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Since the mid-nineteenth century, there has been a notable acceleration in the development of the techniques used to confirm identity. From fingerprints to photographs to DNA, we have been rapidly amassing novel means of identification, even as personal, individual identity remains a complex chimera. The Art of Identification examines how such processes are entangled within a wider sphere of cultural identity formation. Against the backdrop of an unstable modernity and the rapid rise and expansion of identificatory techniques, this volume makes the case that identity and identification are mutually imbricated and that our best understanding of both concepts and technologies comes through the interdisciplinary analysis of science, bureaucratic infrastructures, and cultural artifacts. With contributions from literary critics, cultural historians, scholars of film and new media, a forensic anthropologist, and a human bioarcheologist, this book reflects upon the relationship between the bureaucratic, scientific, and technologically determined techniques of identification and the cultural contexts of art, literature, and screen media. In doing so, it opens the interpretive possibilities surrounding identification and pushes us to think about it as existing within a range of cultural influences that complicate the precise formulation, meaning, and reception of the concept. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Dorothy Butchard, Patricia E. Chu, Jonathan Finn, Rebecca Gowland, Liv Hausken, Matt Houlbrook, Rob Lederer, Andrew Mangham, Victoria Stewart, and Tim Thompson.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. Gant fundamentally altered the law governing police searches of vehicles incident to the arrest of a vehicle occupant. To date, there has been no empirical examination of Gant’s impact on line officers. The present study does so using data from a survey of police officers that assessed their ability to apply Gant. Although 93 percent of the officers had been taught Gant and 77 percent had received training within the twelve months prior to completing the survey, 67 percent incorrectly applied Belton, rather than Gant. Moreover, nearly half of the sample were missing constitutionally permissible opportunities to search the vehicle under either of Gant’s two prongs. Concerningly, officers who had received recent training on vehicle searches were significantly less likely to identify correct search protocols under Gant’s evidence prong. The implications of these findings are discussed.

In 1913, the villain of John Buchan’sThe Power-Houseevaluates the precarious position of Western society. Over ninety years later, a character in Jonathan Raban’sSurveillancetakes a similar view.¹ The identical accents at the beginning of consecutive centuries speak to repeating conditions of cultural anxiety, and help to account for the renewed vigour of spy fiction since 9/11; in each case, perceptions of weakness in institutions and infrastructure engender paranoia, undermine trust in the stability of society, and precipitate crises – at once disturbing and liberating – of individual agency. Under such circumstances, conspiracy becomes a presiding mythos, the

The United States Supreme Court in 2012 in United States v. Jones changed the legal test for what constitutes a police search under the Fourth Amendment. After Jones, a search occurs when: (1) an individual’s privacy rights are violated (“Katz” test); and/or (2) an individual’s property is trespassed upon (“Jones” test). From 1967 until Jones, only the Katz test was used. In light of this significant change, this study explores two questions using a content analysis approach: (1) the choice of legal test used by federal appellate courts to decide the “search” question (i.e., the Jones test, Katz test, or both tests), and (2) these courts’ holding regarding whether a “search” occurred. Most of these courts are relying upon Jones in some fashion; however, Jones has not prevented these courts from frequently applying Katz. Though reliance on Jones alone has led to uniform determinations by courts of a “search” and hence enhanced Fourth Amendment protections, overall post-Jones there are nearly an equal number of courts finding a “search” and “no search.” When courts apply Katz alone to evaluate a search, they have held no search occurred. In sum, Jones’ impact on Fourth Amendment search law has been incremental and gradual.

The United States Supreme Court in 2012 in United States v. Jones changed the legal test for what constitutes a police search under the Fourth Amendment. After Jones, a search occurs when: (1) an individual’s privacy rights are violated (“Katz” test); and/or (2) an individual’s property is trespassed upon (“Jones” test). From 1967 until Jones, only the Katz test was used. In light of this significant change, this study explores two questions using a content analysis approach: (1) the choice of legal test used by federal appellate courts to decide the “search” question (i.e., the Jones test, Katz test, or both tests), and (2) these courts’ holding regarding whether a “search” occurred. Most of these courts are relying upon Jones in some fashion; however, Jones has not prevented these courts from frequently applying Katz. Though reliance on Jones alone has led to uniform determinations by courts of a “search” and hence enhanced Fourth Amendment protections, overall post-Jones there are nearly an equal number of courts finding a “search” and “no search.” When courts apply Katz alone to evaluate a search, they have held no search occurred. In sum, Jones’ impact on Fourth Amendment search law has been incremental and gradual.

The United States Supreme Court decision in Clark v. Arizona has become a fundamental part of the landscape concerning the insanity defense and, as a result, has greatly impacted the general use of mental health evidence. In particular, Clark and its progeny have effectively narrowed the scope and significance of mental health evidence used at criminal trials for the state of Arizona and many other states which follow a similar model. This has the net effect of limiting or even eliminating potential defenses and evidence to be considered as a mitigating factor for mentally ill defendants during the guilt phase of trial. Yet, to date, there has not been a study which has examined the impact of Clark on how courts handle mental health evidence or the insanity defense. This dissertation seeks to fill the gap in the literature by systematically reviewing all state and federal criminal cases which have cited the Clark decision through January 1, 2023. During the study period 175 cases were examined using a mixed methods research design. The results indicate that Clark has created an unworkable standard for courts. Specifically, courts have problems properly applying Clark to evidence regarding behavioral tendencies. The data suggests that when behavioral-tendency evidence is even only somewhat linked to a serious mental illness, courts are categorizing this evidence as diminished capacity evidence and excluding it from being admitted in jurisdictions that do not recognize that defense. In addition, courts have issues properly applying their state’s test for the insanity defense. The results suggest that some courts are erroneously conflating purposeful action with appreciation of the wrongfulness of the act.

This essay stages a new reading of Joseph Conrad's novel of 1907, The Secret Agent, tracing beyond the novel itself the communications networks that traverse Conrad's London, in particular the Post Office. As an officer in British cargo ships, as a Polish exile from a family of dissidents, and as a struggling author, Conrad had become acutely aware of the communications systems that crisscrossed England, Europe, and the globe, and of the forms of surveillance and control that those systems enabled. But the reception history of this novel of anarchism has tended too readily to draw attention to the mismatch between its literary ambitions and its penny-dreadful content at the cost of undervaluing its attention to the technologies of information control in which those generic distinctions participate. The essay therefore offers an analysis of the novel's interest in postal systems and in related efforts to distinguish between public and private, official and unofficial, forms of communication. Situating The Secret Agent in relation to postal interception scandals of the 1840s and intelligence leaks of the 1880s, the essay re-evaluates the 'gratuitous' and 'irrelevant' matter disparaged by its first critics to show how Conrad's work acknowledges the new social and technological extent of communications control, while insisting on the prerogative of literary writing to reshape and critique the new systems of textual categorization that emerged in response to the information surge of the late nineteenth century.

Hip-hop's popularity has steadily increased since the late 1980s, with it becoming the most streamed genre of music in 2017. This rise in popularity is matched by an increase in the number of criminal court cases which implement one of hip-hop culture's primary features, rap music, as evidence. In order to build upon prior research regarding rap's implications in legal proceedings and begin to understand what impact this phenomenon might be having, this study systematically examines how rap lyrics were used in 160 state and federal criminal cases over a five-year period of time. Using qualitative content analysis, we found that rap evidence was proffered in these cases in one or more of five distinct ways: (1) to prove gang affiliation for sentencing enhancement purposes; (2) as circumstantial evidence of the commission of a crime; (3) as direct evidence of having communicated a threat; (4) to prove motive, knowledge, intent, identity, or character; or (5) to establish what incited the commission of a crime. Each of these themes was examined and analyzed with respect to the function of rap evidence within each case. The analyses demonstrate that rap evidence is routinely admitted against defendants in criminal proceedings, even in cases in which the prejudicial effect of such evidence clearly outweighs its probative value. Conversely, courts fail to consider rap lyric evidence when offered by defendants to exculpate themselves or mitigate their potential criminal liability. We offer several public policy recommendations to address these concerns.

For most of the twentieth century, teletype carried the vast majority of global written telecommunications traffic, flashing text messages between businesses, government institutions and - since most telegraph traffic after the early 1930s was channelled through the teletype networks - private individuals. Creed also supplied equipment to the Associated Press, Reuters and other news agencies, and teletype rapidly became the primary means by which news and information were syndicated to newspapers, radio stations and television networks around the world. Because teletype carried messages between different parts of a closed bureaucratic institution, or from one such institution to another, its appearances in film and fiction frequently mark a boundary between official and unofficial worlds: the point or occasion where the black box opens, offering a rare glimpse of the invisible operations of a self-contained organization.