Objective: To review homicides committed during psychotic illness in New South Wales over 10 years from 1993 to 2002.
Design and setting: Case series of all known homicides committed during psychotic illness in NSW, taken from reports of psychiatrists submitted in proceedings in the Supreme Court of NSW.
Main outcome measures: Demographic and clinical features of perpetrators; estimated frequency of homicide during psychotic illness.
Results: In the 10 years from 1993 to 2002, there were at least 88 people charged with 93 homicide offences committed during the acute phase of mental illness. High rates of drug misuse, especially of drugs known to induce psychotic illness and brain injury, were reported. Evolving auditory hallucinations and delusional beliefs that led the person to believe they were in danger were the symptoms strongly associated with lethal assault. The victims were mostly family members or close associates. Only nine of the victims were strangers, including three fellow patients. Most lethal assaults (69%) occurred during the first year of illness, and the first episode of psychotic illness was found to carry the greatest risk of committing homicide.
Conclusions: People in their first episodes of mental illness should be considered to be at greater risk of committing serious violence than those in subsequent episodes. Illicit drug use, a history of brain injury, auditory hallucinations and delusional beliefs of immediate danger were particularly associated with lethal assault.
Dangerousness criteria should be removed from mental health legislation and be replaced by criteria that focus on a patient's capacity to refuse treatment.
Mental health laws that require the patient to be assessed as dangerous before they can receive involuntary treatment are associated with significantly longer DUP. As reducing DUP is an intervention that can improve the prognosis of schizophrenia, this finding suggests that mental health laws should be amended to allow treatment on grounds other than dangerousness, at least in the crucial first episode of psychosis.
Law enforcement agencies all around the world are using biometrics and especially fingerprints to solve and fight crime. Often forensic experts are needed to record fingermarks at crime scenes and to ensure that those captured are of forensic value. In times of increased demand for forensic services, this process needs to be automated and streamlined as much as possible to improve efficiency and reduce workload.Hence, we investigate if the forensic evidential value (suitability for forensic analysis and/or examination) of fingermark images can be determined at an early stage automatically without any expert involvement, especially when using a mobile phone camera. We explore different factors such as the capture device and the constraints inferred, image feature sets and classifiers used, and their interplay.A database of 1,428 pseudo fingermarks has been collected and its ground truth, whether a mark is of forensic value or not, has been determined by 3 experts. The lowest equal error rate achieved, when using a mobile phone to capture the marks, is 13.62%.These promising results suggest that it might be possible to streamline forensic procedures by the application of an independent automated tool to assist with certain tasks.
Forensic science is increasingly relied upon by law enforcement to assist in solving crime and gaining convictions, and by the judicial system in the adjudication of specific criminal cases. However, the value of forensic science relative to the work involved and the outcome of cases has yet to be established in the Australian context. Previous research in this area has mainly focused on the science and technology, rather than examining how people can use forensic services/science to the best possible advantage to produce appropriate justice outcomes. This fiveyear project entails an investigation into the effectiveness of forensic science in police investigations and court trials. It aims to identify when, where and how forensic science can add value to criminal investigations, court trials and justice outcomes while ensuring the efficient use of available resources initially in the Victorian and the ACT criminal justice systems and ultimately across Australia and New Zealand. This paper provides an overview of the rationale and aims of the research project and discusses current work-in-progress.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.