Crime Reduction and the Length of Prison Sentences

The issue discussed is whether policies of imposing increasingly lengthy prison sentences on serious criminal offenders reduce crime. The empirical evidence for the deterrence and incapacitation effects of incarceration is first examined and found to be of limited help in answering the question whether lengthy prison sentences reduce crime. Conceptual and normative analysis of deterrence and incapacitation suggest that we have little reason to believe that the general use of lengthy prison terms produces more good than harm for society, especially if the burdens of and alternatives to such prison terms are taken into account.     

Overview of: “Crime Place and Pollution: Expanding Crime Reduction Options Through a Regulatory Approach”

Research Summary Crime reduction policy has focused almost exclusively on offenders. Recent studies and evaluations show that expanding our policy portfolio to include places may be highly productive. We show that there is considerable research showing that crime is concentrated at a relatively few locations, that high-crime places are stable, that changing places can reduce crime, that displacement is not only far from inevitable but also less likely than the diffusion of crime prevention benefits, and that owners of high-crime places can be held accountable for the criminogenic conditions of their locations. We link these findings to environmental policy, where environmental scientists, economists, and regulators have developed a broad set of regulatory options. The core of this article describes a portfolio of environmental policy instruments directly applicable to crime places. We also discuss major decisions local governments will need to make to implement various forms of regulation, and we list challenges that governments must anticipate in planning for such implementation. We argue that a regulatory approach to crime places has the potential to lower the cost to taxpayers of reducing crime by shifting costs from governments to the relatively few place owners whose actions create crime-facilitating conditions. Policy Implications Taking a regulatory approach to crime places substantially expands the crime policy options under consideration. Regulatory options may increase local governments’ effectiveness at reducing crime while reducing governments’ costs. This is because regulatory approaches have the potential to shift some portion of the financial burden for crime fighting to owners of criminogenic locations. Policy makers can select between means-based anticrime regulations that focus on how place owners manage their locations and ends-based regulations that focus on the number of crimes allowed at places. Both of these approaches contain several alternative regulatory instruments, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Experimenting with various regulatory instruments could lead to the development of a range of new crime reduction policies. In addition, a regulatory approach has implications for the funding of policy research. Means-based regulatory instruments require governments to develop evidence that the means they regulate have the desired impact on crime. Ends-based regulatory instruments shift this burden to the regulated places.     

Diagnosing Crime and Diagnosing Disease: Bias Reduction Strategies in the Forensic and Clinical Sciences

Cognitive effort is an essential part of both forensic and clinical decision‐making. Errors occur in both fields because the cognitive process is complex and prone to bias. We performed a selective review of full‐text English language literature on cognitive bias leading to diagnostic and forensic errors. Earlier work (1970–2000) concentrated on classifying and raising bias awareness. Recently (2000–2016), the emphasis has shifted toward strategies for “debiasing.” While the forensic sciences have focused on the control of misleading contextual cues, clinical debiasing efforts have relied on checklists and hypothetical scenarios. No single generally applicable and effective bias reduction strategy has emerged so far. Generalized attempts at bias elimination have not been particularly successful. It is time to shift focus to the study of errors within specific domains, and how to best communicate uncertainty in order to improve decision making on the part of both the expert and the trier‐of‐fact.     

论单位犯罪是共同犯罪

承认单位犯罪是共同犯罪,在理论上和实践中都有其必要性,使对单位犯罪的直接负责的主管人员和直接责任人员追究刑事责任有明确的法律依据,而且在理论上也符合单位犯罪的本质和共同犯罪的成立条件。     

国际犯罪与涉外犯罪、跨国犯罪关系辨析——以基础概念解析为进路

国际犯罪与涉外犯罪、跨国犯罪之间虽然在起源上具有不可磨灭的历史渊源,但它们在内容上并不具有同一或者包容关系,而是一种即相互交叉又彼此保持一定独立性的关系。只有当涉外犯罪、跨国犯罪具有"国际性"时,即它们的危害性达到国际刑法所要求的严重程度时,才能上升为国际犯罪。而在国际犯罪中,除了具有国际性的涉外犯罪和跨国犯罪外,还包括具有国际性的既不属于涉外犯罪又不属于跨国犯罪的单纯的国内犯罪。     

Crime and Reactions to Crime in Scandinavia

This short overview of available statistical data on crime and penal systems in Scandinavia indicates that the level of traditional forms of crime in Scandinavia is on a par with or lower than that found in many other European countries. As elsewhere in western Europe, Scandinavia experienced a substantial increase in crime rates during the post‐war period—indicating that these recorded increases may have common structural roots. The 1990s witnessed a stabilization of theft rates, albeit at a high level. Increasing equality between women and men may have contributed to an increase in the reporting of violent and sexual offences against women (and children), making these offences more visible. The system of formal control in the Scandinavian countries is characterized by relatively low police density; a clear‐up rate that has declined; above‐average conviction rates; the imposition of fines in a high proportion of criminal cases; and relatively low prison populations. The implications for crime policies are discussed.     

行政犯与二元化犯罪模式

刑事犯与行政犯的类型划分已成为犯罪分类中的一个固定范武,如何在认知行政犯之本质的基础上设置行政犯的犯罪模式,这就不仅关系到刑法的控制效果,而且还关系到刑法的科学发展.作为"先抑后扬"的二元化犯罪模式,不仅能够满足刑法上设置行政犯之目的诉求,而且较好地体现了刑法谦抑原则,因而是行政犯之犯罪模式的理性选择.所以未来的刑法修正案应适当扩展二元化犯罪模式的存在范围,具体可以考虑在纯正的贪利性行政犯中实行.     

Lighting and Homicides: Evaluating the Effect of an Electrification Policy in Rural Brazil on Violent Crime Reduction

Introduction

This study estimates the effects of lighting on homicides in rural areas of developing countries.

Methods

We use an IV strategy by exploring the LUZ PARA TODOS or Light for All (LPT) program that was adopted by the federal government to expand electrification to rural areas in Brazilian municipalities in the 2000s as an exogenous source of variations in access to electricity.

Results

Our results indicate a significant decrease in homicide rates in municipalities the Northeast region, which is the poorest region of the country and most affected by the policy expansion. We estimate that helping a municipality increase from zero electricity coverage to full coverage reduces homicide rates by 92 per 100,000 inhabitants. This is equivalent to moving a municipality that is at the 99th percentile to the median (zero) of the crime distribution across municipalities. In addition, we perform placebo exercises using sub-samples of predominantly urban municipalities. The results increase our confidence in the IV strategy since our primary results were from areas with a larger percentage of rural population, as should be expected by the policy.

Conclusions

This study contributes to the extant literature by investigating the effects of lighting on homicides in a different context, rural areas of a developing country (Brazil).

     

Crime Reporting Decisions and the Costs of Crime

The paper develops a model of crime reporting based on an economic approach. It identifies the principal costs and benefits of reporting from the victim’s perspective, taking account of insurance provision and the risk of intimidation by an offender. It shows how a victim might use backward induction to infer a rational reporting strategy. The recording of crime by the police is a process that relies on victim reports, and is thus influenced by the reporting decisions made by victims. The paper uses empirical evidence from the British Crime Survey and from the International Crime Victims Survey to explore the hypotheses generated by the model. It finds support for the suggestion that the propensity to report a crime increases with the size of the loss entailed. The paper also explores the implications of the findings for the estimation of the costs of crime. Reporting and intimidation costs are generally excluded from bottom-up estimates of costs, an omission that may be quite serious in the context of offences such as domestic violence.     

从信用卡犯罪看身份信息犯罪

《刑法修正案(五)》有关信用卡信息犯罪链的规定具有重大的立法价值。从身份信息犯罪链考察,可以将身份信息犯罪分为广义和狭义的两个概念。广义而言,就是指"与身份信息有关的犯罪",包括身份盗窃、身份伪造和身份欺诈。狭义而言,就是指身份盗窃和身份伪造,不包括身份欺诈。狭义的身份信息犯罪不以欺诈目的为要件。独立规制身份信息犯罪有利于从犯罪预备行为阶段遏制严重犯罪的发展,有利于构建单位和个人信息保护的法制体系,独立规制身份信息犯罪也是打击网络犯罪的需要。     

行为犯既遂后"中止"探讨

行为犯,由于其自身的特点,在其行为完成后,也就是完成了刑法分则规定的所有构成要件后,仍然客观存在着行为人主动消除危害社会客体的反悔行为,对这种行为我们应该怎样界定？如作为一种新的中止行为,在刑法理论上又应该怎样协调各原有理论？把其固定为一种新的中止制度实为必要。     

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.     

论独立教唆犯之犯罪预备性——以我国刑法第29条第2款的规定为视角

独立教唆犯是预备犯,这是因为,从教唆行为的本质上看,教唆行为是教唆者所教唆之罪的犯罪预备行为,且这种犯罪预备行为的本身在法律上不具有正当性。为了尽早阻断教唆行为对法益的破坏作用,有的国家在刑法总则中对独立教唆犯予以原则性地处罚规定,采取的是非独立预备犯的立法模式,将犯罪构成要件的可罚性前置化。采取独立预备犯立法技术的国家,在刑法分则中为一些独立教唆行为规定了特定的犯罪构成要件,使一些教唆行为成为其相应的犯罪构成要件的实行行为,但不是教唆者所教唆之罪的犯罪实行行为。