Impulsivity,Offending, and the Neighborhood: Investigating the Person–Context Nexus

The traditional trait-based approach to the study of crime has been challenged for its failure to acknowledge differences in the social environments to which individuals are exposed. Similarly, community-level explanations of crime have been criticized for failing to take into account important individual differences between criminals and non-criminals. Ultimately, a full understanding of crime requires the consideration of both individual and environmental differences, perhaps most importantly because they may interact to produce offending behavior. Yet little criminological research has examined if the effects of individual-level characteristics vary by the context in which they are embedded. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by using multivariate, multilevel item response models to examine if the influence of impulsivity on offending differs as a function of neighborhood context. Analyses using data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods reveals that the effects of impulsivity are amplified in neighborhoods with higher levels of socioeconomic status and collective efficacy, and lower levels of criminogenic behavior settings and moral/legal cynicism. Implications of these findings for research and policy are discussed.     

Policy-makers’ perceptions on their sex offender laws: the good,the bad,and the ugly

The views and attitudes that lawmakers have about sexual offenders and sexual victimization can be influential in criminal lawmaking. And given the popularity of sex offender laws, policy-makers are central players in how state justice systems respond to sex crimes. Therefore, state-level policy-makers from across the country, who sponsored and passed at least one sex offender law in their state, (n?=?61) were interviewed about sex offenders and sex crimes. Policy-makers believe sex offender laws are too broad. The laws extend to nonviolent offenses, low-risk offenders, and thus dilute the law enforcement potency of sex offender registries. Policy-makers view existing sex offender laws as necessary to enhance public safety and as proof that lawmakers are responding to the needs and concerns of the public. Sex offender laws were also discussed as a source of political capital; a way to help ensure reelection. The sexual victimization of children and the media’s coverage of sex crimes were instrumental in these state-level policy-makers’ decisions to sponsor sex offender laws. Policy and research recommendations are offered.     

Me,myself and I: the sociology of policing male rape,the gaze of the ‘Other’

In this paper, the bodies of male rape victims as the ‘other’ are problematized. The social and cultural constructions of male rape within a policing context are examined since the police play a major role in impeding the progress of male rape cases. The author draws on police data, generated from interviews and qualitative questionnaires with the police, to illustrate the problems with policing male rape in England, UK. While the author provides empirical data, sociological, cultural, and post-structural theoretical frameworks largely inform it. It is argued that the bodies of male rape victims are positioned in inferior positions, whereby their bodies are metaphorically and symbolically marked as ‘abnormal’, ‘deviant’, and the ‘other’. Through social and power relations, their bodies are tainted, which reinforces gender and social norms.     

A Review of “Setting the Standard: Certification,Governance, and the Forest Stewardship Council”

Abstract

As the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) establishes itself as one of the premier regimes in international law, member states are increasingly availing themselves of the significant dispute settlement provisions found in Part XV. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) is beginning to take its place in the pantheon of major international tribunals. Although its jurisprudence thus far has largely consisted of applications for prompt release of vessels, these cases have arisen from disagreements over fishery practices and the enforcement of fishery laws by coastal states. The ITLOS is developing into a transparent, consistent and speedy forum to adjudicate marine disputes arising from UNCLOS. While the overall scope and reach of Part XV may be uncertain at the present time, especially vis‐à‐vis other dispute settlement institutions, the early activity under Part XV is promising. Those concerned with marine wildlife issues should be encouraged by the potential of Part XV, the ITLOS in particular, to serve as an effective regime in the realm of marine wildlife dispute settlement.     

The birds,the bees,and the deep freeze: is there international consensus in the debate over assisted reproductive technologies?

This Comment traces assisted reproductive technologies from their historical beginnings in early artificial insemination techniques, through the revolutionary advent of in vitro fertilization two decades ago, and continues to current experimental procedures such as embryo twinning and cryopreservation of ova. It then examines the worldwide controversy surrounding clinical use of these technologies and international attempts to resolve these issues. The final focus is on whether or not a consensus exists within the international legal community on how to tackle the complex issues presented by recent advances in reproductive technology.     

Who Run the World? Cats: Cat Lovers,Cat Memes,and Cat Languages Across the Web

The paper provides an overview of the macro-isotopy “cat”, a totemic figure disputed between the elitist and often-esoteric subculture related to the origins of Internet and the standardized mass culture permeating social media. Due to its features, “cat” is a cultural unit which is easy to anthropomorphize and iconize, according to a variety of textual practices, including so-called Internet memes (lolcats) and one of the most interesting examples of sign proliferation to date: the creation of a whole new language (lolspeak) based upon systemic misspellings and mistakes.     

Paying the levy: Taxable wealth in Bridgetown,Barbados, 1680–1715

Differential fertility can be attributed to economic and cultural factors, but the family also plays an important role. Fertility behavior may be transmitted from parents to children through heritable dispositions or via socialization. Previous research has shown, however, that the expression of genetic effects depends on the interplay with the environment. In this article we take a long-term view and examine how the different mechanisms shifted over time and across social and local contexts on the basis of a large-scale database containing 100 thousand sibling pairs born between 1810 and 1870 in the Dutch province of Zeeland, a society undergoing demographic transition and industrialization. Corroborating earlier research, we find a significant increase in the expression of heritabilities and a fading of social influence for women born after the 1840s, who started their reproductive careers during the historical fertility decline in this region. Our study points out that the ‘social control’ of fertility was particularly reduced for women born in towns, women originating from the urban or rural laboring classes, and women from communities with a relatively liberal religious climate. Our findings are in line with research emphasizing the important role played by women in decision-making processes around childbearing, and could indicate the conditions that enhanced women's position in household bargaining during the historical fertility decline.     

Police,Crime and the Problem of Weak Instruments: Revisiting the “More Police,Less Crime” Thesis

Objectives

A key question in the general deterrence literature has been the extent to which the police reduce crime. Definitive answers to this statement, however, are difficult to come by because while more police may reduce crime, higher crime rates may also increase police levels, by triggering the hiring of more police. One way to help overcome this problem is through the use of instrumental variables (IV). Levitt, for example, has employed instrumental variables regression procedures, using mayoral and gubernatorial election cycles and firefighter hiring as instruments for police strength, to address the potential endogeneity of police levels in structural equations of crime due to simultaneity bias.

Methods

We assess the validity and reliability of the instruments used by Levitt for police hiring using recently-developed specification tests for instruments. We apply these tests to both Levitt’s original panel dataset of 59 US cities covering the period 1970–1992 and an extended version of the panel with data through 2008.

Results

Results indicate that election cycles and firefighter hiring are “weak instruments”—weak predictors of police growth that, if used as instruments in an IV estimation, are prone to result in an unreliable estimate of the impact of police levels on crime.

Conclusions

Levitt’s preferred instruments for police levels—mayoral and gubernatorial election cycles and firefighter hiring—are weak instruments by current econometric standards and thus cannot be used to address the potential endogeneity of police in crime equations.

     

What harm,whose justice?: excavating the restorative movement

The city of Hull in the northeast of England gave itself the ambitious task of becoming the world’s first restorative city. The aim of this strategy was to create a more socially and emotionally confident youth population which in turn would encourage a more entrepreneurial and aspirational outlook across the City. Based on a two-year National Lottery-funded project exploring peoples’ experiences of restorative approaches and a Knowledge Transfer Project to help develop restorative skills, the development of restorative justice is analysed. How does a restorative classroom, workplace, or family really behave? Is there a common objective within, and across, all restorative initiatives and if so, what is it? The answer to these questions is that communication breakdown can be understood as the common harm within, and across the restorative movement. This raises some interesting questions and challenges for zemiology where both restorative justice and social harm perspectives contain quite different notions of harm suggesting that neither has yet developed a clear or solid foundation upon which to build an alternative focus to criminal harms.     

Post-Marxism and the Politics of Human Rights: Lefort,Badiou, Agamben,Rancière

Recent histories of human rights have shown that the turn to human rights as a form of politics occurred as a placeholder for utopian energies at the end of history, coinciding with a retreat of the organised left, the abandonment of the theme of revolution, and the pluralisation of political struggles. This essay examines the way that radical continental theory has responded to the political hegemony of human rights by focusing on ‘post-Marxist’ thought. Examining the work of four influential critics of human rights—Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Rancière—I argue that post-Marxist thought provides two very different approaches to the political possibilities offered by human rights. The first retains a fidelity to the revolutionary critique of rights by rejecting the language and conceptuality of human rights as too deeply implicated in the liberal political order that needs to be resisted. The second acknowledges the limitations of human rights while arguing that they also offer important tools for democratic political struggle. The essay draws upon these analyses to consider the contemporary political meaning of human rights. It argues that the latter of these strategies is problematic because we now face a radically different political conjuncture to the one in which the politics of human rights first emerged: human rights have played an important role in the project of post-historical reaction; the political space in which the politics of rights once made sense has collapsed; and we have seen substantial political upheavals in the wake of the crisis of capitalism.     

Rethinking the Probative Value of Evidence: Base Rates,Intuitive Profiling,and the “Postdiction” of Behavior

It is argued that American courts may be routinely admitting evidence with little to no probative value and great potential for prejudicial impact. This may be particularly likely with regard to what is essentially intuitive profiling or stereotype related evidence, defined herein as evidence suggesting that the defendant (or other party), or his (her) behavior, fits intuitive profiles (or stereotypes) of the type of person likely to commit the crime or behavior in question. In other words, intuitive profiling evidence is admitted to postdict behavior. Formal empirically based profiling evidence (testimony regarding the fit of a defendant's characteristics or behaviors to formal or scientific profiles of the typical perpetrator of the crime in question for use to prove guilt is inadmissible in American courts. However, we suggest that everyday use of informal intuitive profiles underlies both judicial determinations of probative value diagnosticity, and thus admissibility, of evidence, and jurors' use of the evidence in determining guilt. Demonstrations of the use of base rate information to evaluate the probative value of such intuitive profiling evidence both as evidence of guilt and as evidence of innocence are provided. Demonstrations of both how to evaluate the actual probative value of evidence (when all necessary values are known), and the theoretical limit of its probative value (in circumstances where some values are not known) are provided. It is argued that such evaluations may provide the basis for (1) support of motions to either admit or to exclude evidence, (2) testimony to the jury to help them weigh or interpret evidence, (3) exculpatory profiling (profiling evidence of innocence), (4) pretrial research to establish probative versus prejudicial value of evidence, and (5) sufficiency analyses to determine maximum likelihood of guilt, given multiple items of evidence. Among these, the first two are considered most important, as it can be demonstrated that many profiling characteristics currently admitted in trial (such as evidence of battery to support a murder charge) are not probative of guilt.     

‘Swimming the Witch,Pricking for the Devil's Mark’: Ordeals in the Early Modern Witchcraft Trials

The article focuses on the problem of why ordeals returned to use in the early modern European witchcraft trials after they had been prohibited in 1215. The problem is approached comparatively and in context of the law of proof, with special focus on Scandinavia. The main argument of the article is that the use of ordeals in the early modern period was dependent on the degree of professionalisation of the legal profession and of the ‘scientification’ of the procedural system. This explains why ordeals were used more in France, Germany and Switzerland than in Scandinavia. The study also sheds some light on the rarity of ordeals in England, Spain and Russia.     

The ‘Heathrow’ Case: Polycentricity,Legislation, and the Standard of Review

The recent Court of Appeal decision in the ‘Heathrow’ case, Plan B Earth v Secretary of State for Transport is an illustration of the challenges of reviewing polycentric and expert decision-making. The issues raised in the case concerning the Planning Act 2008 are an illustration of a court's expository role in such contexts. The Court tackled directly a series of interpretive questions concerning the Planning Act 2008's obligations regarding the consideration of climate change. The Habitats and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive issues raised in the appeal, in contrast, were presented with the question of the intensity of review foregrounded in legal argument. The Court therefore sought to articulate the ‘standard of review’ and to apply it to the government's decisions. This way of framing the issue unfortunately sidelined the courts’ expository role in relation to intepreting the Habitats and SEA Directives, leaving key provisions under-analysed.     

Psychiatrists,criminals, and the law: Forensic psychiatry in Switzerland 1850–1950

Between 1880 and 1950, Swiss psychiatrists established themselves as experts in criminal courts. In this period, the judicial authorities required psychiatric testimonies in a rising number of cases. As a result, more offenders than ever before were declared mentally deficient and, eventually, sent to psychiatric asylums. Psychiatrists also enhanced their authority as experts at the political level. From the very beginning, they got involved in the preparatory works for a nationwide criminal code. In this article, I argue that these trends toward medicalization of crime were due to incremental processes, rather than spectacular institutional changes. In fact, Swiss psychiatrists gained recognition as experts due to their daily interactions with judges, public prosecutors, and legal counsels. At the same time, the spread of medical expertise had serious repercussions on psychiatric institutions. From 1942 onwards, asylums had to deal with a growing number of “criminal psychopaths,” which affected ward discipline and put psychiatry's therapeutic efficiency into question. The defensive way in which Swiss psychiatrists reacted to this predicament was crucial to the further development of forensic psychiatry. For the most part, it accounts for the subdiscipline's remarkable lack of specialization until the 1990s.     

Universal Credit, ‘Positive Citizenship’, and the Working Poor: Squaring the Eternal Circle?

This article examines the potential effects of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 on the United Kingdom social security system, and on claimants. This legislation illustrates new modes of thought and ideology underlying the British welfare state. The introduction of the ‘Universal Credit’ has the potential to solve the ‘poverty trap’, where claimants are better off in receipt of welfare benefits rather than engaging with employment, and may assist low‐paid individuals into ‘positive’ citizenship. However, the practicalities of implementing Universal Credit might undermine legislators’ ambitions. It may be that the Act attempts too much reform to the social security system, trying to impose legislative uniformity on a highly complex set of socio‐economic circumstances which may be impervious to such rationalisation. This could result in the scheme requiring further reform, or even abolition. The ideological and historical underpinnings of Universal Credit are also examined to understand more clearly its nature and structure.     

‘From weird to wired’: MPs,the internet and representative politics in the UK

On 14 May 2002, the House of Commons voted on proposals put forward by the Modernisation Select Committee for reform of the departmental select committee system. This article examines the origins of those proposals, and the outcome of the vote, focusing on one particular proposal to create a Committee of Nomination to place MPs onto select committees. This raises questions regarding two competing academic approaches to explaining parliamentary reform, the ‘attitudinal’ approach and the ‘contextual’ approach, and concludes that, of the two, the ‘contextual’ approach is better placed to explain the failure to create a Committee of Nomination.