Scaling Criminal Offending

Objective:

This paper reviews a century of research on creating theoretically meaningful and empirically useful scales of criminal offending and illustrates their strengths and weaknesses.

Methods:

The history of scaling criminal offending is traced in a detailed literature review focusing on the issues of seriousness, unidimensionality, frequency, and additivity of offending. Modern practice in scaling criminal offending is measured using a survey of 130 articles published in five leading criminology journals over a two-year period that included a scale of individual offending as either an independent or dependent variable. Six scaling methods commonly used in contemporary criminological research are demonstrated and assessed using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979: dichotomous, frequency, weighted frequency, variety, summed category, and item response theory ??theta??.

Results:

The discipline of criminology has seen numerous scaling techniques introduced and forgotten. While no clearly superior method dominates the field today, the most commonly used scaling techniques are dichotomous and frequency scales, both of which are fraught with methodological pitfalls including sensitivity to the least serious offenses.

Conclusions:

Variety scales are the preferred criminal offending scale because they are relatively easy to construct, possess high reliability and validity, and are not compromised by high frequency non-serious crime types.     

Scaling archetypal criminals

The current study introduces an exploratory postdiction scale whose elements are derived from Moffitt’s (2001) developmental taxonomy, specifically her idea of the life-course persistent offender. Using data obtained from a probability sample of 500 adult arrestees in the western United States, this 7-item additive scale postdicts such criminal behavior as violent and property Index arrests, felony convictions, and prison sentences with overall accuracy ranging from 85% to 92%. Unlike other efforts, this scale suggests that most criminals are benign, low-level offenders, a finding anticipated by Moffitt’s theory. Like prior criminological scales, the current measure has difficulty correctly identifying highrate offenders. The merits of using theory to influence scale construction are expressed and suggestions for refining this instrument are offered.     

期货市场法律规制的创新与渐进

我国期货市场发展历程中的萧条和繁荣都归因于期货业今昔具体法制环境的不同。要使期货市场保持稳健的可持续发展并能够跟上和配合整体经济发展的需要 ,我国期货法律规制体系必须走一条渐进式的法律规制创新之路。     

Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts

Scholars estimating policy positions from political texts typically code words or sentences and then build left‐right policy scales based on the relative frequencies of text units coded into different categories. Here we reexamine such scales and propose a theoretically and linguistically superior alternative based on the logarithm of odds‐ratios. We contrast this scale with the current approach of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), showing that our proposed logit scale avoids widely acknowledged flaws in previous approaches. We validate the new scale using independent expert surveys. Using existing CMP data, we show how to estimate more distinct policy dimensions, for more years, than has been possible before, and make this dataset publicly available. Finally, we draw some conclusions about the future design of coding schemes for political texts.     

论新《行政诉讼法》的若干制度创新

新《行政诉讼法》相对于原《行政诉讼法》有一系列制度创新,其中最重要的有下述八项:立案审查制改登记制,让当事人起诉难变起诉易;案件可跨行政区域管辖,让地方干预易变干预难;扩大受案范围,让行政解纷法治渠道窄变法治渠道宽;放宽当事人资格限制,让利害关系人参与诉讼机会少变参与机会多;增加复议机关被告责任和被诉行政机关负责人出庭应诉责任,让告官见官难变告官见官易;改进诉讼程序,让起诉时限短、诉讼耗时长变起诉时限延长、诉讼耗时减少;扩大司法审查强度,增加裁判形式,让行政诉讼救济手段更多、监督力度更大;增加行政裁判的执行方式,让行政审判更有权威、更有公信力。     

关于创新法制宣传教育工作的若干思考

创新是一个民族的灵魂,是一项事业发展的源动力。新世纪新阶段,法制宣传教育工作面临新形势新要求,需要与时俱进,不断创新。一、充分认识法制宣传教育工作创新的重要意义胡锦涛总书记6月25日在中央党校发表的重要讲话中强调,面对新形势新任务,我们要坚持以邓小平理论和“三个代     

Effective staff selection

Management needs to ensure successful selection procedures throughout the company because selection is a critically important management function that ultimately influences the success or failure of the enterprise. Poor decisions in staff selection can reverberate throughout the organization by dampening staff morale, wasting valuable time, and reducing productivity. Staff selection consists of several identifiable stages of activities. Although selection can be broken into specific steps, the complexity of human behavior limits the usefulness of the cookbook approach. An emphasis solely on procedural stages provides the form without considering the substance. Nor is it possible to identify all the problem areas possible. With these limitations in mind, this article examines common and critically important problem areas in staff selection and suggests ways of handling or correcting them.     

论全球化背景下中国国家角色扮演同法律变革与发展

法律虽是社会变迁的内在需求的反映 ,但法律的生命同样受制于国家这一中介。即国家角色扮演状态与社会变迁境况共同决定着法律的变革与发展的最终形态。新世纪全球化进程无论是在深度还是广度上都正进一步推进 ,由此也使得法律必须也必定适时地变革与发展。但变革与发展能否符合要求 ,与国家的角色的扮演间的关系是不可忽视的。为此 ,以新世纪全球化进一步推进为切入点 ,从全球化对传统国家角色的挑战、应对全球化的挑战国家角色的定位原则、全球化背景之下国家角色扮演法律变革与发展等几方面进行阐述