The Impact of Field Court Attendance Notices on Property Crime in New South Wales,Australia

Objectives

This paper investigates the impact of Field Court Attendance Notices (FCANs) on rates of property crime in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. FCANs are used for relatively minor offenses, are issued ‘on the spot’, and provide an alternative to the time consuming process of arresting an alleged offender and taking them to the police station for processing. Despite their use in NSW for over 20 years, this study is the first to evaluate their impact on crime.

Methods

We use data provided by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We specify a general dynamic panel data model estimated via the Arellano and Bond (Rev Econ Stud 58:277–297, 1991) estimator, specifically the first-differenced twostep generalised method of moments (GMM) estimator.

Results

For property crime as a whole, in both the short- and long-run, we find no significant relationship between the use of FCANS and levels of offending. However, when offending rates are disaggregated into 11 sub-categories, we find that in the short-run an increase in the use of FCANs leads to statistically significant decreases in the rate of crime for five of the sub-categories offenses considered (break and enter dwelling; motor vehicle theft; steal from motor vehicle; steal from retail store and; steal from dwelling). The long-run results are largely consistent with the short-run results in terms of their signs and statistical significance, suggesting that the effects persist.

Conclusions

The empirical analysis presented in this paper suggests that the use of FCANs is an effective and potentially efficient policing strategy for a subset of property offenses, in that offenders can be processed at lower cost and long-run rates of certain crimes reduced.

     

Attrition in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment: a response to Nyman

In a prior article in this journal, John Nyman argues that the effect on health care use and spending found in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment is an artifact of greater voluntary attrition in the cost-sharing plans relative to the free care plan. Specifically, he speculates that those in the cost-sharing plans, when faced with a hospitalization, withdrew. His argument is implausible because (1) families facing a hospitalization would be worse off financially by withdrawing; (2) a large number of observational studies find a similar effect of cost sharing on use; (3) those who left did not differ in their utilization prior to leaving; (4) if there had been no attrition and cost sharing did not reduce hospitalization rates, each adult in each family that withdrew would have had to have been hospitalized once each year for the duration of time they would otherwise have been in the experiment, an implausibly high rate; (5) there are benign explanations for the higher attrition in the cost-sharing plans. Finally, we obtained follow-up health-status data on the great majority of those who left prematurely. We found the health-status findings were insensitive to the inclusion of the attrition cases.     

The Next Generation: Creating New Peace Processes in the Middle East

This essay describes how Israeli students in a course on mediation and consensus building taught in an Israeli university law department by an American law professor and an Israeli instructor analyzed and studied the conflict in the Middle East. It describes the suggestions they made for process design for the next stages of whatever peace process might emerge for the region. In light of the students' suggestions, the authors present some ideas as to how different approaches to reconciliation and peace might be used, managed, and coordinated.     

形形色色的诈骗犯

他们可以直视着你的眼睛,赢得你的信任、融化你的心;他们的过去、现在与将来谎话连篇;他们会像我们化妆一样很容易地变换名字与身份.     

Public Action for Public Science: Re-imagining the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

ABSTRACT

In Iowa, the heart of the United States Corn Belt, a small, publicly funded research center has championed alternative agricultural practices and fostered the creation of a sustainable agricultural community over the past 30 years, but its future is now uncertain due to funding cuts and increased corporatization of the university. We share our engagement in a grassroots campaign to restore and, ultimately, to re-imagine the future for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture as an act of ecofeminist praxis. This process documents the beginnings of a transformative moment. We find opportunities to begin a new dialogue about the place of a sustainable agricultural center, the role of science created by and for the public, and a new relationality among scientists, farmers, animals, and the Earth.     

论合法性与政治协商

本文主要的意图是根据对卢梭、罗尔斯和西耶斯等理论的分析,探讨合法性基础的建构问题。作者认为,作为合法性基础的不是每个人的确定性意志,而是他们决定意志的过程,即政治协商的过程。虽然协商理论仅仅提供了一种不完善的、尽可能合理地做出决策的方式,但是,这种过程使理性结果的实现更加可能。     

Can ICT-enabled real-time data contribute to adaptive management in development programming?

This article aims to explore whether ICT-enabled real-time data (RTD) systems can help to improve the operationalisation of adaptive management of international development programmes. Using a qualitative multi-method approach consisting of 48 semi-structured key expert interviews and four exploratory case studies, we found that RTD can successfully inform rapid tactical adaptive management in development programmes but is, on its own, of only limited use for most strategic adaptive management. The research identified multiple contextual barriers to the use of RTD for adaptive management. These barriers need to be addressed to realise the full potential of real-time adaptive management of programmes.