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In 1987 Myra Hindley submitted a petition to the Home Office requesting permission to undergo hypnosis in an attempt to locate the grave of Keith Bennett. Whilst the request was initially declined, the issue continued to be an administrative challenge for the Home Office for the fifteen years that followed. Drawing on her 'prison records' currently held in The National Archive, this paper details the reasons for the request, how the policy response to it was developed, maintained, and then changed, and how it shaped broader orientations to the use of hypnosis in criminal investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research study aims at attempting to assess thematically the underlying ideas implied by the novel, Lord of the Flies. The novel reflects quite effectively the social and cultural conditions of the contemporary times. It revolves around the idea of the evil which is inherent specifically in human nature and in society at large. The author asserts the view that man is evil by nature. It is that culture and pressure of civilization which stops that evil from emerging sometimes, but as soon as that sociological and civilizational barrier has been removed, then the human heart comes out in its true shape and shows the bestial instinct quite fearlessly. Moreover, the author has also woven a web of thematic elements that holds together the novel, Lord of the Flies in a clever, artistic way. Above all, the thematic elements involved in the novel are the emergence of evil, the loss of civilization, the motif of power, the fate of the intellectual, the uncertainty of life, rules and orders, loss of innocence, primitivism, symbolic manifestations and the tone of pessimism. I have applied the methods of historical and textual approaches for the evaluation of the thematic concerns of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that feminist legal scholars should engage directly and explicitly with the question of evil. Part I summarises key facts surrounding the prosecution and life-long imprisonment of Myra Hindley, one of a tiny number of women involved in multiple killings of children in recent British history. Part II reviews a range of commentaries on Hindley, noting in particular the repeated use of two narratives: the first of these insists that Hindley is an icon of female evil; the second, less popular one, seeks to position her as a victim. In Part III, the article broadens out and we explain why we think feminist legal scholars should look at the question of evil. In large part, the emphasis is on anticipating the range of possible objections to this argument, and on trying to answer these objections by showing how a focus on evil might benefit feminist legal thinking – specifically in relation to the categories of perpetrator and victim and, more generally, in relation to laws motivated by a desire to secure women’s human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]