Is Educational Achievement a Turning Point for Incarcerated Delinquents Across Race and Sex?

Research has linked the role of education to delinquency, but much of the focus has been on general population samples and with little attention to demographic differences. Employing a cumulative disadvantage framework that integrates elements of informal social control and labeling theories, this article examines whether academic achievement serves as a positive turning point and re-directs juvenile delinquents away from subsequent offending. Attention is also given to race/sex contingencies. Using a sample of 4,147 delinquents released from Florida correctional institutions (86% male, 57% non-White, average age at release = 16.8 years), propensity score analysis yielded two findings: youth with above average academic achievement while incarcerated were significantly more likely to return to school post-release, and youth with above average attendance in public school were significantly less likely to be re-arrested in the 1-year post-release period. While the academic gains were pronounced among African-American males, the preventive effects of school attendance are similar across race and sex, suggesting that education can be a part of a larger prevention effort that assists juvenile delinquents in successful community re-entry.     

Ethnicity,Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban

This article argues that an Islamist militant group with a relatively homogenous ethnic make-up is more likely to be supported by those of the same ethnicity even if the group makes no reference to and even downplays the importance of ethnicity. Using survey data from an original survey carried out in Pakistan in 2013, with 7,656 respondents, this hypothesis is tested in a multiple regression analysis of support for the Pakistani Taliban. The results demonstrate that co-ethnicity between the respondent and the Islamist militant group is the most important predictor of support for the militant group.     

Economic Segregation and Unequal Policy Responsiveness

Political Behavior - As levels of residential economic segregation increase in the United States, politicians may have greater incentives to focus their attention on the demands of those living in...     

Loring Paul Jones: Life After Foster Care: Improving Outcomes for Former Foster Youth

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

NOAA's Resurrection of Program Budgeting: Déjà Vu All Over Again?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration instituted a Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) in 2002. As supplemented by matrix management, PPBES was appealing as an effort to rationalize the performance of an agency with an especially high degree of functional overlap among its component parts. Although PPBES has had some salutary effects, the agency's experience to date consistent with accounts of the difficulties that led to the abandonment of program budgeting by the civilian bureaucracy almost 40 years ago. As such, it speaks to the limits of performance assessment as a means of reallocating resources and responsibilities across organizational boundaries.     

Collusion in auctions for emission permits: An experimental analysis

Environmental markets have several institutional features that provide a new context for the use of auctions and that have not been studied previously. This paper reports on laboratory experiments testing three auction forms—uniform and discriminatory price sealed‐bid auctions and an ascending clock auction. We test the ability of subjects to tacitly or explicitly collude in order to maximize profits. Our main result is that the discriminatory and uniform price auctions produce greater revenues than the clock auction, both with and without explicit communication. The clock appears to facilitate successful collusion, both because of its sequential structure and because it allows bidders to focus on one dimension of cooperation (quantity) rather than two (price and quantity).© 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

A New Measure of Policy Spending Priorities in the American States

In this paper, we develop and test a general measure of policyexpenditures in the American states. Our approach is to constructa spatial proximity model of yearly state program spending.The empirical analysis reveals that state spending patternsvary along a clear and readily-interpretable unidimensionalcontinuum which differentiates policies that provide particularizedbenefits to needy constituencies from policies that providebroader collective goods. Based upon standard evaluative criteria,the variable created from our model possesses some highly desirablecharacteristics. And, it compares favorably to other measuresof state policy activity. The net result is a yearly score foreach state which summarizes that state's spending across allmajor program areas. More generally, we believe that our variablecan be interpreted as valid and reliable representational measurementof state policy priorities. In this capacity, it could occupyan important position within models of state politics. Author's note: Many colleagues provided useful feedback on earlierversions of this paper. We particularly appreciate the excellentcomments and suggestions from Robert Erikson, Richard Fording,Kim Hill, David Lowery, Andrea McAtee, and George Rabinowitz.We would also like to thank Daniel Lewis and William Myers fortheir assistance with the data collection. The yearly statepolicy priority scores obtained from the unfolding analysis,along with the data used to create the scores, the SAS macroto carry out the unfolding procedure, and all other supplemental materialsare available on the authors’ web sites: http://polisci.msu.edu/jacobyand http://polisci.msu.edu/schneider. All these materials arealso available on the Political Analysis Web site.