Magister Artium - MA / This thesis falls within the category of historical studies that is concerned with a difficult legacy of South Africa's liberation struggle, namely the practice of necklacing that accompanied it. My interest in the practice is limited to its emergence and politicizing as it relates to the ANC, the UDF and the apartheid state. The ANC and the UDF overwhelmingly understood the practice as resistance, yet ambivalently so. The question guiding this thesis therefore asks: how is necklacing written into the narrative of struggle history? Here I refer to its (re)representation, its (re)characterization, its (re)articulation in a wider discursive war of propaganda strategies that was waged through the interplay of an apartheid state discourse and what I consider to be an official non-state discourse, that of the ANC and the UDF. / South Africa

The influences that crime control, due process factors, and individual demographic characteristics have on the criminal trial outcomes of accused arsonists was unknown. Absent this knowledge, it was not clear if public policy ensures justice for the accused, particularly for the disadvantaged. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate, using Packer's due process and crime control model as the theoretical framework, the relationship between time to trial, number of defense and prosecution witnesses, access to fire origin and cause experts, legal representation type, age, race, education, and gender and criminal arson case outcomes. A sample size of 165 archival court records of those accused of arson from 2011-2015 were analyzed using Packer. According to the results of the logistic regression models, there was a significant relationship (p < .05) between trial outcomes and the use of fact witnesses by the defense and by the prosecution.This relationship moved the pendulum toward crime control for the selected population. The ordered logistic model explained 6.9% of the variation in the criminal case outcomes. Policymakers can use the results of this study to inform criminal justice policy and to prioritize funding to assure fairness and social justice for the accused. Arson defendants and their counsel can use the results to prepare their defense to assure their social justice while prosecutors can use the results to better inform their decisions to assure the legal and factual guilt of the defendant. Future research is needed to provide a clearer understanding of the role that other variables play in the outcome for the population.

No description available.

Deliberate firesetting is a dangerous behavior that is associated with considerable costs annually. It has been estimated that young people under the age of 18 are responsible for a large proportion of all firesetting incidents. Moreover, firesetting has been linked to serious antisocial and aggressive behaviors and behavioral difficulties among juveniles and has been found to predict later delinquency, which makes this an important area to study. Some previous studies have found support for the importance of factors akin to self-control, e.g., impulsivity, for juvenile firesetting. This study applied an aspect of situational action theory (SAT), where self-control is viewed as part of crime propensity, but of lesser importance than morality, to the study of juvenile firesetting for the first time. Analyzing self-report data from two waves of the longitudinal Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study (MINDS), this study examines a key proposition of situational action theory, namely that morality is more important than self-control and that self-control is relevant in the explanation of crime (firesetting) only for individuals with lower levels of morality. The results indicate support for this proposition.

CHDS State/Local / The current trend in terrorist tactics is the use of simple, inexpensive and conventional weapons. One such weapon is improvised incendiary devices (IIDs). The homeland security community has underestimated the magnitude of the threat. Policy makers must recognize the potential for terrorist cells to use IIDs to create terror and fear in the public. IIDs have the potential to create devastating fires resulting in mass casualties. In addition to evaluating the risk of an IID attack and determining the state of preparedness of first responders, this thesis includes a proposal for the creation of two new national planning scenarios, urban and wildland conflagrations or firestorms. Recommendations will include incendiary protocols in the weapon of mass destruction matrix as represented by "I" in CBIRNE. This organizational change can be applied to the homeland security strategies, lexicons and documents of Federal, State, and local governments and the private sector to address the IID threat. This thesis is intended to serve as a catalyst for the Department of Homeland Security to set policy that will decrease vulnerabilities and consequences of this lesser-known threat. / Battalion Chief, New York City Fire Department (FDNY)

This paper describes a new technique for analyzing fire debris using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Petroleum distillates, which are commonly used accelerants, were weathered, burned, and steamdistilled. These, as well as virgin samples of the accelerants, were analyzed by gas chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In addition, solvent studies and detectibility limit studies were conducted. The use of NMR is described as a valuable adjunct to the existing methods of analysis.

This dissertation asks: what has happened to the children and grandchildren of former industrial workers, those who came of age in the shadow of industrial ruination in the Rust Belt? It draws on 105 interviews with working-class descendants who grew up in or near the Mon Valley in Pennsylvania, to explore how those descendants engage with industrial ruins. For most, the ruins recalled the breakdown of the employer-employee social contract, a sense of betrayed tradition, and the current (abysmal) state of affairs for the working class. Most advocate for the destruction of the ruins, as the loss and failure embodied by industrial ruination acts as a trap, imprisoning them in the past. Their attempts to build a new working-class identity require letting go of industrial work and the memories of the lost past. For a wider range of perspectives, two other groups of descendants were interviewed—fifteen arsonists and four cultural producers (novelists). The arsonists, who set fire to abandoned buildings, draw on regional fire symbolism and maintain their inherited association between work and identity as they struggle to resurrect industry. The novelists, who have all published in the vein of American Gothic literature, are seeking to reinterpret the past to serve the needs of the present, using supernatural figures alongside ruins in their novels in order to allow the main characters to identify, recover, and reinterpret a hidden past, which allows for mourning and the formulation of a new class identity. Each of these groups of descendants is cobbling together different versions of working-class identity, but all show that navigation of economic restructuring is a process of continual transformation. Descendants’ imaginative constructions are emblems not of solidity or permanence, but rather revision and reinvention.

No description available.

Master’s thesis deals with a determination problem of ignitable liquids from fire debris. The aim of this work is to introduce the properties of used fire accelerants and to give an overview and evaluation of the various techniques which can be conducive to the fire investigator. Determination of fire accelerants from fire debris was made by the technique of solid phase microextraction (SPME) with subsequent chemical analysis by GC/MS. Based on the chromatographic results were established the target compounds and reconstructed ion chromatograms which are typical for some kinds of flammable liquids. There were used gasoline, diesel, kerosene and technical gasoline (white spirit) as the fire accelerants. This work also deals with the influence of interfering products in fire debris analysis, including their identification and characterization. Different kinds of substrates were burned, extracted and analyzed in order to identify all the interfering products that they may release.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån ett uppdrag från Christina Innala vid Örebropolisen undersöka huruvida det går att utläsa beteendemönster hos svenska mordbrännare som kan ligga till grund för vidare geografiska analyser. I uppsatsen kommer vi att se närmre på mordbrännare och geografisk profilering utifrån svenska förhållanden. Materialet som ligger till grund för uppsatsen består av domslut gällande mordbränder och dessa analyseras och kategoriseras. De domslut som i materialet har omfattat seriemordbrännare har analyserats utifrån geografisk profilering med hjälp av mjukvaran GeoProfile. Detta för att undersöka hur brottplatser förhåller sig till fasta punkter för svenska seriemordbrännare.Sammanfattningsvis kan man utifrån vårt material identifiera sex stycken kategorier av mordbrännare. Dessa kategorier stämmer överrens med tidigare forskning. Utifrån våra geografiska profileringar kan man dra slutsatsen att seriemordbrännare tenderar att anlägga sina bränder i anslutning till en eller flera fasta punkter. Den svenska mordbrännaren är alltså inte en irrationell individ som slumpmässigt och oberäkneligt anlägger bränder. Bränderna tenderar ofta att uppstå inom en gärningsmans rutinaktivitetsområde, det vill säga att gärningsmannen vanligtvis begår brott i områden som denne känner till. / As an a assignment from Christina Innala at the police in Örebro, this paper aims to investigate whether it is possible to discern behavioral patterns of Swedish arsonists as a point of departure for further spatial analysis. In this paper geographic profiling based on Swedish conditions will be studied. The material that is the basis for the essay consists of judicial decisions regarding arson and these will be analyzed and categorized. The judicial decisions that in the material has included serial arsonists has been analyzed based on geographic profiling using the software GeoProfile. We want to examine wheatear crime scenes are related to anchor-points for Swedish serial arsonists.In summary, based on our material we were able to identify six categories of arsonists. These categories match those of previous research. Based on our geographic profiling it can be concluded that the serial arsonists tend to set their fires in connection with one or more anchor-points. The Swedish arsonist is not an irrational individual that randomly and unpredictably set fires. Fires tend to occur within a criminals routine activity area, in other words the offender usually commits the offense in areas that is known for him/her.