbed Frank Thompson, with her cropped hair and ill-fitting uniform, was able to fit in easily with the other youthful soldiers and soon marched to Manassas where her war story commenced. Throughout the war, Edmonds/Thompson served as a postman, a nurse, and a spy until she contracted malaria and was forced to desert for fear of revealing her true sex [excerpt]

Discovering the War at Home: Oakland Manor, George Gaither, and the Shipley Brothers

From my high school, which is majority African American, it takes only ten minutes to drive to Oakland Manor, a grand, sweeping 19th century-style stone house that sits in my hometown of Columbia, Maryland, a town made up mainly of apartments and identical suburban homes. Growing up, the manor was no more than a big, old building that hosted weddings and was somehow tied to my local history. Growing up, moreover, I did not realize the extent to which my hometown was tied to slavery and the Civil War; both seemed too far removed from a community that stressed diversity and inclusion throughout my childhood. However, after discovering a monument to the Confederate soldiers from Howard County, in which Columbia is located, I learned that Oakland Manor holds a historical narrative that I never knew existed so close to home. During the Civil War, it was the property of a cavalry officer who joined the Confederacy and owned three slaves–all brothers who joined the USCT and fought against their former owner’s cause. Ten minutes from my high school was sitting an opportunity to learn about and interpret slavery and the Civil War in my hometown. [excerpt

Competing Memory Camp Colt’s Place in Gettysburg History

I recently came face-to-face with the issue of relevance in my research on Camp Colt for a public history class, and in studying the tankers’ noble intentions—preserving democracy, stemming German militarization, progressing American innovation—on an equally noble battlefield, I came to an troubling impasse: should America’s first tank school, which operated on the same ground where men fell in droves during Pickett’s Charge roughly fifty years prior, be recognized to the same degree as the Battle of Gettysburg? Is there a way to justify discussing Eisenhower’s command over the fledgling tank corps, which never saw combat, in the same light as the Civil War’s costliest land battle? To me, of course, the answer is yes. With my interests lying in the First World War, I think the Camp Colt experience proves imperative to understanding Gettysburg as a place, but I also see it as more than a neat anecdote. The training that occurred on the battlefield in 1918 paved the way for America’s participation in modern, armored war and established Dwight D. Eisenhower as a notable leader. Moreover, the camp’s trainees looked to Civil War era values of bravery and duty, memorialized in stories about Joshua Chamberlain and Pickett’s Charge, to establish a new martial masculinity for the 20th century. [excerpt

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (And Away From Camp): How Soldiers Used Sports to Cope During War Time

Snowball fights during the Civil War were a pretty big deal. In fact, sports and fitness in general played a role in shaping ideals of honor, courage, and idolization among the Armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia, and they proved to have an impact on the life of the individual soldier by distracting him (or possibly her) from the monotonous routine of camp life and establishing bonds of comradeship. [excerpt