Explaining Young People’s Involvement in Online Piracy: An Empirical Assessment Using the Offending Crime and Justice Survey in England and Wales

Abstract

The Internet has been widely acknowledged as facilitating many forms of youth offending. Existing research has identified important drivers of young people’s involvement in online crime, yet this has overwhelmingly relied on school or college samples. As such, it tells us little about those young people that have left the formal education system—a group who are more likely perpetrators of juvenile crime more generally. Focusing on young people’s involvement in online piracy offenses, our analysis draws on data from a nationally representative survey of England and Wales to better understand the dynamics of involvement in online crime across the population. We assess the potential overlaps between online and offline offending, the role of differential association and deviancy neutralization techniques in shaping offending behavior, as well as the protective effect of strong family support networks in reducing involvement in piracy. We find that illegal downloaders tend to be young, male, and have a higher number of delinquent friends. We also find that many of these offenders do not confine their offending to online spaces, with involvement in offline property offenses also high among this group.     

Examining a Strategy for Improving Candidate Perceptions of Test Fairness

Candidate perceptions of test fairness have significant consequences for organizations. However, little attention has been directed toward interventions that may promote favorable reactions, despite recognition that the identification of such management practices is important. The current study investigated a strategy designed to improve candidate reactions—field vetting of items. This strategy involves comprehensive test item review sessions with a variety of applied subject matter experts. The extent to which the field vetting process resulted in more favorable reactions among police officers vying for promotion was investigated using a naturally-occurring quasi-experimental design. Results showed support for the field vetting process to improve reactions to high-stakes tests.     

Some aspects of normal behavior: their use in understanding problems encountered by document examiners.

The premise that progress in document examination will depend on employing techniques useful in the more formal branches of science is not exactly logical. The correlation between the work of the document examiner and the behavioral sciences has been discussed by presenting some random thoughts which have occurred to the author over a period of years. The suggestion is made, by illustration and implication, that the unfortunate connotation of the word "behavior" with the word "graphology" has tended to direct the attention of document examiners away from a study of the behavioral sciences, a branch of science from which much can be learned. The fact that the subjective concepts of probability formed by the mature document examiner will approach mathematical expectation has been noted.     

Resource Management under Climatic Risk: A Case Study from Niger

In this article, we develop an empirical model of an agro-pastoral system subject to high climatic risk in order to test the impact of rainfall variability on livestock densities, land allocation patterns and herd mobility observed at the community level. Also, because grazing land is a common-pool resource, we determine the impact of cooperation on these decision variables. To capture different abilities of communities to cooperate in managing these externalities, we construct indices comprised of factors considered to affect the costliness of achieving successful cooperation. We then test hypotheses regarding the impact of rainfall variability and cooperation, using data collected in a semi-arid region of Niger. Results indicate that rainfall variability initially leads to higher densities, but the impact becomes negative as variability increases still further. This result indicates that the benefits of accumulating large herds in variable environments are eventually offset by the increasing probability of large losses. Mobility in the current period is strongly related to current rainfall, and is also positively related to long-term rainfall variability. Communities with characteristics hypothesised to favour cooperation have lower stock densities and greater herd mobility. Neither cooperation nor rainfall variability has a significant impact on the proportion of land allocated to crops or common pastures.     

Ambiguity and conflict in sentencing research: Partial resolution through crime-specific analysis

Prior research on factors influencing sentence severity has produced ambiguous findings. To resolve some of this ambiguity, a crime-specific approach to data analysis is proposed and tested. The research sample consists of 468 convictions resulting from 619 indictments for the crimes of murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. Independent variables examined include seven offender and case-processing characteristics. The dependent variable, sentence severity, is measured first as a dichotomous variable (probation or prison) and then as an interval variable (prison-sentence length). After determining that crime type explains a significant proportion of the total variance in sentence severity, the dependent variables are then regressed on the variable list. Four regressions are performed for each dependent variable; the first analysis uses all cases in the sample, while the remaining analyses focus separately on the crimes of murder, assault, and robbery. The research indicates that the aggregate and crime-specific analyses produce substantively different results, both in terms of the factors found to influence sentence severity and the total amount of variance explained. Findings demonstrate the utility of crime-specific analysis.     

An autonomous foreign policy for a changing Italy

L'ltalia e la politica internazionale / a cura di Roberto Aliboni. Franco Bruni, Ales‐sandro Colombo e Ettore Greco ; Istituto Affari Internazionali, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale ‐ Ed. 2000. ‐ Bologna : il Mulino, c2000. ‐ 492p. ‐ ISBN 88–15–07734–0     

Norm diffusion and the limits to forestry governance reform in Southeast Asia's new democracies

Abstract

The return of the World Bank Group (WBG) to Burma after some 25 years’ absence, along with other international financial organizations, follows a series of extraordinary political reforms that have taken place in the country since 2010. Burma has made a transition from 50 years of authoritarian rule to what its leaders call ‘disciplined democracy’. This paper examines the likely consequences of the Bank's return for the forestry sector in Burma and the potential outcomes in forestry governance given the evolution of its development agenda over the past 25 years. While measures to address deforestation have been applied in Southeast Asia, the success of forestry governance reforms depends to a large extent on their endorsement and adoption by local power structures and political figures, as well as on the nature of the political regime itself. The record on forestry governance in Southeast Asia is particularly poor and international financial organizations continue to neglect the local political economy of deforestation. Comparatively, few studies have attempted to investigate the relationship between types of political regimes and rates of deforestation. The paper examines two other new democracies in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Cambodia), and the impact that governance reforms have had on their deforestation trends and land use, in order to contextualize the potential impact of the WBG's return to Burma. In Southeast Asia, powerful vested interests continue to outweigh the support inside governments or civil society for the forestry governance norms promoted by international organizations. The cases of Indonesia, Cambodia and Burma illustrate that deep patrimonial interests operate within the region and that local politics cannot be ignored by international organizations designing policy reforms. The WBG should effectively engage wherever possible with the local communities and a broad range of civil society groups before developing further initiatives.