Does Parolee Drug Testing Influence Employment and Education Outcomes? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment with Noncompliance

Despite the ubiquity of drug testing in criminal justice settings, there is little experimental evidence suggesting that testing reduces drug use or engenders pro-social behavior. This paper estimates the effect of parolee drug testing on labor and education outcomes with data from a randomized experiment involving 1,958 young parolees. It provides the first estimates in the literature suggesting that drug testing with graduated sanctions can improve short-run employment and education outcomes for parolees. After controlling for parole office fixed effects, juvenile criminal history, and a host of other covariates, the analyses suggest that parolees randomly assigned to testing are 6–8 percentage points (∼11%) less likely to be unemployed and not in school for the month following release to parole when compared to those assigned to the no-testing condition. Racially- and ethnically-stratified analyses find that Hispanics assigned to testing are 10–13 percentage points (∼22%) less likely to be unemployed and not in school, while the estimated coefficient for Blacks is statistically insignificant and hovers around zero. Analyses that use instrumental variable techniques to account for noncompliance by parole officers yield local average treatment effects that are almost twice as large as the intention-to-treat effects.

Mother–Child Contact during Incarceration: A Study Based on a National Survey of Women Prisoners

Based on quantitative data from a national survey of female inmates in Norway, the present article describes the self-reported frequency and type of mother–child contact before and during imprisonment and investigates to what extent this is influenced by mothers’ sociodemographic background as well as their drug abuse and previous criminal history. A total of 141 female inmates participated in the study, representing 75% of the total female inmate population. The findings indicated that 6 in 10 female inmates had children, most of them minors. Half of the mothers had an immigrant background. The mothers presented with serious problems in several welfare domains. Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that preimprisonment contact remained an important contributor to mother–child contact during imprisonment after the other variables included in the study were controlled.     

On a New Perspective of Legal Positivism Study——Based on the pure theory of law

分析实证法学的研究无法摆脱或超越分析实证法学理论“标签”的限制.在这样的研究局势下,研究成果将永远无法自我扬弃.通过讨论纯粹法理论,揭示其所包含的不可避免的政治因素,从而启示后来的研究者:如果以此种不同以往的进路进行研究,分析实证法领域将展现出一种超越“标签”之外的多面向的研究新境界.     

Testing the “Law of Crime Concentration at Place” in a Suburban Setting: Implications for Research and Practice

Objective

To assess whether the “law of crime concentration at place” applies in a non-urban context. We test whether longitudinal trends in crime concentration, stability, and variability apply in a suburban setting.

Methods

We use group-based trajectory analysis to examine trends in recorded crime incidents on street segments in Brooklyn Park, a suburban city outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, over a 15-year period from 2000 to 2014.

Results

Consistent with the law of crime concentration at place, crime in Brooklyn Park is highly concentrated at a small percentage of micro-places. Two percent of street segments produced 50 % of the crime over the study period and 0.4 % of segments produced 25 % of the crime. The patterns of concentration are highly stable over time. However, the concentration of crime is substantially higher and there is much less street-by-street variability in Brooklyn Park compared to urban areas.

Conclusions

We find strong support for the application of the law of crime concentration at place to a non-urban setting, suggesting that place-based policing approaches tested in cities can also be applied to suburbs. However, there are also important differences in the concentration and variability of crime hot spots in suburbs that require further examination. Our study is based on a single setting that may not be representative of other suburban and rural areas. Finally, the clustering of hot spots raises questions about the use of street segments to analyze crime at suburban micro-places.

     

A flying start for the agreement on the conservation of African‐Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA)

Abstract

In accordance with Article XIV the Agreement on the Conservation of African‐Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) entered into force on November 1, 1999 after the signature and ratification by the requisite fourteen Ranges States, comprising at least seven from Africa and seven from Eurasia. A few days later, the first Meeting of the Parties took place in Cape Town, South Africa. This article will provide a brief historical overview of the development of AEWA. However the main focus will be on what has occurred since November 1999 and what can be anticipated in the near‐term future.     

From vocational training to education: the development of a no‐frontiers education policy for Europe?

This article focuses on developments towards an EU educational policy. Education was not included as one of the Community competencies in the Treaty of Rome. The first half of the article analyses the way that the European Court of Justice and the Commission of the European Communities between them managed to develop a series of substantial Community programmes out of Article 128 on vocational training. The second half of the article discusses educational developments in the community following the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty of Amsterdam. Whilst the legal competence of the community now includes education, the author's argument is that the inclusion of an educational competence will not result in further developments to mirror those in the years before the Treaty on European Union. If the 1980s were a decade of expansion, the medium‐term future is likely to be one of consolidation.     

Modeling Temperature Variations Using Monte Carlo Simulation: Implications for Estimation of the Postmortem Interval Based on Insect Development Times*†

The association between insect development and temperature is well established. Thermal summation using accumulated degree-day measures is commonly used. However, the time at which evidence is collected is important in these estimates. The aim of this study was to provide a simulated model of the effect of temperatures on six dipteran species commonly associated with cadavers, from the death scene to the refrigerator, and finally at the time of autopsy. Temperatures measurements were sampled over a 16-month period from the external environment (external to the mortuary), within the mortuary refrigerator, and within the mortuary autopsy suite. Monte Carlo simulation using accumulated degree-days (ADD) was used to estimate the variations based on the mean and standard deviation of the temperature measurements. It was found that there was a negative correlation between the base temperature of the fly species (lowest temperature at which the flies will survive) and developmental likelihood. Species with high base temperatures (Chrysomya albiceps, Chrysomya chloropyga, and Musca domestica) were less likely to continue development in refrigerators than species with lower base temperatures (Lucilia sericata and Piophila casei). The findings of this study highlight the importance of recording temperature measurements and the period of refrigeration on PMI estimation especially when continued development occurs in spite of a period of cooling of the insect evidence.     

Evidence of Negligible Parenting Influences on Self‐Control,Delinquent Peers,and Delinquency in a Sample of Twins

Behavioral genetic findings continue to call into question the dominant role of parental influence. Utilizing a sample of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we assess the association between parenting behaviors and child self‐control, delinquent peer formation, and delinquency. Our results indicate that genetic influences and non‐shared environmental influences account for variation in these outcomes. We discuss these findings as they relate to theorizing about the role and function of parenting in the etiology of unique traits and behaviors.     

Sex/gender‐based decision‐making in the criminal justice system as a possible (additional) explanation for the underrepresentation of women in official criminal statistics — a review of international literature

This article represents an analysis of the literature on sex‐based selection processes in the criminal justice system. It is only since the feminist wave of the sixties that sexual discrimination has been considered as an issue of importance in the study of the criminal justice system and that female criminality has been looked at more thoroughly. The article deals with the different assumptions and hypotheses which have come forward in the debate on the possible discrimination of men and women in the criminal justice process. In the first part of the article the various theoretical models are outlined: the chivalry and evil women hypotheses, the legal or etiological model, the social control theory, the family‐based justice model, and a multifactoral model. In the second part of the article, the results of empirical research relevant to these hypotheses are presented. American, British, Belgian, Dutch and some German literature has been taken into account. The review of the literature shows that the chivalry hypothesis cannot offer an all‐embracing explanation for the possibly perceived preferential treatment of women. Similar conclusions can be drawn for the explanatory value of the legal model. Although a more lenient treatment of women can sometimes be explained by legal factors, these factors can offer no more than a partial explanation for observed sex differences in the criminal justice system. Especially in the case of pre‐trial release and sentencing, more particularly when deciding whether or not to send a defendant to prison, a noticeable sex‐effect can still be found. In the literature we find strong suggestions — although not always confirmed — that an (initially observed) more lenient treatment of women at these stages can be explained by stereotypes and expectations about the personality of women as less dangerous and the specific role which women fulfill in western society.     

The ‘Code of Silence’: Are Self‐Report Surveys a Viable Means for Studying Police Misconducts?

Police misconducts have very rarely been studied by the self‐report method because it is assumed that the ‘code of silence’ is too hard to break even in an anonymous survey research situation. In this study a self‐report method was carried out in a police unit in Finland. Respondents were shown a list of 16 possible conducts. They were asked whether they knew a police officer who had been engaged in misconduct mentioned in the list or whether they themselves had engaged in one or more of the misconducts mentioned in the list. The analysis results indicated that, in an anonymous self‐report survey context, police officers are clearly willing to report on service misconducts, both their own and those of their fellow officers. Thus, the assumed ‘code of silence’ does not seem as strong as the literature suggests.     

The EU Illegal,Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing Regulation Based on Trade and Market-Related Measures: Unilateralism or a Model Law?

The problem of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is well recognized, yet conventional monitoring, control, and surveillance mechanisms administered by coastal and flag states have so far achieved limited success. The EU IUU Regulation is one of the most recent instances of trade and marketplace measures being implemented at the domestic rule level to block out IUU-caught fish. It aims at preventing any harvesting, processing, and re-exporting states from the circumvention of internationally agreed fisheries management goals. The immediate question for international law is whether unilaterally created trade-restrictive measures would affect the development of a truly global strategy to combat IUU fishing as a global activity. This article responds to the inquiry by exploring the potential and legitimacy limitations for domestic trade regulation to be effective and fairly nondiscriminatory. It draws on the regime theory to provide further insights into the ways of reconciling and synergizing disparate fisheries and trade management systems.     

Focusing on How Rather Than on Whom: Constructing a Process-Based Framework for Interpreting the Press Clause in the Network-Society Era

The Internet has made it possible for anyone to become a publisher, thus raising questions regarding how the press clause of the First Amendment will be defined in the twenty-first century. This study proposes a process-based framework for understanding the press clause that moves away from the historically problematic questions that arise with approaches that seek to determine who is a journalist. This approach aligns with historical conceptualizations of the press clause and the characteristics of the network society. The proposed framework is drawn from an analysis of recent lower-court cases in which citizen publishers claimed protections that have traditionally been associated with journalism, as well as an examination of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and of legal scholars’ historical understandings of the clause.     

Comparison of the M-Vac® Wet-Vacuum-Based Collection Method to a Wet-Swabbing Method for DNA Recovery on Diluted Bloodstained Substrates*†‡

A wet-vacuum-based collection method with the M-Vac^® was compared to a wet-swabbing collection method by examining the recovery of diluted blood on 22 substrates of varying porosity. The wet-vacuum method yielded more total nuclear DNA than wet-swabbing on 18 porous substrates, recovering on average 12 times more DNA. However, both methods yielded comparable amounts of total DNA on two porous and two nonporous substrates. In no instance did wet-swabbing significantly recover more DNA. The wet-vacuum method also successfully collected additional DNA on previously swabbed substrates. Mitochondrial DNA yields were assessed, and outcomes were generally similar to the nuclear DNA outcomes described above. Results demonstrate that wet-vacuuming may serve as an alternative collection method to swabbing on difficult porous substrates and could potentially recover additional DNA on previously swabbed substrates. However, swabbing remains the preferred collection method on substrates with visible stains and/or nonporous surfaces for reasons of convenience, simplicity, and lower cost relative to the wet-vacuum method.     

Sa skya Paṇḍita’s Classification of Arguments by Consequence Based on the Type of the Logical Reason: Editorial Conundrum and Mathematics for Commentators

This paper examines a passage of the eleventh chapter of the Rigs gter of Sa skya Pa??ita (1182–1251) on the division of arguments by consequence (thal ?gyur) of the form “Because S is P, it follows that it is Q” with respect to the type of relation between P and Q. This passage appears in quite different versions in several available recensions of the Rigs gter, all of which are problematic to some extent. The different interpretations of the commentators can be shown to derive from their reliance on different versions of the text, which they strove to make sense of through two distinct strategies. Following up on the examination of a division of arguments by consequence along the same line in the works of Sa skya Pa??ita’s Tibetan predecessors, in particular Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109–1169) and mTshur ston gZhon nu seng ge (ca. 1150–1210) (see Hugon, in J Indian Philos 44(5):883–938, 2016b), I evaluate the diverging versions of the Rigs gter against a coherent logical scenario founded on Sa skya Pa??ita’s discussion pertaining to the types of logical reasons in inference in the tenth chapter of his work and comparison with the classification by Phya pa. I offer a hypothesis regarding the genesis of the problematic versions of the passage on the classification of consequences in the Rigs gter based on the comparison with the classification found in mTshur ston’s epistemological work. I propose that the composition of this portion of the Rigs gter might have involved a textual reuse of mTshur ston’s classification, even though mTshur ston and Sa skya Pa??ita disagree on background issues. This very disagreement imposed changes to the reused text that led to problematic readings.     

Who is Qualified to Provide Expert Testimony on the Psychological Fitness for Duty of a Police Officer? A Guide for Agencies,Lawyers and Hearing Officers

The Rules of Evidence in the Federal Courts and most State Courts are lenient in qualifying witnesses as experts. This article looks at the most common standard for determining who is qualified to testify as an expert regarding the psychological fitness for duty of a serving police officer. The article then discusses key areas that agencies, attorneys and hearing officers should focus on in determining the credibility of an expert’s testimony. Finally, this paper suggests trial preparation techniques for counsel, should a disputed fitness evaluation become involved in litigation.