Suicide and other external-cause mortality statistics in Ireland: a comparison of registration and occurrence data

There are two sets of annual mortality statistics released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in Ireland, one based on deaths registered in the particular year and the other based on the deaths that occurred in that year. We compared the registration and occurrence figures for suicide and for other deaths by an external cause for the years 1987-2003. The occurrence figures were, on average, 6% higher than the registration figures. There was evidence that the extent of the discrepancy increased over the study period, reaching almost 20% in recent years. The findings suggest that caution needs to be taken in the media reporting of registration figures for suicide and other external causes of death in Ireland and in the interpretation of these figures by health professionals.     

BEYOND ARSON? A THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is radical environmentalist group that has in the past engaged in profile acts of arson, thus far without causing casualties. In order to determine the correct level of official response, it is necessary to examine the potential for the ELF and other radical environmentalist groups to engage in various levels of violence against human beings. Using empirically-based threat assessment, this study investigates the motivational and capability-related attributes of the ELF and concludes that there is a moderate-high threat of an escalation to internationally targeting people, a moderate probability that its members will at some point seek to inflict mass casualties and a low potential for ELF attacks using unconventional weapons. The assessment also identifies several factors indicating that the threat of all three types of violence is increasing, although determining the magnitude of this increase requires further study. Recommendations are given for law enforcement strategies with respect to the ELF and similarly-oriented radical groups.     

Elections with partially ordered preferences

Suppose an organization has a committee with multiple seats, and the committee members are to be elected by a group of voters. For the organization, the possible alternatives are the possible sets of individuals who could serve together. A common approach is to choose from among these alternatives by having each voter cast separate votes on the candidates for each seat. When this type of ballot is used, important characteristics of the set of individuals on the committee (such as what percentage of the members will be female) might not be explicitly considered by the voters. Another approach that has been used is to have each voter cast a ballot which ranks all possible sets of members. However, this approach can require the voters to weigh a relatively large number of alternatives. This paper considers group decisions where it is desirable to: (1) explicitly consider characteristics of alternatives and (2) have a relatively small number of options upon which a voter has to express his preferences. The approach that we propose has two steps: First voters vote directly on pertinent characteristics of alternatives; Then these votes are used to indirectly specify preferences on alternatives. The indirectly specified preferences are ones that are naturally modeled using partially ordered sets. We identify some specific methods that could be applied in the second step. In addition, by replacing the indirectly specified preferences in a suitable way, we suggest a technique that can use any positional, pairwise, or other voting method that accepts totally (or “completely”) ordered inputs to tally ballots. We also describe another way to potentially compute pairwise rankings from partially ordered alternatives and discuss some practical and theoretical difficulties associated with our approach.     

The fragmented French executive: Ministerial cabinets in the Fifth Republic

Ministerial cabinets are small informal groups of personal advisers attached to each Minister. Originally a political body they have in the Fifth Republic become a pivot in the politico‐administrative system. To a large extent the role of cabinets can be understood by analysing their environment—that is the needs of the Minister to whom they are responsible, the central administration and the nature of the cabinet itself. These three variables form a useful framework within which the activities of cabinets can be assessed. ¹     

Who are the people in your neighborhood? A descriptive analysis of individuals on public sex offender registries

Despite growing focus on registration and notification systems as central elements of national sex offender management practice, there has been remarkably little systematic analysis of the content of these registries and the diversity of individuals contained within them. Specifically, little research attention has been paid to examining the heterogeneity of the population of registered sex offenders — a circumstance that may obscure important distinctions within the population and, in turn, may undermine the ostensible purpose of SORN to prevent sexual victimization. Addressing this significant gap in our current knowledge, this article sets forth a national profile of the registered sex offender (RSO) population, drawn from an analysis of data on 445,127 RSOs obtained from the public registries of 49 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and Guam. In contrast with the homogenized perception about registered sex offenders that permeates much public discourse, the analysis illuminates the wide diversity of registrants across a range of demographic, offense-related, registry status, and risk-oriented variables. Policy and practice implications concerning risk, prevention, and the public safety utility of sex offender registries are discussed.