Comparing trends in infanticides in 28 countries, 1960–2009

The term ‘infanticide’ refers to the homicide of a child younger than one year old. In this article, we describe infanticide trends in 28 industrialized countries between 1960 and 2009. The analysis is based on the cause of death data from the WHO Mortality Database and national materials. The purpose is to compare those trends in all these 28 countries not to compare countries per se. Cause of death statistics are based on ICD classification. During the review period, ICD classification changed three times. In addition to describing infanticide trends, we will analyse the impact of those changes on statistical infanticide levels, to be sure that changes in trends could be seen as real, not statistical artefacts. According to our analysis, the change from ICD-7 to ICD-9 in 1968–1970 seems to have had some impact on registered infanticide mortality levels in three of the studied countries. In other countries, the changes did not have any general impact on registered infanticide levels. During the period, infanticide rates decreased in almost all European countries, and increased or were stable in most non-European industrialized countries. Even in Europe, there were significant differences in the decreasing trend between countries. We also found some structural variation behind the trend figures, which raised the question of whether the aggregated infanticide levels really describe an identical phenomenon in different countries.     

关于财经类专业统计学创新教学改革的思考

统计学课程是高等院校财经类专业的基础核心课程,其主要目的是培养和提高学生的统计思维能力和统计基本技能。近年来统计教学改革在突出实践性和应用性上取得了一定的成效,但仍存在着例如对统计学学科性质和目标的认知偏差、教学方法单一及实践能力的训练不足等问题。需要做好确立财经类专业统计学课程的教学目标,不断改进教学方法和教学手段,充分运用多媒体教学,加强计算机教学的应用,真正落实实践教学环节,并正确处理好教学与教材、多媒体与板书以及基础课与专业课之间的关系。     

Ethnic statistics and social classifications in France: how the ‘black community’ was born

Abstract

The status of France's ethnic minorities has become a major issue in recent years owing to the riots in October and November of 2005, as well as the National Assembly debates on the Taubira law,1 1. Christiane Taubira is a French female politician and activist born 2 February 1952, in Cayenne, French Guyana. She is a militant of the PRG (Parti Radical de Gauche) et ‘deputée’ (a member of the French National Parliament). She is best known for the law that she devised and proposed and bears her name, the Taubira Law. Voted in 21 May 2001, it recognizes the slave trades and slavery as a crime against humanity. ethnic statistics, affirmative action, and the memory and commemoration of slavery and the slave trade,2 2. The decision to commemorate slavery was taken on 30 January 2006, by the French President Jacques Chirac. The date for the commemoration is 10 May, each year. and communautarisme 3 3. Communautaire/communautarisme/communautariste refers to something along the lines of ‘multiculturalism’, although its connotations are almost entirely negative. Communautarisme, to the French, is what happens when you let immigrants form their own communities, speak their own languages, and practice their own religions. Consequently, France becomes less ‘French’ and more open to foreign values and cultural practices (http://inthefray.org/content/view/482/39). .The present paper shows how, against the aforementioned backdrop, the black community is creating itself as a visible group ‘endowed with value systems and representation systems’ (Champagne, P., 1984. La manifestation: La production de l'evenement politique. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 52–53(1), 18–41), and how the positions taken by the various actors (associations, journalists and politicians) have contributed to this process of legitimation. Thus, it appears that although France's Blacks are still a largely fragmented group, they are constructing an identity for themselves in the republic via a process that is a reaction to the apparent rigidity of France's republican system and to the real (albeit denied) stigmatization and discrimination that some Blacks say they are subjected to on a daily basis.

This work is a revised version of a paper accepted for presentation at the ‘Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners’ conference organized in Mansfield College, Oxford, UK, between Tuesday 22 September and Thursday 24 September, 2009.     

How Much Disagreement is Good for Democratic Deliberation?

The ideal of deliberation requires that citizens engage in reasonable discussion despite disagreements. In practice, if their experience is to match this normative ideal, participants in an actual deliberation should prefer moderate disagreement to conflict-free discussion within homogeneous groups, and to conflict-driven discussion where differences are intractable. This article proposes a research design and methods for assessing the quality of a deliberative event based on the perceptions of the participants themselves. In a structured deliberative event, over 2,000 individuals were assigned to small groups composed of about 10 persons of varying levels of ideological difference to discuss health care reform in California. We find that participants experience higher satisfaction with deliberation under moderate ideological difference than when they are in homogeneous or in highly disparate groups. That moderate disagreement induces optimal deliberation is consistent with normative expectations and empirically demonstrates the deliberative quality of this event.     

Age structure and crime rates: The conflicting evidence

Because arrest rates are especially high for teenagers and young adults, criminologists have long contended that age structure changes affect crime trends. In recent years, however, this belief has been drawn into question because crime has not declined even though high-crime age groups have shrunk. We argue that the age/crime relationship is probably exaggerated because the high arrest rates for younger persons are due partly to their lesser ability to escape arrest, younger persons commit more group crime, and the age structure of victims should be taken into account. We then review 90 studies that regress crime rates on age structure; only a small minority consistently finds significant relationships. Because of methodological problems in this research, one cannot conclude that the age/crime relationship does not exist, but the weight of evidence shows that forecasts based on demographic trends are not likely to be helpful.     

Analysis of age-at-death estimation through the use of pubic symphyseal data

The question of whether age parameters derived from an American population will reliably estimate age-at-death for East European skeletal populations is important since the ability to accurately estimate an individual's age-at-death hinges on what standard is used. A reference sample of identified individuals with known ages-at-death from the regions of the Former Yugoslavia (n = 861) is used to determine the age structure of victims and serves as the prior in the Bayesian analysis. Pubic symphyseal data in the manners of Todd (Am J Phys Anthropol, 3 [1920], 285; Am J Phys Anthropol, 4 [1921], 1) and Suchey-Brooks (Am J Phys Anthropol, 80 [1986], 167) were collected for n = 296 Balkan males and females and for n = 2078 American males and females. An analysis of deviance is calculated using an improvement chi-square to test for population variation in the aging processes of American and East European populations using proportional odds probit regression. When males and females are treated separately, there is a significant association among females and the population (df = 1, chi-square likelihood ratio = 15.071, p = 0.001). New age estimates for Balkan populations are provided and are based on the calculated age distribution from the Gompertz-Makeham hazard analysis and the ages-of-transition. To estimate the age-at-death for an individual, the highest posterior density regions for each symphyseal phase are provided.     

统计学方法在微量物证数据处理中的应用

统计学方法在微量物证理化检验工作中受到越来越多的重视,采用有效的统计学方法对检验数据进行分析,不仅能够深度挖掘复杂数据背后信息,还能不断提高数据的应用价值和证据本身的证据价值。本文对目前微量物证领域常用统计学方法进行归纳总结,简要介绍了常用统计方法的应用,对各类方法优缺点进行说明。最后,对法庭科学工作者都比较感兴趣的贝叶斯统计与似然比方法在理化检验数据统计分析中的应用进行了介绍。     

简述狱政统计的调查与分析

狱政统计是对狱政管理工作进行全面、系统、准确调查分析的方法,是研究狱政现象数量方面的专业性工作。搞好狱政统计,是实现监狱工作法制化、科学化的客观要求。狱政统计调查是狱政统计整理和分析研究的前提,肩负着提供狱政统计基础资料的任务。狱政统计分析是狱政统计研究的最后阶段,也是提供狱政统计研究成果的阶段。采取正确的分析方法,从各个不同方面对狱政现象进行综合的分析研究,才能全面、深入地认识问题。     

Crime Trends in Western Europe from 1990 to 2000

This paper analyses the evolution of police recorded crime rates for nine offences (intentional homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, vehicle theft, burglary, domestic burglary, and drug offences) over the period 1990–2000 in 16 Western European Countries. The analysis shows that there was an increase in drug and violent offences, while property offences reached a peak at the beginning of the 1990s and started decreasing afterwards. The evolution of property offences can be related to the emergence of a large black market for stolen goods in Central and Eastern Europe at the beginning of the time series, while by the end of it that market was saturated and there had also been a reinforcement of police measures in the frontiers and of security measures in Western European households. The increase in drug offences is correlated to the rise of drug use in Europe shown by other indicators, and can be related to an increased availability of drugs in European markets. Finally, the upward trend in violent offences can be explained partially by gang struggles over the control of illegal markets and by the consolidation of problematic neighbourhoods, but seems also due to a large extent of increase in the reporting of violent offences by their victims and the recording of such offences by the police. The analysis shows that opportunity-based theories provide a satisfactory explanation of the trends in recorded crime, and that the crime opportunities are heavily influenced by socio-economical factors.Versions of this paper were presented at the 3rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (Helsinki, August 27–30, 2003) and at the Societies of Criminology 1st Key Issues Conference (Paris, May 13–15, 2004). The paper was written during a stay at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (Freiburg imBreisgau, Germany) made possible through the support of Swiss National Science Foundation     

National trends in female arrests, 1960–1990: Assessment and recommendations for research

Trends in female criminality from 1960 to 1990 are examined. The main focus is UCR arrest statistics but other sources of evidence are also used. Major findings include the following: (1) relative to males, the profile of the female offender has not changed; and (2) the principal change in the female percentage of arrests involves the overall rise in property crime, especially minor thefts and frauds. The effects of broad-based legal and societal trends on female criminality are discussed and an agenda for research on the issue of female crime trends is proposed.