Police,Crime and the Problem of Weak Instruments: Revisiting the “More Police,Less Crime” Thesis

Objectives

A key question in the general deterrence literature has been the extent to which the police reduce crime. Definitive answers to this statement, however, are difficult to come by because while more police may reduce crime, higher crime rates may also increase police levels, by triggering the hiring of more police. One way to help overcome this problem is through the use of instrumental variables (IV). Levitt, for example, has employed instrumental variables regression procedures, using mayoral and gubernatorial election cycles and firefighter hiring as instruments for police strength, to address the potential endogeneity of police levels in structural equations of crime due to simultaneity bias.

Methods

We assess the validity and reliability of the instruments used by Levitt for police hiring using recently-developed specification tests for instruments. We apply these tests to both Levitt’s original panel dataset of 59 US cities covering the period 1970–1992 and an extended version of the panel with data through 2008.

Results

Results indicate that election cycles and firefighter hiring are “weak instruments”—weak predictors of police growth that, if used as instruments in an IV estimation, are prone to result in an unreliable estimate of the impact of police levels on crime.

Conclusions

Levitt’s preferred instruments for police levels—mayoral and gubernatorial election cycles and firefighter hiring—are weak instruments by current econometric standards and thus cannot be used to address the potential endogeneity of police in crime equations.

     

Skeletal estimation and identification in American and East European populations

Forensic science is a fundamental transitional justice issue as it is imperative for providing physical evidence of crimes committed and a framework for interpreting evidence and prosecuting violations to International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The evaluation of evidence presented in IHL trials and the outcomes various rulings by such courts have in regard to the accuracy or validity of methods applied in future investigations is necessary to ensure scientific quality. Accounting for biological and statistical variation in the methods applied across populations and the ways in which such evidence is used in varying judicial systems is important because of the increasing amount of international forensic casework being done globally. Population variation or the perceived effect of such variation on the accuracy and reliability of methods is important as it may alter trial outcomes, and debates about the scientific basis for human variation are now making their way into international courtrooms. Anthropological data on population size (i.e., the minimum number of individuals in a grave), demographic structure (i.e., the age and sex distribution of victims), individual methods applied for identification, and general methods of excavation and trauma analysis have provided key evidence in cases of IHL. More generally, the question of population variation and the applicability of demographic methods for estimating individual and population variables is important for American and International casework in the face of regional population variation, immigrant populations, ethnic diversity, and secular changes. The reliability of various skeletal aging methods has been questioned in trials prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Radislav Krstic (Case No. IT-98-33, Trial Judgment) and again in the currently ongoing trial of The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Zdravko Tolimir, Radivolje Miletic, Milan Gvero, Vinko Pandurevic, Ljubisa Beara, Vujadin Popovic, Drago Nikolic, Milorad Trbic, Ljubomir Borovcanin (IT-05-88-PT, Second Amended Indictment). Following the trial of General Krstic, a collaborative research project was developed between the Forensic Anthropology Center at The University of Tennessee (UT) and the United Nations, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Office of the Prosecutor (ICTY). The purpose of that collaboration was to investigate methods used for the demographic analysis of forensic evidence and where appropriate to recalibrate methods for individual estimation of age, sex, and stature for specific use in the regions of the former Yugoslavia. The question of "local standards" and challenges to the reliability of current anthropological methods for biological profiling in international trials of IHL, as well as the performance of such methods to meet the evidentiary standards used by international tribunals is investigated. Anthropological methods for estimating demographic parameters are reviewed. An overview of the ICTY-UT collaboration for research aimed at addressing specific legal issues is discussed and sample reliability for Balkan aging research is tested. The methods currently used throughout the Balkans are discussed and estimated demographic parameters obtained through medico-legal death investigations are compared with identified cases. Based on this investigation, recommendations for improving international protocols for evidence collection, presentation, and research are outlined.     

Risk Avoidance Strategies After Sexual Assault: A Dyadic Study of Survivors and Informal Support Providers

Interview data from 45 matched pairs of survivors disclosing sexual assaults and their primary informal support provider (friend, family, significant other) were used to explore survivor-support provider perspectives on self-protective behaviors survivors and those close to them take to protect themselves from future assaults. Strategies for reducing risk taken by survivors included behavioral changes, security measures, self-defense strategies, avoiding alcohol or drugs, and protecting others. Support providers play critical roles by encouraging survivors to pursue risk avoidance strategies, and employing these strategies themselves. Counseling and prevention implications are drawn in the context of risks facing survivors trying to avoid further sexual victimization.     

Understanding the Islamic State’s competitive advantages: Remaking state and nationhood in the Middle East and North Africa

While many researchers have examined the evolution and unique characteristics of the Islamic State (IS), taking an IS-centric approach has yet to illuminate the factors allowing for its establishment in the first place. To provide a clearer explanation for IS’s successes and improve analysts’ ability to predict future occurrences of similar phenomena, we analyze IS’s competitive advantages through the lens of two defining structural conditions in the Middle East North Africa (MENA): failure of state institutions and nationhood. It is commonly understood that the MENA faces challenges associated with state fragility, but our examination of state and national resiliency shows that Syria and Iraq yield the most deleterious results in the breakdown of the nation, suggesting that the combined failure of state and nation, as well as IS’s ability to fill these related vacuities, is a significant reason IS thrives there today. Against this backdrop, we provide a model of IS’s state- and nation-making project, and illustrate IS’s clear competitive advantages over all other state and non-state actors in both countries, except for Kurdish groupings. We conclude with recommendations on how policy-makers may begin halting and reversing the failure of both state and nation in Iraq and Syria.     

What a Feminist Curiosity Contributes to the Study of Development

This essay explores the various ways that women and gender have been included in international development thinking and practice by tracing the origins of the field of gender and development alongside its central debates, concepts, and accomplishments. This overview demonstrates that feminists have expanded the scope of development research and practice to include issues previously ignored but now recognized as central to development, and have provided more nuanced accounts of development by probing the underlying assumptions of development policy. In so doing, it argues, feminists have exposed the gendered nature of transnational flows and transformations, and have tracked their effects down to the level of diverse women and men’s daily lives. Drawing on the contributions in this special issue, this essay then highlights the multiple advantages of applying what Cynthia Enloe labeled a “feminist curiosity” to the study of development. By refusing to take the current state of affairs as natural or given, and refusing to accept as trivial women’s diverse lives and experiences, the papers in this special issue go beyond highlighting how international development efforts differentially affect women and men to demonstrating how women, men, and gender ideologies in particular places—whether development agencies, academic institutions, or local communities—critically shape international development itself.     

International peace building and the emerging inclusivity norm

This paper draws on constructivist theory to assess the contemporary debate around inclusion within peace-building and state-building processes and on inclusivity as an emerging norm within international policy processes. Within the wider context of an ongoing but still incomplete normative shift in terms of how peace building is both understood and practised, it focuses on the case of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, and makes the case that the inclusivity agenda marks a significant shift towards fulfilling a longstanding commitment to respecting national ownership of peace-building processes.     

Associations Between Trauma Type,Timing, and Accumulation on Current Coping Behaviors in Adolescents: Results from a Large,Population-based Sample

The development of adolescents’ coping in response to stress is critical for adaptive functioning; these coping strategies may be shaped by numerous environmental factors during childhood, including experiences such as exposure to trauma. Childhood trauma has been shown to undermine contemporaneous coping, but how does a history of exposure to trauma and the characteristics of that trauma (type, timing, and accumulation) relate to current coping among adolescents? We addressed this question using a nationally-representative sample of 9427 adolescents (ages 13–18; 48.9% female; 66% White). Adolescents reported on their lifetime exposure to 18 different traumas, including witnessing or experiencing interpersonal violence, accidents, disasters, and violent or accidental loss of loved ones, as well as their current use of coping behaviors when under stress (problem-focused, positive emotion-focused, and negative emotion-focused coping strategies). The study’s results highlight that exposure to nearly all forms of trauma was unrelated to problem-focused and positive emotion-focused coping behaviors, but strongly associated with increased negative emotion-focused coping. Use of each coping style did not vary with age at first exposure to trauma, but increased with the number of lifetime traumatic events experienced. The findings suggest that the extent of prior exposure to trauma, including variations across type and timing, may be related to a particular form of coping that has been linked to increased risk for mental health problems. Study results highlight coping strategies as a potential target for prevention and treatment efforts, and indicate a need to better understand the malleability and trajectory of coping responses to stress for promoting healthy youth development.