The FARC and democracy in Colombia in the 1990s

Three issues dominate the debate about the leading guerrilla group in Colombia, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The issues are the survival and strengthening of the movement after the end of the cold war, its incapacity to defeat the state and the chronic nature of the conflict. The article addresses these issues through the concept of the partial breakdown of the state, first used in reference to the political violence of the 1950s. The account finds little room for hope about the success of the peace talks currently taking place between the government and the FARC. The outlook is for chronic conflict that will continue to sap Colombia's democracy.     

Mutual insurance as an elusive concept in traditional rural communities

During the last two decades, economists have paid increasing attention to the role of informal risk‐sharing arrangements as a privileged way through which traditional rural communities can achieve a significant degree of protection against income fluctuations and other hazards beyond their control. This article however argues that when they enter into such arrangements members of these communities are guided by a principle of balanced reciprocity (they expect a return from any contribution or payment they make) rather than by a true logic of mutual insurance. More precisely, they do not conceive of insurance as a game where there are winners and losers and where income is redistributed between lucky and unlucky individuals. None the less, traditional agrarian societies have proven able to develop a restricted range of sustainable forms of mutual insurance that avoid the aforementioned problem.     

Palatine Sutures as Age Indicator: A Controlled Study in the Elderly

Abstract:  Vault sutures have proven their low reliability for estimating age at death in individual forensic science cases. We broke down the palatine sutures of 134 skulls (with known sex and age at time of death) into 15 subparts and 5 stages of fusion to obtain a mean coefficient of obliteration ( C p) which was then linked to five age classes. We completed this study with multiple regression equations of total palatine suture scores. We compared our results with those obtained using the Mann method on the one hand and classically segmented and scored ectocranial suture age determination methods on the other. Palatine sutures generally do not estimate age at death any better than cranial vault sutures. Despite the partly subjective aspect of suture study, palatine suture observation contributes additional information to age-range estimation, especially in old and very old subjects where other methods lose their effectiveness.     

Examining the Use of Disciplinary Segregation within and across Prisons

Prison officials have historically been afforded considerable discretion to administer sanctions designed to maintain order and security within a prison. Such discretion can generate disparate treatment of offender groups, but few studies have investigated whether sanction disparities exist within prisons, despite considerable research on sanctioning decisions made by other criminal justice actors. We use data collected from a nationally representative sample of inmates housed in state operated confinement facilities to examine potential influences of prison officials’ decisions to impose one type of sanction—disciplinary segregation. Multi-level analyses reveal that both legally relevant criteria such as prior misconduct history and extralegal factors such as age and holding a prison job affected whether an inmate was placed in disciplinary segregation for a rule violation. Also, prisons in which a greater proportion of the inmate population is involved in prison work and prisons with a higher density of inmates classified minimum-security use disciplinary segregation less frequently.     

Individual and Environmental Influences on Prison Officer Safety

Prison officers are exposed to violence and other safety risks at rates higher than workers in most occupations are, and indicators of workplace safety have been linked to a number of negative health and occupational outcomes among officers. Yet, few researchers have examined the sources of prison officer safety. Using data collected from over 1,800 officers working in 45 prisons, we apply a multi-level opportunity framework to examine the individual and environmental influences on objective and subjective measures of officer safety. Our analysis revealed that officer safety is affected by officers’ routines (e.g. frequency of contact with inmates) and characteristics that might reflect officers’ suitability as targets (e.g. age, race). We also observed that indicators of both micro- (e.g. coworker support) and macro-level (e.g. architectural design) guardianship influence prison officers’ safety.     

The Status of Forensic Anthropology in Europe and South Africa: Results of the 2016 FASE Questionnaire on Forensic Anthropology

One of the goals of the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe (FASE) is to map the existing education and practice opportunities in the field of forensic anthropology in order to support the development of the discipline and to optimize the training courses provided by the Society. To address this goal, an online questionnaire was sent to European and South African practitioners of forensic anthropology and related disciplines in 2016. The results of the questionnaire showed that the status and roles of forensic anthropologists vary depending on the national legal systems, education, and employment status of the practitioners. Despite the fact that the expertise of forensic anthropologists has been increasingly requested in a variety of investigations and the spectrum of tasks has become broader, including identification of living persons, specialized education in forensic anthropology is still restricted to a few graduate and postgraduate programs in European countries and to annual FASE courses.     

Fighting Windmills: The Coalition of Industrialists and Environmentalists in the Climate Change Issue

This paper extends the political economy idea developed by Ackerman and Hassler [Clean Coal/Dirty Air, or How the Clean Air Act became a Multibillion-Dollar Bail-out for High Sulfur Coal Producers and What Should Be Done About It. New Haven: Yale University Press], which suggested that a coalition of environmentalists and industrialists successfully lobbied the US Congress. More strict technology-based standards for new emitting sources than for existing sources was the resulting policy outcome serving the common interest of the coalition because it offered both a barrier to entry for new firms and improved environmental quality. We focus on the case of international climate negotiations and the promotion of wind-based energy. Along the lines of the Ackerman and Hassler approach, we suggest that one reason for EU eagerness to push forward ambitious reduction target levels (and thereby promote new green industries) could be a similar coalition between industrialists and environmentalists. Such a strategy can be seen in the context of the Bootleggers and Baptist theory developed by Yandle [Bootleggers and Baptists: the Education of a Regulatory Economist, Regulation, 7, 12–16], where the Baptists (in our case the environmentalists) demand changes in behaviour on moral grounds. In contrast, the Bootleggers (the producers of renewable energy), who profit from the very regulation, keep a low profile. The actual heavy subsidisation of renewable energy sources, such as wind energy, can be viewed as a successful policy outcome for the coalition of industrialists and environmentalists offering both market protection and improved environmental quality. Solving the current dead-lock in international climate negotiations may well imply fighting the strong coalition of industrialists and environmentalists. Such a political battle may turn out to be just as tough as fighting windmills and needs to be addressed in future and more rigorous empirical research. At the end of the day, transparent incentives of relevant stakeholders in the climate change issue are necessary preconditions for progress in the climate change negotiations.JEL Classification: Q28,H2, H4