Disaster Victim Identification

Fraser et al. [78] and Fraser and Meier-Augenstein [79] discuss the use of IRMS (C, N, O, H) in nail and hair samples for identifying an individual s recent movements, their geographical origin, and life history. This application is of particular importance when human remains are badly decomposed (e.g., during a mass disaster victim identification [DVI] incident), for the identification of individuals detained on suspicion of committing an act of terrorism, or in relation to people smuggling. 

The national Disaster Victim Identification Team (DVI), a police-led response coordinated by the Association of Chief Police Officers which deploys to mass fatality incidents in the UK and abroad at the request of the Foreign Office. 

Taylor, A., Fraser, A. (1982). The stress of post-disaster body handling and victim identification work. Journal of Human Stress, 8, 4-12. 

The most common application of forensic odontology is the identification of deceased individuals. Dental identification of human remains may result from a number of situations whereby the body is disfigured to such an extent that visual identification is not possible. Such situations include the victims of fire, violent crime, motor vehicle accidents, mass disaster, bodies found in water, and decomposed remains. Occasionally a body s dentition may be used for purposes other than identification, and several studies have investigated postmortem tooth loss as a potential indicator of time since death (Hall 1997 McKeown and Bennett 1995). 

If the above steps have not been taken prior to the disaster, samples for tissue typing should be taken from victims as soon as is feasible and certainly within 24 8 h, in order to ensure that sufficient white blood cells remain in the peripheral blood to make tissue typing possible and subsequent identification of a donor. 

Real-World Reading Link DNA testing is becoming more routine in medicine, forensic science, genealogy, and identification of victims in disasters. Modern techniques have made it possible to get a useful DNA sample from surprising sources, such as a strand of hair or dried saliva on a postage stamp. 

Some of these stages have no exact parallels in the Mods and Rockers case, but a condensed version of this sequence (Warning to cover phases 1 and 2 then Impact then Inventory and Reaction to cover phases 5, 6 and 7) provides a useful analogue. If one compares this to deviancy models such as amplification, there are obvious and crucial differences. For disasters, the sequence has been empirically established in the various attempts to conceptualize the reactions to deviance this is by no means the case. In addition, the transitions within the amplification model or from primary to secondary deviation are supposed to be consequential (i.e. causal) and not merely sequential. In disaster research, moreover, it has been shown how the form each phase takes is affected by the characteristics of the previous stage thus, the scale of the remedy operation is affected by the degree of identification with the victim. This sort of uniformity has not been shown in deviance. 

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