Influencing retirement behavior: A key issue for social security

Recent trends toward earlier retirement threaten future supplies of labor and the financial stability of many of our public and private pension systems. One of the few federal efforts now in place to reverse this trend has been the 1977 law outlawing mandatory retirement before age 70 for most American workers. This legislation by itself will have little effect on retirement patterns, because strong financial incentives to retire remain imbedded in the system. Changes in the Social Security Act enacted this year begin to recognize these incentives but are highly controversial and at best will not begin to go into effect until 1990. To be successful, efforts of policymakers to increase work at older ages must focus on the financial incentives at the heart of retirement plans rather than on merely attempting to weaken mandatory retirement constraints.     

“Purpose versus practice in the use of electronically monitored home confinement”

This paper explores differences between the stated purpose and actual practice of electronically monitored home confinement as a prison-diversion strategy. Methods and data are triangulated to examine the difference between the stated purposes of electronic monitoring and its actual usage in two contexts: 1) the decision to imprison/probate; and 2) the actual use of electronically monitored home confinement. Sentencing information, along with data on employment, family, substance abuse, prior convictions, and type of offense, were collected on 391 felony offenders sentenced to probation in 1987–89 from three counties located in two large Metropolitan Statistical Areas in Texas. Information gathered from interviews with probation officials is also employed. This paper presents an analysis of this data and discusses its implications for future use and evaluation of electronically monitored home confinement.     

We’ve got them on the list: contacting,canvassing and voting in a British general election campaign

Many voters are canvassed by British political parties in the months and weeks immediately preceding a general election – but many are not. The parties are selective in whom they make contact with, and where. They focus on those in marginal constituencies who are likely to vote for them – and having identified them early in the process they contact them again, seeking to sustain that support in the seats where the contest overall will be either won or lost. A large panel survey conducted immediately before and after the 2010 general election allows detailed insight into that pattern of canvassing, identifying who the parties contacted, and where, in the six months prior to the election being called, and then who were contacted during the month immediately preceding polling day, and in how many different ways. Each party focused on its own supporters in the marginal constituencies, and in the middle-class neighbourhoods within those constituencies, but whereas the Conservatives, expecting to win the election, campaigned most intensively in the seats they lost by relatively small margins at the previous contest, Labour and the Liberal Democrats fought defensive campaigns in the seats that they won then. Such tactics were successful; the more ways in which respondents were contacted by a party, the more likely they were to vote for it.     

The suitability of using domestic pigs (Sus spp.) as human proxies in the geophysical detection of clandestine graves

Research in many forensic science fields commonly uses domestic pigs (Sus spp.) as proxies for human remains, due to their physiological and anatomical similarities, as well as being more readily available. Unfortunately, previous research, especially that which compares the decompositional process, has shown that pigs are not appropriate proxies for humans. To date, there has not been any published research that specifically addresses whether domestic pigs are adequate human proxies for the geophysical detection of clandestine graves. As such, the aim of this paper was to compare the geophysical responses of pig cadavers and human donor graves, in order to determine if pigs can indeed be used as adequate human proxies. To accomplish this, ground penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) responses on single and multiple pig cadaver graves were compared to single and multiple human donor graves, all of which are in known locations within the same geological environment. The results showed that under field conditions, both GPR and ERT were successful at observing human and pig burials, with no obvious differences between the detected geophysical responses. The results also showed that there were no differences in the geophysical responses of those who were clothed and unclothed. The similarity of the responses may reflect that the geophysical techniques can detect graves despite what their contents are. The study implications suggest that experimental studies in other soil and climate conditions can be easily replicated, benefiting law enforcement with missing persons cases.     

International Cooperation,Spoiling, and Transnational Terrorism

Do interstate relations influence the sources and targets of transnational terrorism? A considerable body of recent research suggests that the answer to this question is yes, and that one state may sponsor terrorist attacks to weaken the bargaining positions of other states. We suggest, in contrast, that positive or cooperative actions invite terrorist attacks from a different source: nonstate groups wishing to spoil interstate cooperation that they oppose. We assess this argument with a dyadic dataset using monthly data on transnational terrorist attacks and cooperative and noncooperative actions between states. Our results suggest that spoiling in response to interstate cooperation is an important determinant of transnational terrorism.     

Forecasts of Violence to Inform Sentencing Decisions

Objectives

Recent legislation in Pennsylvania mandates that forecasts of "future dangerousness" be provided to judges when sentences are given. Similar requirements already exist in other jurisdictions. Research has shown that machine learning can lead to usefully accurate forecasts of criminal behavior in such setting. But there are settings in which there is insufficient IT infrastructure to support machine learning. The intent of this paper is provide a prototype procedure for making forecasts of future dangerousness that could be used to inform sentencing decisions when machine learning is not practical. We consider how classification trees can be improved so that they may provide an acceptable second choice.

Methods

We apply an version of classifications trees available in R, with some technical enhancements to improve tree stability. Our approach is illustrated with real data that could be used to inform sentencing decisions.

Results

Modest sized trees grown from large samples can forecast well and in a stable fashion, especially if the small fraction of indecisive classifications are found and accounted for in a systematic manner. But machine learning is still to be preferred when practical.

Conclusions

Our enhanced version of classifications trees may well provide a viable alternative to machine learning when machine learning is beyond local IT capabilities.