Expert Evidence of "Risk Assessments" and the Preventive Detention of "Dangerous Prisoners".

The Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (Qld) provides for the preventive detention of a prisoner if there is "acceptable, cogent evidence" to a "high degree of probability" that the prisoner is a "serious danger to the community" because of an "unacceptable risk" that the prisoner will commit a "serious sexual offence". In preventive detention cases courts rely on the expert opinion of psychiatrists and psychologists who often use actuarial risk assessment instruments. In Black v Attorney-General (Qld) [2022] QCA 253 the Queensland Court of Appeal considered a decision to detain an offender who had a history of possessing and trading child sexual exploitation material but who had not previously been proved to have committed a contact offence against a child. This article analyses the reasoning of the Court of Appeal and critically examines the reliability of probabilistic risk assessment tools and the validity of expert evidence about risk in the preventive detention context.

The marriage of psychology and law: testamentary capacity.

Banks v. Goodfellow [1870. LR 5 QB 549 (Eng.)] is almost 150 years old, yet still stands as authority for the principle that unsoundness of the mind will not rebut testamentary capacity where it does not affect the will itself. Readers of this journal would know that psychology has advanced greatly during this sesquicentenary, and yet the law relating to testamentary capacity has remained relatively stagnant. We review the present laws relating to decision-making for adults with impaired capacity, particularly in Queensland, and also review various models of gauging decision-making capacity in other jurisdictions. We argue that qualified experts should be enlisted to make determinations about testamentary capacity when questions of capacity arise. We also argue the case for the development of scientifically validated protocols to assess decision-making capacity in the testamentary context.

Legal risk management and injury in the fitness industry: the outcomes of focus group research and a national survey of fitness professionals.

The Australian Fitness Industry Risk Management (AFIRM) Project was set up to explore the operation of rules and regulations for the delivery of safe fitness services. This article summarises the results of recent focus group research and a national survey of risk management practices by the AFIRM Project. Our focus group research in four States identified the following most important concerns: (1) the competency of fitness professionals; (2) the effectiveness of pre-exercise screening and the management of de-conditioned clients; (3) poor supervision of fitness service users and incorrect use of equipment; (4) fitness trainers failing to remain within their scope of practice; (5) equipment misuse (as distinct from incorrect use); and (6) poor fitness training environments. This information was then used to develop 45 specific items for a questionnaire that was disseminated throughout the fitness industry. The survey, which is the largest ever conducted in the Australian fitness industry (n = 1,178), identified similar concerns. Our research indicates that efforts to improve risk management in the fitness industry should focus, first and foremost, on the development and monitoring of safety policy, and improvements in the education and training of fitness instructors to ensure that they can incorporate risk management practices.

Confocal imaging of fluorescently labeled proteins in the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction.

The Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ) consists of a presynaptic motor neuron terminal and a postsynaptic muscle cell that offer an accessible and popular model system for the analysis of synaptic growth and function. I describe techniques for visualizing fluorescently labeled proteins within dissected, formaldehyde-fixed second to third instar larval NMJs. In addition, I present two strategies using confocal microscopy to solve a particular problem in NMJ analysis: distinguishing fluorescence in the presynaptic nerve terminal from that in the adjacent postsynaptic muscle cell. This problem arises from the fact that the membrane of the muscle cell envelops the motor neuron terminal with a convoluted process called the subsynaptic reticulum, obscuring the boundary between muscle and nerve. A first strategy entails taking thin optical sections through synaptic boutons to capture a cross section of the nerve terminal, and a second strategy involves visualizing epitope-tagged isoforms of particular proteins that have been transgenically expressed in either the nerve or the muscle.

Nervous wreck, an SH3 adaptor protein that interacts with Wsp, regulates synaptic growth in Drosophila.

We describe the isolation and characterization of nwk (nervous wreck), a temperature-sensitive paralytic mutant that causes excessive growth of larval neuromuscular junctions (NMJs), resulting in increased synaptic bouton number and branch formation. Ultrastructurally, mutant boutons have reduced size and fewer active zones, associated with a reduction in synaptic transmission. nwk encodes an FCH and SH3 domain-containing adaptor protein that localizes to the periactive zone of presynaptic terminals and binds to the Drosophila ortholog of Wasp (Wsp), a key regulator of actin polymerization. wsp null mutants display synaptic overgrowth similar to nwk and enhance the nwk morphological phenotype in a dose-dependent manner. Evolutionarily, Nwk belongs to a previously undescribed family of adaptor proteins that includes the human srGAPs, which regulate Rho activity downstream of Robo receptors. We propose that Nwk controls synapse morphology by regulating actin dynamics downstream of growth signals in presynaptic terminals.