An investigation into the differentiating characteristics between car key burglars and regular burglars

Car key burglary has recently become the focus of empirical investigation as offenders, no longer able to steal vehicles without first obtaining their keys, resort to "burgling" target properties. Research surrounding the modus operandi of these offenses is beginning to emerge; however, little attention has been paid to investigating the characteristics of car key burglary offenders. Challenging the assumption that car key burglary offenses are perpetrated by regular burglars, this study aims to differentiate between offenders. Logistic regression analysis of 110 car key and 110 regular burglary offenders revealed that car key burglars are more likely to have previous vehicle theft convictions and are also more likely to be detected on information supplied to the police than regular burglars. Regular burglars are more likely to have previous shoplifting convictions. It was concluded that car key burglars are a distinct sample of offenders and the implications of these findings are discussed.     

Community Service by High School Students: A Cure for Civic Ills?

In response to what some see as a crisis in civic attitudes and participation, there has been a reinvigorated effort to involve high school students in school-based community activities and in less formal, volunteer community service. Yet little is known about the extent of participation or its effects. Using a nationally representative sample of 9th–12th graders from 1996, we document a high participation rate but also note that many students perform service only once or twice a year and in limited capacities. Participation rates are related to certain student, family, and school characteristics; school policies are also significant, though arranging but not requiring participation may be the key. Participation appears to stimulate greater political knowledge, more political discussions with parents, enhanced participation skills, and higher political efficacy, but not more tolerance of diversity.     

Liberal Nationalism and Cultural Rights

Liberal nationalists such as Yael Tamir and Will Kymlicka have argued for an extravagant range of cultural rights based on respect for individual autonomy. I present an alternative account of the moral import of liberal autonomy for the status of cultural minorities. The article examines three pivotal aspects of Tamir's argument for cultural rights and argues that, in each case, Tamir's position fails to honour the value of individual autonomy, and in ways parallel to Kymlicka's argument. These shared difficulties point to some basic ontological and moral properties of a genuine autonomy-based defence of cultural rights.     

A method for calculating the strength of evidence associated with an earwitness's claimed recognition of a familiar speaker

The present paper proposes and demonstrates a method for assessing strength of evidence when an earwitness claims to recognize the voice of a speaker who is familiar to them. The method calculates a Bayes factor that answers the question: What is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was the suspect versus what is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was not the suspect but some other speaker from the relevant population? By “claim” we mean a claim made by a cooperative earwitness not a claim made by an earwitness who is intentionally deceptive. Relevant data are derived from naïve listeners' responses to recordings of familiar speakers presented in a speaker lineup. The method is demonstrated under recording conditions that broadly reflect those of a real case.     

Transitional narratives of identity among ethnic minority youth gangs in Denmark: from collectivism to individualism

Current literature often depicts the street cultures of ethnic minority youth as forms of collective cultural resistance to experiences of marginalization from mainstream society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in 2014 with 23 young men attached to a rehabilitation centre for criminal offenders in Denmark, this article focuses on ethnic minority youth who desist from such street culture and their former gang life, criminality and drug use and how they describe this shift within their narratives. More specifically, we show how this shift can to some extent be characterized by a move from collective to more individualistic self-narratives re-articulating broader individualistic discourses existing in contemporary society. Among these more individualistic self-narratives, we find extensive reference to ideas of self-responsibility and also individual pragmatic interpretations of Islam. Such re-articulations can be seen as a way to create feelings of agency in severely disempowering circumstances.     

The Party Faithful: Partisan Images,Candidate Religion,and the Electoral Impact of Party Identification

We argue that the factors shaping the impact of partisanship on vote choice—“partisan voting”—depend on the nature of party identification. Because party identification is partly based on images of the social group characteristics of the parties, the social profiles of political candidates should affect levels of partisan voting. A candidate's religious affiliation enables a test of this hypothesis. Using survey experiments which vary a hypothetical candidate's religious affiliation, we find strong evidence that candidates’ religions can affect partisan voting. Identifying a candidate as an evangelical (a group viewed as Republican) increases Republican support for, and Democratic opposition to, the candidate, while identifying the candidate as a Catholic (a group lacking a clear partisan profile) has no bearing on partisan voting. Importantly, the conditional effect of candidate religion on partisan voting requires the group to have a salient partisan image and holds with controls for respondents’ own religious affiliations and ideologies.     

涉农产业发展的国际比较研究

涉农产业是一个涵盖农业投入、农业生产、农产品加工和流通的产业体系.涉农产业发展具有显著的阶段性特征,随着经济发展水平的提高,涉农产业在国民经济中的重要性趋于稳定,且涉农产业价值链的延伸趋于均衡;涉农产业产品与非涉农产业产品收入弹性的差异、以及涉农产业内部不同产品收入弹性的差异,是影响农产品加工和流通部门发展的主要因素;...     

When second best is good enough: a comparison between a true experiment and a regression discontinuity quasi-experiment

In this paper, we compare the results from a randomized clinical trial to the results from a regression discontinuity quasi-experiment when both designs are implemented in the same setting. We find that the results from the two approaches are effectively identical. We attribute the comparability in part to recent statistical developments that make the model required for the analysis of data from a regression discontinuity design easier to determine. These developments make an already strong quasi-experimental design even stronger.