Long-term effects of the Moving to Opportunity residential mobility experiment on crime and delinquency

Objectives

Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.

Methods

We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization.

Results

We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.     

Practice of forensic entomology--usability of insect fragments in the estimation of the time of death

Forensic entomology analyzes and evaluates the presence of necrophagous or necrophilic insects on human corpses to estimate the post-mortem interval. The three cases presented are good examples illustrating that not only the various stages of development of the necrophagous insects from egg via larva to pupa are useful for forensic assessment. Depending on the situation in the individual case, even inconspicuous remains of past insect activity such as empty pupal cases or larval skins may supply important entomological information. For this purpose it is indispensable to preserve such evidence, which may appear only as fragments or pieces at first sight, for proper entomological assessment.     

Anti-depressants, suicide, and drug regulation.

Policymakers are increasingly concerned that a relatively new class of anti-depressant drugs, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI), may increase the risk of suicide for at least some patients, particularly children. Prior randomized trials are not informative on this question because of small sample sizes and other limitations. Using variation across countries over time in SSRI sales and suicide, we find that an increase of one pill per capita (a 13 percent increase over 1999 levels) is associated with a 2.5 percent reduction in suicide rates, a relationship that is more pronounced for adults than for children. Our findings suggest that expanding access to SSRIs for adults may be a cost-effective way to save lives, although policymakers are right to remain cautious about pediatric use of SSRIs.     

Interpenetration versus Einbettung

The debate with the economy and with economics is an important focus of the works of Talcott Parsons. Parsons’s economic sociology has been, however, perceived rather critically by the new economic sociology. This article discusses these critiques and asks whether they did justice to Parsons’s economic sociology. I show that the critiques concentrate mostly on structural functionalism. Hardly any attention is given to the theory of expressive-symbolic communication of affect that Parsons developed later as part of systems-functionalism. This theoretical development, however, connects directly to the concept of social embeddedness as the core term of the new economic sociology. A connection to this part of Parsons’s theory could help to develop a basis in action theory that is still wanting in the new economic sociology.     

Towards productive functions? A systematic review of institutional failure,its causes and consequences

Policy Sciences - Recognised as an integral part of the political process, the topic of institutional failure has recently received increased attention in the literature, particularly with respect...     

Does Direct Democracy Hurt Immigrant Minorities? Evidence from Naturalization Decisions in Switzerland

Do minorities fare worse under direct democracy than under representative democracy? We provide new evidence by studying naturalization requests of immigrants in Switzerland that were typically decided with referendums in each municipality. Using panel data from about 1,400 municipalities for the 1991–2009 period, we exploit Federal Court rulings that forced municipalities to transfer the decisions to their elected municipality councils. We find that naturalization rates surged by about 60% once politicians rather than citizens began deciding on naturalization applications. Whereas voters in referendums face no cost of arbitrarily rejecting qualified applicants based on discriminatory preferences, politicians in the council are constrained to formally justify rejections and may be held accountable by judicial review. Consistent with this mechanism, the increase in naturalization rates caused by switching from direct to representative democracy is much stronger for more marginalized immigrant groups and in areas where voters are more xenophobic or where judicial review is more salient.     

Opposition dynamism under authoritarianism: the case of Yemen, 1994–2011

In contrast to the empirical conditions in large parts of the authoritarian world, the systematic literature on political opposition under authoritarianism either treats the opposition as a static entity or fails to comprehensively address its dynamic character. On the basis of a critical literature review and an ensuing analysis of the Joint Meeting Parties, a cross-ideological opposition alliance that gradually evolved to become the main competitor of the Salih regime in Yemen, we suggest that political opposition in electoral authoritarian regimes is an intrinsically dynamic institution in terms of its organizational shape, its goals and its modes of contestation. We also show that, while authoritarian structures do set the basic conditions defining opposition action, much of what motivates this action and contributes to opposition dynamism emerges from within the opposition. In addition, our findings on the Yemeni case suggest that opposition dynamism peaks when the strength of the opposition is nearly on par with that of the regime.