过失犯罪与故意犯罪之关系新解

传统刑法立法秉承的基本理念是＂以故意犯罪为原则,以过失犯罪为例外＂,但现代刑事立法中,过失犯罪与故意犯罪关系密切、互为依存,既有交叉关系,也有并存关系,还有竞合关系。本文以单位犯罪、渎职型犯罪以及结果加重犯等为例,分别阐述过失犯罪与故意犯罪的特殊关系,以期在一个新的视野下科学地把握过失犯罪内部构造及其地位、作用,对进一步完善刑法立法、丰富刑法理论有所裨益。     

The Relationship Between Crime Reporting and Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports

Empirical studies that use reported crime data to evaluate policies for reducing crime will understate the true effectiveness of these policies if crime reporting/recording behavior is also affected by the policies. For instance, when the size of the police force increases, changes in the perceived likelihood that a crime will be solved may lead a higher fraction of victimizations to be reported to the police. In this paper, three data sets are employed to measure the magnitude of this reporting bias. While each of these analyses is subject to individual criticisms, all of the approaches yield similar estimates. Reporting bias appears to be present but relatively small in magnitude: each additional officer is associated with an increase of roughly five Index crimes that previously would have gone unreported. Taking reporting bias into account makes the hiring of additional police substantially more attractive from a cost–benefit perspective but cannot explain the frequent inability of past studies to uncover a systematic negative relationship between the size of the police force and crime rates.     

Specifying the Relationship Between Crime and Prisons

There is no scholarly consensus as to the proper functional form of the crime equation, particularly with regard to one critical, explanatory variable—prison population. The critical questions are whether crime and prison rates must be differenced, whether they are cointegrated, and whether they are simultaneously determined—whether crime and prison cause one another. To determine the proper specification, different researchers have applied unit-root, cointegration, and Granger tests to very similar data sets and obtained very different results. This has led to very different specifications and predictably different implications for public policy. These differences are more likely to be due to the methods used, rather than to real differences among the data sets. When the best available methods are used to identify the proper specification for a panel of U.S. states, results are fairly clear. Crime rates and prison populations are close to unit-root; crime and prison are not cointegrated; crime clearly affects subsequent prison populations. Thus the best specification of the crime equation must rely on differenced data and instrumental variables. Alternative specifications run a substantial risk of spurious results.

Economic Conditions, Deterrence and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from Micro Data

This article investigates the determinants of criminal activityamong juveniles in the United States. It uses a survey of U.S.high school students conducted in 1995, which provides detailedinformation on offenses; personal, family, and neighborhoodcharacteristics; as well as deterrence measures. The determinantsof selling drugs and committing assault, robbery, burglary,and theft are analyzed separately for males and females. Theresults provide some evidence that juveniles respond to incentivesand sanctions. Employment opportunities and policies designedto increase the probability of arrest may be effective toolsfor reducing juvenile crime.     

国际犯罪与国际不法行为关系透析

国际犯罪与国际不法行为的关系,并不是多数学者所主张的被包含与包含关系,而应该视国际犯罪的行为主体而定。当国际犯罪的主体是自然人时,国际犯罪与国际不法行为之间各自独立,不发生任何关系;当国际犯罪的主体是国家等国际法主体时,国际犯罪与国际不法行为之间具有交叉关系,即国际不法行为中程度严重者属于国际犯罪,但国际犯罪不完全是国际不法行为。     

涉黑犯罪与权力腐败关系之探源

只要对目前中国涉黑组织犯罪的现状稍做分析就不难发现,权力的失职、滥用等腐败行为为涉黑组织产生和迅速膨胀、蔓延提供了有利条件。与此同时,涉黑组织的发展又加剧了权力的腐败。因此,探讨涉黑组织犯罪与权力腐败之间的关系,无论对于防范和打击涉黑组织犯罪还是对于预防和遏制权力腐败都具有积极的意义。     

Discrepancies Between Crime Reports and Crime Surveys:

The absence of strong zero-order associations between victimization and official crime rates for cities has been a puzzle for social scientists since the data for making such comparisons became available. Using the 26 large central cities for which data on both types of rates are available, we analyze the extent to which discrepancies between the rates can be accounted for by aspects of urban social structure that differ from city to city. After introducing such structural controls, we find a much closer correspondence between the two types of rates for motor vehicle theft, robbery, burglary, and forcible rape, but not for aggravated assault and larceny-theft. These results are explained by citing evidence that we have identified some critical "suppressor" variables for the former crimes (i.e., variables that are positively associated with one type of rate and negatively associated with the other). By contrast, the heterogeneous nature of the phenomena subsumed by the latter two crime categories may preclude identification of a similarly parsimonious list of suppressors. One implication of these conclusions is that cross-sectional analyses of intercity variation in official rates may produce results that are in reasonably close correspondence with what would be obtained with victimization rates for certain index crimes, provided that sufficient structural control variables are utilized.     

Perception vs. Reality: The Relationship Between Organized Crime and Human Trafficking in Metropolitan Atlanta

Since the enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, there has been an increase in both media and scholarly discussions of human trafficking. Although most of these discussions have framed human trafficking as a crime committed primarily by organized crime groups, there has been very little empirical research examining the link between human trafficking and organized crime. In an effort to start to address this gap in the research, we conduct an exploratory study to determine if there is a link between human trafficking and organized crime in one of the Southeast’s human trafficking hubs – Atlanta, Georgia. We collected data on 24 federal human trafficking cases that were indicted in metropolitan Atlanta between 2000 and 2013. Then, we conducted a content analysis of the court documents for each federal human trafficking case and classified the relationship between organized crime and human trafficking using one of three categories: nonexistent, organized criminal network, organized criminal syndicate. For the majority of the human trafficking cases (n = 16), we found that there was no relationship between organized crime and human trafficking. For the cases that did show a relationship between organized crime and human trafficking, we found evidence of organized criminal networks in eight of the cases and evidence of an organized criminal syndicate in only one case.     

Theoretical and Empirical Work on the Relationship Between Unemployment and Crime

Part of the ongoing debate between Cantor and Land and Greenberg centers on differing opinions about the question of interest in Cantor and Land (1985). We begin this article with our opinion that Cantor and Land's theory relates changes in the business cycle to changes in the aggregate rate of crime. We then question whether year-to-year changes adequately reflect changes in the business cycle, which last on average 4 years, and we refer to an article by Cook and Zarkin (1985) which presents an alternative method of measuring business cycle changes. We also discuss how Greenberg's use of cointegration provides an alternative way of addressing the difficult statistical problem of nonstationarity without resorting to first differences. Our final contribution involves noticing that opportunity and motivational theories of crime can be structurally identified by focusing on different types of crime rather than temporal lags. We demonstrate this idea by splitting car theft into joyriding and theft for profit. We show that joyriding appears to be driven by opportunity, while the causal structure of theft for profit is less clear.     

Addressing Unobserved Heterogeneity in the Relationship Between Crime and Consumer Confidence

Objectives

This study revisits the relationship between property crime and economic conditions with the latter being represented by a collective economic perception variable in the form of the Index of Consumer Confidence (ICC). The present work takes this application to assess the severity of cross-sectional dependence and nonstationarity, two issues that are deemed pervasive in macro panels but have not been given sufficient consideration in previous research.

Methods

The dataset comprises information for five Canadian regions over a time period of 24 years from 1982 to 2005. The study compares the parameter estimates and residual properties of the commonly used two-way fixed effects (2FE) model and the augmented mean group (AMG) estimator where the latter can accommodate nonstationarity and cross-sectional dependence that potentially arise from unobserved common factors.

Results

In contrast to the 2FE approach, when using the AMG estimator one can reject the null hypothesis that the current ICC has no impact on crime. Some of the effects still hold when an alternative economic indicator, the unemployment rate of young males, is added to the model. Diagnostic tests confirm that the commonly used 2FE estimator yields nonstationary and cross-sectional dependent residuals, whereas the heterogeneous parameter model produces more favorable diagnostic results.

Conclusions

The findings provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that subjective measures of economic conditions are linked to financially-motivated crime rates. Through this application, the study demonstrates the importance of examining underlying data properties and regression residuals in empirical work to ensure the validity of estimates.

     

数字证据、电子证据、科学证据、电子记录概念比较分析

与数字证据相关的概念很多,但它们的内涵和外延存在一定差异,从提出概念的出发点、载体、表现形式、研究范围等角度分析数字证据、电子证据、科学证据、电子记录等概念的差异,并进一步提出对数字证据进行专门研究的科学性和必要性。     

The Quest for Recompense: Claimants' Experience of Medical Negligence Compensation in Victoria,Australia*

This paper reports a study investigating the experiences of people who perceived that they had suffered a health or medical care injury in Victoria, Australia. A particular focus was their experience with the process of seeking compensation. The research strategy involved a preliminary questionnaire and in-depth interviewing of the participants and, where possible, their families. We describe the type of injury reported by the participants, experiences with health care providers and lawyers and attitudes to the current system of compensation. The severity of injury sustained by these participants was often severe, involving permanent incapacity and psychological distress. We conclude that the quest for recompense is fraught with difficulties for claimants. The present system of compensation neither provides adequate financial compensation nor - even where claimants are successful - acknowledgement of the legitimacy of their claim.     

重新犯罪与否和罪犯改造质量标准的关系质疑--兼论科学的罪犯改造质量标准

什么是罪犯改造质量标准？这是长期以来在我国法律界争论不休的一个重要问题。但令人不可思议的是 ,以是否重新犯罪作为衡量罪犯改造质量的标准 ,在监狱的实践工作中长期无人反思。按照这一标准 ,重新犯罪率越低 ,监狱的改造质量就越高 ;反之 ,则为改造质量低。对此 ,笔者不敢苟同。我们认为 ,重新犯罪率的高低可以衡量一个国家的社会控制能力与水平 ,却不能科学、准确地反映监狱改造罪犯的质量。本文试图在反思的基础上 ,探索实事求是的、科学的罪犯改造质量标准。一、以重新犯罪与否作为罪犯改造质量标准的不科学性１．以重新犯罪与否作为…     

Clearing Crime in Prime-Time: The Disjuncture Between Fiction and Reality

Crime dramas provide entertainment to millions of Americans. The impact of viewing these programs on perceptions and expectations of police is a concern for practitioners, researchers and policy makers. While a growing body of research is identifying factors associated with the probability of clearance in offenses reported to police, a dearth of research looks at the portrayal of police efficiency in apprehending offenders in popular crime dramas. This study examines the depictions of police investigations across four fictional crime dramas. The authors find offenses are cleared at much higher rates than national averages and that several case characteristics typically associated with clearance in actual cases do not share the same relationship in these fictional programs. Results indicate substantial variation between programs in the depiction of the collection and utility of DNA evidence in assisting investigators to identify suspects. Findings are discussed in relation to data collected from actual police departments.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Relative Group Size and Hate Crime Rates: Linking Methods with Concepts

Abstract

In recent studies, Hipp et al. caution that the selection of the appropriate denominator in computing the rate of intra- and inter-group interactions is consequential for key findings. The present study builds on this work and examines whether adjusting for the structural opportunities for any type of interaction affects the observed relationship between hate crime rates and minority group size. We go beyond prior research by computing distinctive measures of anti-Black hate crime rates across US counties circa 2000. Our findings offer support for the power-differential hypothesis, revealing a negative effect of minority population size on crime motivated by bias. These results also underline the importance of the procedure developed by Hipp et al., showing that that the selection of the “baseline” for the computation of hate crime rates is critical for understanding the relationship between minority group size and crime motivated by bias.     

Crime trends and the effect of mandated drug treatment: Evidence from California's Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act

The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (SACPA), implemented statewide in California in July 2001, mandates drug treatment rather than incarceration for certain nonviolent drug offenders. Critics of the legislation suggest that crime increased as a result of the legislation, but researchers have largely ignored this issue. Utilizing time series methodology applied across several independent data sets from Orange County, California, the effects of SACPA on crime were assessed. Results indicate that significant increases in commercial burglaries and paraphernalia arrests may have been attributed to SACPA, but the overall pattern does not support a conclusion that crime increased markedly.