Opportunity and Self-Control: Do they Predict Multiple Forms of Online Victimization?

This study investigates the predictors of four types of cybercrime victimization/experiences: online harassment, hacking, identity theft, and receiving nude photos or explicit content. The effects of victimization opportunity and low self-control are examined as the primary independent variables in logistic regression analyses of data collected from a large sample of undergraduates enrolled at two universities in the United States. Results suggest that opportunity is positively related to each of the four types of online victimization, and that low self-control is associated with person-based, but not computer-based, forms of cybercrime. These findings speak to the utility, and also the limitations, of these perspectives in understanding cybercrime victimization risk among college students, and to the potentially criminogenic nature of the Internet.

     

Do unilateral trade measures really catalyze multilateral environmental agreements?

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Unilateralism remains an opaque concept associated with discriminatory or coercive policy implications. Legal controversies...     

Do deep and comprehensive regional trade agreements help in reducing air pollution?

Environmental concerns are increasingly being incorporated into regional trade agreements (RTAs) to promote environmental quality and ultimately ensure compatibility between trade and environmental policies. This occurs in a context where air pollution and its effects on human health are of major concern. This paper investigates whether the proliferation and depth of environmental provisions (EPs) in RTAs are associated with lower concentration levels of particulate matter. We present an index of EPs in RTAs that measures the breadth and depth of the provisions and use it to estimate the effect of ratifying RTAs with different levels of EPs on changes in PM_2.5 concentration levels in a panel of OECD countries over the 1999–2011 period. Using an instrumental variables strategy, we find that countries that have ratified RTAs with EPs show lower levels of PM_2.5 concentrations when we control for scale, composition and technique effects and for national environmental regulations. Moreover, the PM_2.5 concentration levels in the pairs of countries that belong to an RTA with EPs tend to converge for the country sample. The results also hold for a longer period of time (1990–2011) and a broader sample of 173 countries as well as for other pollutants, namely CO₂ and NO₂.     

Bound feet: How sexy were they?

In lore and literature, footbinding is thought to have been maintained by its erotic attraction for Chinese men. Interviews with hundreds of living village and small-town women who were footbound in their childhood prove this to be an unsustainable myth. In addition to my extensive fieldwork in many Chinese regions, graphic and portable erotic art, and classical erotic novels all reveal a low level of sexual attentiveness to bound feet and shoes even among the literate. Since most commoner marriages were arranged by parents, and since Chinese mothers-in-law were unlikely to seek sexually distracting brides for their sons, it is clear that while Chinese culture produced some bound foot fetishists, the erotic aspect of the practice was of minimal, if any, importance to the huge population of ordinary couples. This finding clears the way for more effective explanations of its remarkable endurance and spread.     

Jail Calls: What Do Kids Have to Do with It?

For many domestic violence victims, witness tampering continues throughout an abuser’s detention while awaiting court appearance and sentencing, often via phone calls made from jail. A common question we are asked when leading an investigation and providing expert testimony is how abusers involve their children (directly or indirectly) during jail calls. In this commentary, we use three case examples to illustrate how abusers involve their children (directly or indirectly) to further manipulate and tamper with their victim. As the three case examples illustrate, domestic abusers tend to use similar strategies with children during the jail calls as they do with their primary victim (e.g., minimizing the abuse, calling up images of a broken family due to impending charges and sentencing), and tend to triangulate their children against the victim.     

Health professional-patient confidentiality: does the law really matter?

Confidentiality is often tested in the health professional-patient relationship, particularly given that both the law and ethics permit disclosure of confidential information in the public interest. This column outlines the results of an Australian Research Council project indicating that mental health professionals may place more weight on their ethical responsibilities relating to confidentiality than what the law requires. The outcomes of the project, which used both questionnaires and focus group discussions, suggests that there is some confusion as to legal requirements in this area and that many mental health professionals rely on ethical frameworks to justify disclosure even where there is no legal requirement to do so. It is suggested that ethics training for health professionals should be of primary importance to ensure responsible decision-making in this area.     

Addressing cross-border environmental displacement: when can international treaties help?

Environmental degradation is increasingly causing cross-border displacement of people, but countries have formed no treaties to facilitate collaboration on the issue. When is such collaboration feasible, and how should environmental displacement treaties be designed? We present a game-theoretic analysis. In our model, countries first decide on ratifying a treaty, and doing so commits them to helping other countries that face cases of environmental degradation in the future. The equilibrium analysis suggests that treaty formation is easier under conditions of mutual vulnerability than if some countries are at a greater risk of environmental degradation than others. Our most important finding is that contrary to the received wisdom, treaties imposing stringent demands on countries are easier to form than treaties that are easy to comply with. We also examine the benefits of using displacement treaties to build capacity for cooperation. We illustrate the utility of the analysis with a discussion of the Kampala Convention on environmental displacement and consider the potential for future treaty formation in Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.     

Human and fundamental rights: What are they about?

Conclusion Human rights, distrusted by Bentham, through emergence ofGesellshaft, have sometimes been identified with rights of market men and gradually on an ad hoc basis and so have been given a relational or relativist character for that reason. Such a view ignores the test of humanness or the tele of human rights surviving any political association and the need for full development of human personality as an autonomous being inherent in full respect for all as moral persons. This disposes of the view of human rights in terms of rules of a game, or of connection between human rights and human action, or of the standard of the prudent man or, finally, of the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. Equally, that very test of humanness disposes of criticisms of the human rights theory based on a concern for implementation of rights, on concentric circles based on the specific and concrete, on the impossibility of liking the billions, on the distinction between negative, positive and administrative rights, on the condition of being able to make valid claims and thereby denying human rights to the deprived millions in poor countries, on the social justice model, on the potential for violence and conflict and, finally, on the vagueness or subjectivity of human rights. An eclectic synthesis not between good and evil nor between right and wrong but between the extremes of the views presented in such critical explanations e.g. between the New Right and the New Left and between Hobbes and Rousseau) is what is needed in order to present a workable theory of human rights in the modern-day world.     

Mental health specialized probation caseloads: Are they effective?

With the large and growing number of persons with mental illnesses under probation supervision, a form of specialized probation called specialized mental health caseload (SMHC) has been implemented. This study explores the effectiveness of a prototypic SMHC implemented statewide. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare criminal justice, mental health, and community engagement outcomes among three caseloads: a newly established SMHC supervising no more than 30 clients per officer (N = 1367); an established SMHC supervising roughly 50 clients per officer (N = 495); and a traditional caseload of clients receiving mental health treatment and supervised by officers with average caseloads of over 130 clients (N = 5453). Using a mixed methods approach, we found that the SMHC was implemented with high adherence to fidelity, and comparisons based on different caseload samples generally support the effectiveness of the specialized mental health caseload, particularly on criminal justice outcomes. Future studies using random assignment are needed to examine the connection among mental health symptoms, compliance with treatment and probation supervision, and recidivism.     

University mission and academic freedom: Are they irreconcilable?

Educational freedom, rightly understood, depends upon the freedom to shape - and (for individuals) to choose to study in or teach in - distinctive educational institutions. This implies an obligation upon faculty who have chosen to commit themselves to such an institution to teach in a way that engages positively with its educational project. Policies which provide scope and encouragement for schools and universities to represent distinctive and coherent viewpoints are an essential condition of educational freedom in a pluralistic society. These issues are discussed with reference to the ‘values project‘ of Free University in Amsterdam and to debates, in the Netherlands and the United States, over the distinctive character of schools. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Public Charitable Collections: Are they a Worthwhile Cause?

This article examines one of the most long-established methods of fund-raising for charitable causes in the UK – public charitable collections – and looks at changing patterns in this method of fund-raising in recent years. There have been changes both in the method of collection, which now extends beyond cash donations collected by unpaid volunteers to direct debits and credit card donations collected by paid collectors, and also in the chosen locations for collections, with a preference for supermarkets and other off-street sites. These changes have brought with them difficulties in the regulation of such collections. The article gives a brief overview of current legislative provisions in the UK and the proposed new measures for England and Wales. It examines some of the practical problems involved with the implementation of legislative provisions, and considers some alternative ways of combating potential fraud.