Drug policies: A study of the opinions of local law enforcement patrol officers about various policy alternatives

The article briefly reviews some literature describing the scope and seriousness of psychoactive substance misuse in the United States and then examines some chronic problems in the nature of public policy analysis. A methodology. Conceptual Review, is briefly discussed as a plausible alternative to contemporary approaches. Data from n=100 patrol officers who completed the Drug Policy Questionnaire (DPQ) are presented. Patrol officers were highly supportive of conventional policies, e.g., prevention, education, and treatment, but also recommended more punitive approaches, e.g., imprisonment for both dealers and users. Legalization was rejected as a viable policy alternative. Implications for policy and future research are also discussed.     

中外法庭科学标准化研究现状比较与发展趋势

近年来,我国法庭科学发展迅猛,开始受到广泛关注和重视。经过多年的研究和推动,标准化正逐步深入到法庭科学的日常实践中,通过制定和实施标准规范,确保法庭科学结果质量,更好发挥科学技术在执法司法中的重要作用。标准化研究是法庭科学标准化工作的重要环节,也是推动法庭科学标准化发展的基础和动力。国内外法庭科学研究者都高度重视法庭科学标准化研究,许多新理念、新思想、新方法不断涌现。本文从标准定位、标准化对象、标准颗粒度、标准体系、质量控制、国际标准化六个方面对当前中外法庭科学标准化研究的现状进行了深入全面的归纳和比较,指出了国内外在法庭科学标准化研究方面的相似和差异,并对法庭科学标准化研究的未来发展趋势进行了分析,以求为推动我国法庭科学领域标准化工作高质量发展提供借鉴和参考。     

Reporting on financial derivatives –A Law and Economics perspective

Fearing Enron-like financial fiascos concerning derivatives, accounting standards boards have issued new standards aimed at promoting higher transparency and reducing information asymmetries. After persistent reluctance, and despite significant criticism, the pertinent International standard, with some exceptions, was finally adopted by the E.U., for the sake of intra-European and cross-Atlantic accounting harmonization, for which the standard constituted sine-qua-non. These reluctance and criticism are not unfounded, as the standards might paradoxically result in increased information asymmetries, not easily mitigated by additional disclosure, and ultimately resulting in distortion of capital allocation and corporate governance mechanisms. Suggestions for more efficient solutions are outlined herein. JEL Classification G34 · M40     

论地方金融监管法律规制的完善——以《温州民间金融管理条例》为借鉴

目前,我国地方金融监管的法律制度尚不完善,存在地方金融管理重复与真空并存、地方金融管理部门权责不对等、职能定位与市场定位有偏差等问题。其原因主要在于相关法律制度的缺失。完善地方金融监管法律制度可以借鉴温州政府的《温州民间金融管理条例》,通过确立监管理念、监管主体以及具体制度的构架等建立起地方金融监管法律体系,以促进地方金融监管的法治化、规范化。     

Having a Bad Month: General Versus Specific Effects of Stress on Crime

We examine whether particular types of stress are related to particular types of crime or whether all types of stress are related to all types of crime. Our estimates are based on analyses of within-individual change over a 36 month period among recently incarcerated offenders. We find that assault is most strongly related to family stress, suggesting that conflicts between family members lead to assault. Economic crimes (property crimes and selling illicit drugs) are most clearly related to financial stress, suggesting that these crimes often reflect attempts to resolve financial problems. On the other hand, crime is generally unrelated to stress from illness/injury, death, and work. The results support the idea that criminal behavior is a focused response to specific types of problems rather than a general response to stress. They are more consistent with explanations that focus on perceived rewards and costs (e.g., the rational-choice approach) than with explanations that portray negative affect as a generalized impetus toward violence or crime (e.g., frustration aggression approaches).     

"The More Things Change…": Business Litigation and Governance in the American Automobile Industry

Business litigation is a relatively neglected area of corporate governance, particularly given its enormous rise in the United States over the past generation. As a preliminary effort to engage this issue, we examine dispute avoidance and resolution in the automotive sector since the early 1970s-focusing on relationships between auto manufacturers and their suppliers and dealers. We generally presume intercorporate litigation to be a "last resort" in business practice, chosen only on the breakdown of less costly means of dispute avoidance or resolution; we take such breakdown typically to be caused by shifts in the terms of competition among firms (e. g., increased competition, instability, uncertainty); and we expect that, over time, the costs of litigation will motivate efforts to construct new structures of nonlitigious dispute resolution. In the case of the U. S. auto industry, we find disruptive shifts in the terms of competition and increased recourse to litigation. Throughout, however, this litigation effect is mitigated by the dominance of major manufacturers over their suppliers and dealers. Over time, it is further dampened by industry development of mechanisms for arbitration or other nonlitigious dispute resolution.     

Nonfinancial Risk Disclosure and the Costs of Private Ordering

In 2016 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) considered for the first time whether financial disclosure reform should address information on sustainability matters and other sources of nonfinancial risk. The resulting debate over these issues raised fundamental questions about how well the federal disclosure regime addresses emerging risks and about how well private ordering, through shareholder engagement, the work of private standard‐setters, and corporate voluntary disclosure, can fill the gaps. This article argues that the current model of nonfinancial risk disclosure, based largely on private ordering, is ineffective and undermines the SEC's mission to protect investors, facilitate capital formation, and promote fair, orderly, and efficient markets. This conclusion rests on evidence that the current state of sustainability disclosure is inadequate for investment analysis and that these deficiencies are largely problems of comparability and quality that cannot readily be addressed by private ordering. This article also highlights the costs of agency inaction to investors and to public companies, which have been largely ignored in the debate over the future of financial reporting. It concludes by proposing avenues for disclosure reform.     

Remote Wiping and Secure Deletion on Mobile Devices: A Review

Mobile devices have become ubiquitous in almost every sector of both private and commercial endeavors. As a result of such widespread use in everyday life, many users knowingly and unknowingly save significant amounts of personal and/or commercial data on these mobile devices. Thus, loss of mobile devices through accident or theft can expose users—and their businesses—to significant personal and corporate cost. To mitigate this data leakage issue, remote wiping features have been introduced to modern mobile devices. Given the destructive nature of such a feature, however, it may be subject to criminal exploitation (e.g., a criminal exploiting one or more vulnerabilities to issue a remote wiping command to the victim's device). To obtain a better understanding of remote wiping, we survey the literature, focusing on existing approaches to secure flash storage deletion and provide a critical analysis and comparison of a variety of published research in this area. In support of our analysis, we further provide prototype experimental results for three Android devices, thus providing both a theoretical and applied focus to this article as well as providing directions for further research.     

Parenting and Safety Program for System-Involved Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: A Qualitative Follow-up Study

This article reports findings from a qualitative follow-up investigation of a mandated parenting and safety program for system-involved female IPV survivors. Participants were contacted 12 months or more after program completion and invited to participate in individual interviews. The interviews focused on the longer-term life changes survivors attributed to the program. Data were collected from 38 survivors. Qualitative analysis determined 4 key themes: relationship changes (e.g., most women were no longer with abusive partners), parenting changes (e.g., improved communication and discipline strategies), personal life changes (e.g., improved help-seeking and self-esteem), and new or ongoing challenges (e.g., financial stress). Overall, findings suggest that tailored, mandated programming — when positive and empowering — may lead to some longer-term beneficial outcomes.     

Does private copying need an update in the UK?

Legal context: Most European legal systems have limited the ‘exclusive’reproduction right of authors in their works to enable usersto copy, for private purposes and without the authorizationof the authors, legally acquired protected material. In exchange,authors receive compensation for their loss of control of theircreations. The UK Copyright Act does not generally permit privatecopying, but it does exempt a few acts from the exclusive rightsawarded to authors through copyright. Key points: The article examines the limitations to the reproduction rightprovided by IP law in the UK, such as time-shifting, in thelight of relevant case law—GEMA (1964), Sony v UniversalStudios (1984)—the European Copyright Directive and aEuropean sector inquiry. Many countries have established levieson copying-friendly media where their proceeds are distributedto authors as compensation. This article argues for the needto reform the IP law in the UK, arguing that time-shifting andother reproduction acts authorized by the statute are privatecopying in disguise. The paper only considers legal privatecopying, which should not be mistaken with piracy or file-sharingin P2P networks. Practical significance: Copying another's works in the privacy of one's home has becomeincreasingly popular on account of the fast-developing paceof technology and its supporting platform: the internet. Althoughlevies have often been imposed on physical media (CDs, CDRs),new technologies such as MP3 and MP4 players and USB flash drivesare often exempted, despite their widespread use as tools forprivate copying. The private copying trend is bringing greaterbenefits to the users than to the creators of protected workswho understandably would like to obtain a share of the overallprofits.     

The utilization of technology assistance by small manufacturers

This paper examines the extent to which small manufacturers in the Nashville metropolitan area have installed the latest technology and used external public and private sources of technical information. A mail survey of 404 manufacturing firms was conducted with 123 firms responding. Results indicate that small manufacturers in Nashville need technological assistance and that the existing assistance network (e.g., federal and state assistance agencies) is not effectively serving this need.     

“Bike litter” and obligations of the platform operators: Lessons from China's dockless sharing bikes

The boom of dockless share bikes in China has brought about enormous private benefits and social benefits. However, it has also imposed upon the public a new cost which can be termed as “bike litter”¹: share bikes parked or abandoned in pathways, rivers and other public spaces. It has not only damaged the aesthetic value of cities but has created serious safety hazards and public nuisances. None of the conventional methods of regulating road and traffic safety hazards, such as private actions, public enforcement and self-regulation, seem to have stopped bike-litter without also stopping dockless bike services. Without having to stop such services, or overly burdening their operators, it is proposed here that certain obligations should be imposed upon the operators of dockless bike services. Unlike tort-related obligations that focus on results (e.g., the reduction or sanction of bike litter), these new obligations compel operators to establish systems for monitoring the behaviors of bike users. In short, these obligations are as follows: (1) an obligation for operators to mandatorily include provisions in their terms of service to allow the operators to monitor, sanction and rewards certain parking behavior of users of the service; (2) an obligation for operators to create and maintain monitoring systems to detect bike littering and to enforce the user agreements; and (3) an obligation for operators to report on, and disclose, details regarding the operation and effectiveness of these systems. The mandatory disclosure obligation of operators, however, should be strictly subject to the protection of privacy rights of bike riders and the protection of fair competition between different platforms. It is also proposed that these obligations should be created through voluntary agreements between the government regulator and operators under a permit system, rather than by creating new statutory obligations, as the former is much more flexible and allows for the adoption of various incentive schemes. Such an approach may also help regulate torts incidence in other types of platform economies.     

The Governance of Blockchain Financial Networks

Since the emergence of the virtual currency Bitcoin in 2009, a new, Internet‐based way of recording entitlements and enforcing rights has increasingly captured the interest of businesses and governments. The technology is commonly called ‘blockchain’ and is often associated with a closely related phenomenon, the ‘smart contract’. The market is now exploring ways of using these concepts for financial assets, such as securities, fiat money and derivative contracts. This article develops a conceptual framework for the governance of blockchain‐based networks in financial markets. It constructs a vision of how financial regulation and private law should set the boundaries of this new technology in order to protect market participants and societies at large, while at the same time allowing the necessary room for innovation.     

Environmental liability under uncertain causation

Recently, the European Commission has issued the “Directive 2004/35/CE on environmental liability with regard to the prevention and remedying of environmental liability”. The Directive extends liability that usually refers to personal injuries and private property to harm where private property does not exist (e.g. biodiversity and endangered species). In these cases, problems with multiple causation and uncertain causation tend to be even more severe than for cases where solely private property is affected. Nevertheless, the otherwise very ambitious Directive remains silent about how to deal with these problems. We focus on uncertain causation and analyze second best optimal standards of proof in a model where benefits of risky activities are private information, and where the firm’s care level chosen to avoid the damage is only imperfectly observable. We derive three results: first, we characterize the factors determining the second best standards. Second, and conversely to the previous literature, high standards of proof such as proof beyond reasonable doubt can be second best optimal even though they lead to inefficiently low care levels. Third, legislators should leave discretionary power to courts which allows them to choose the standard of proof conditional on factors such as the degree of uncertainty over causation or the information quality about care levels as taken by injurers.     

Privacy,surveillance, and the proportionality principle: The need for a method of assessing privacy implications of technologies used for surveillance

Developments in technology have created the possibility for law enforcement authorities to use for surveillance purposes devices that are in the hands or private premises of individuals (e.g. smart phones, GPS devices, smart meters, etc.). The extent to which these devices interfere with an individual's private sphere might differ. In the European Union, surveillance measures are considered lawful if they have been issued in conformity with the legal rules and the proportionality principle. Taking a fundamental rights approach, this paper focuses on the information needed for adopting proportionate decisions when authorizing the use for surveillance of devices that are not built for surveillance purposes. Since existing methods of privacy assessment of technologies do not offer the required information, this paper suggests the need for a new method of assessing privacy implications of technologies and devices which combines an assessment of privacy aspects with the different dimensions of surveillance.     

Politics and white collar crime: Explaining government intervention in the Savings and Loan Scandal

The Savings and Loan Scandal of the 1980s was the biggest crime ever perpetrated in the United States. While several studies have examined the causes of the crime (e.g., deregulation, increase of insurance coverage to $100,000, fluctuations in the economic markets, greed), few scholars to date have studied state intervention in the industry after the crime had been committed. We explore the questions of when and how state managers intervene in the actions of the powerful by supplementing state theory with the literature on the social construction of social problems. Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Miami, November 1994. The authors would like to thank the College of Criminal Justice of Sam Houston State University for financial support in searching newspaper data bases and Henry Pontell for comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

民营上市公司财务监督问题——兼评《上市公司治理准则》《证券法》的相关修订

在日本设置监查委员会等三类委员会的公司中,监查委员会和会计监查人为公司财务监督的最终把门人。日本立法者虽然给予了这两大监督机构一定的独立性,但是东芝公司财务造假事件的发生却反映出这两大机构背后的许多问题。我国《上市公司治理准则》和《证券法》对公司财务监督的有关修改难以解决民营上市企业的财务造假问题。在我国,作为民营上市公司内部财务监督把门人的审计委员会和日本的监查委员会一样,有着交叉任职和缺乏专业性的问题,这使得聘任财会专业的专职审计委员显得有所必要。同时,类似于日本的情形,独立性、会计师事务所的强制轮换制度缺失和时间压力是会计师事务所担任我国民营上市公司外部财务监督把门人时所面临的问题,对此可采取的改革措施有赋予审计委员会对会计事务所的选解任权和报酬决定权、限制每年年初前4个月签字会计师审计的公司数量等。     

The new stock in trade — technology or stewards of technology transfer — Dr. Dvorkovitz & Associates

A brief account of the growth of the “market” concept, as related to technology transfer, leads into the establishment of Dr. Dvorkovitz & Associates by its founder and owner, Vladimir Dvorkovitz, Ph.D., where the company has been, where it is at present, and plans for the immediate future, as related to the world wide dissemination of data on technology available for license from industry, government organizations, university and private research centers, and individual inventors. Company activities cover the computerized data bank, InstanTechEx; TechEx, the annual World Fair for Technology Exchange; the publication on licensing and technology transfer, UNIT.     

Dutch cocaine trade: The perspective of Rotterdam cocaine retail dealers

This article based, on 38 in-depth interviews with Rotterdam cocaine retail dealers, aims to present a clearer picture of how cocaine supply lines in the Netherlands are organized in order to fine-tune policy with respect to crime, public order and safety on the different trade levels. On the retail level the market for cocaine is strictly separated in a market for crack cocaine versus a market for powder cocaine. The crack dealers are often hard drug users themselves living in relatively poor circumstances. Although dealing cocaine is their main activity, they tend to be involved in other activities related to the drug scene, e.g. smuggling cocaine via Amsterdam airport. The cocaine distribution line for supply on the local market is seldom more than two steps. Because the supply for the Rotterdam cocaine retailers comes mainly from small-scale imports, successful police operations against large-scale imports of cocaine will have little influence on the local cocaine supply in the Netherlands.     

What Can be Done About High-Risk Perpetrators of Domestic Violence?

This article addresses practical implications for preventing lethal and nonlethal domestic violence (DV) that stem from recent research on male domestic homicide perpetrators. The role of risk assessment and batterer intervention programs is emphasized, including specific programming for treatment-resistant perpetrators. Adjunct interventions for related problems (e.g., anger, suicidal behaviour, substance abuse) are offered, and risk management tactics are summarized. The article highlights the significance of safety planning for victims and teaching youth skills for forming and maintaining healthy relationships. Possible solutions to the problem of DV perpetrators who avoid arrest also are highlighted (e.g., public awareness campaigns). Additionally, this article discusses approaches for dealing with psychopathic DV perpetrators, including the possible benefits of community education on psychopathy and early intervention for youth at risk for developing these traits. Some policy implications concerning DV and psychopathy also are covered. The article underscores the importance of coordinated community responses to DV.