What Drives the Relationship Between Early Criminal Involvement and School Dropout?

Objective

We examine the relationship between early criminal involvement and school dropout, and analyze which factors underlie this relationship, making use of administrative data from the Netherlands.

Methods

We start by determining the unconditional correlation between early criminal involvement and school dropout, using a basic ordinary least squares model. As this association is likely to be driven by different factors, we proceed by including an extensive set of observable family and individual characteristics into the estimation model. We further proceed to models that account for the influence of unobservable heterogeneity by estimating school, class, sibling and twin fixed effects.

Results

Criminal involvement is associated with an 11 percentage point higher probability of school dropout. The magnitude of this relationship decreases gradually when we account for larger shares of observed and unobserved heterogeneity. The coefficient in the same-gender twin fixed effects model indicates a 3 percentage point higher probability of school dropout, which is statistically significant at a 10 % level. We also find that the association between criminal involvement and school dropout is stronger if juveniles are involved in severe criminal activities.

Conclusions

We conclude that the observable and unobservable factors for which we account explain around 73 % of the unconditional correlation between criminal involvement and school dropout. The remaining variation likely reflects individual-specific characteristics that are different between same-gender twins. A true treatment effect, if existing, is likely to be relatively small. At the same time, serious criminal behavior appears to causally affect school dropout.

     

Understanding the notion of risk in the General Data Protection Regulation

The goal of this contribution is to understand the notion of risk as it is enshrined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with a particular on Art. 35 providing for the obligation to carry out data protection impact assessments (DPIAs), the first risk management tool to be enshrined in EU data protection law, and which therefore contains a number of key elements in order to grasp the notion. The adoption of this risk-based approach has not come without a number of debates and controversies, notably on the scope and meaning of the risk-based approach. Yet, what has remained up to date out of the debate is the very notion of risk itself, which underpins the whole risk-based approach. The contribution uses the notions of risk and risk analysis as tools for describing and understanding risk in the GDPR. One of the main findings is that the GDPR risk is about “compliance risk” (i.e., the lower the compliance the higher the consequences upon the data subjects' rights). This stance is in direct contradiction with a number of positions arguing for a strict separation between compliance and risk issues. This contribution sees instead issues of compliance and risk to the data subjects rights and freedoms as deeply interconnected. The conclusion will use these discussions as a basis to address the long-standing debate on the differences between privacy impact assessments (PIAs) and DPIAs. They will also warn against the fact that ultimately the way risk is defined in the GDPR is somewhat irrelevant: what matters most is the methodology used and the type of risk at work therein.     

The pedagogy of legal reasoning: democracy,discourse and community

Learning legal reasoning is a central part of any undergraduate law degree and remains a threshold concept: one which is vital for any law student to grasp, but which is often difficult to explain. It is a form of reasoning which is very distinctive to the discipline. This article explores the applicability of learning theories typically used to ground pedagogy in higher education to the specific task of teaching legal reasoning. Constructivist or experiential theories of learning are widely used in higher education, but they need to be used with a clear focus on the specific nature of legal reasoning, which does not fit neatly within the assumptions about learning which underpin many constructivist approaches. Situated learning theories, which place emphasis on the role of the community in constructing knowledge, can also be of value. However, steps need to be taken to avoid replicating the hierarchy of the legal community within educational communities. Overall, the pedagogy of legal reasoning needs to pay attention to the specific nature of legal reasoning, to enable students to access the discourse of the legal community to use as a model, and to take students seriously as members of that community.     

Defining A Product Market for Spanish-Language Broadcast Media: Lessons from United States v. Univision Communications,Inc. and Hispanic Broadcasting

In 2003, a media merger with dramatic content and policy implications went largely unnoticed. Little attention was paid to the transaction because it did not affect the majority; it affected the largest minority population in the United States: Hispanics. Although up to 65% of Hispanics prefer Spanish-language media, most broadcast media now come from one corporation, Univision. In approving the consolidation of Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting, the FCC ignored product market findings by the Department of Justice as well as its own policy precedent, which includes numerous exceptions for Spanish programming to promote content and ownership diversity. Consistent with the FCC's mandate to protect the public interest, a demand-side analysis is undertaken, positioning the audience as consumer. Industry evidence, product market thresholds, and ownership rules are applied to United States v. Univision, Inc. and Hispanic Broadcasting, with the conclusion that a separate product market must exist for Spanish language broadcast media.     

The Fall of the Finnish Prison Population

At the beginning of the 1950s, the prisoner rate in Finland was four times higher than in the other Nordic countries and among the highest in Europe. However, the steady decrease that started soon after the Second World War has continued, and in the beginning of the 1990s Finland reached the Nordic level. The paper discusses some backgound factors behind this ''success story''. In addition, the paper examines the relation of prisoner rates and recorded crime. A comparison between the Nordic countries reveals that the major crime trends have been practically similar despite striking differpractices ences in the use of imprisonment. As concluded in the paper, the decrease in the prison population is one of the major victories of Finnish crime policy.     

Population and income: Is there a puzzle?

Abstract

This note presents wide evidence on the relationship between population and income for 125 countries for which data was available for the period 1950–2000. The main result is that there is a weak but negative relationship between population growth and per capita GDP, as income increases population expands at a slower rate. This relationship appears to be stronger for African countries and for Asian countries before 1970.     

The Identity of Turkey: Muslim and secular

Abstract

This article analyses the rise of political Islam in Turkey in the context of the akp's tenure in power with reference to complex social, economic, historical and ideational factors. It aims to answer one of the key questions, which has wider implications for the West and Islamic world: ‘having experienced the bad and good of the West in secularism and democracy’, as claimed by Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, is Turkey in transition from a secular to an Islamic state? The article first questions Turkey's ‘bridge’ or ‘torn-country’ status and then explains the akp's ambivalent policies towards religious and identity issues in relation to the increased public visibility of Islam and a ‘performative reflexivity’ of ‘Muslim-selves’. It concludes that the real issue at stake is not the assumed clash of secular and Muslim identities but the complex of interdependence between Islam, secularism and democratisation in Turkey.     

The Press Freedom Commission in South Africa and the regulation of journalists online: Lessons from Britain and Australia

Abstract

The last few years have seen several attempts to strengthen press regulation in various parts of the world, while the difficulty of controlling online publication is arguably only increasing. In this article the focus is on recent suggestions for a new system of co-regulation of the press in South Africa, in order to see how online journalism is viewed and treated by regulators. In comparison, the article refers to suggestions in this regard by the Leveson Inquiry in Britain and two Australian press and media reviews. Reference is made to Flew and Swift (2013), who apply six main theories in three overlapping categories in debates on the role of journalism and its relationship to the state: fourth estate/market liberal; social responsibility/critical pluralist and dominant interest/radical. A literature review and a qualitative approach were used to identify and compare key debates in various reports from Australia, Britain and South Africa. While suggestions in Britain and Australia favoured an inclusive approach to the regulation of print and online journalism, the South African Press Freedom Commission rejected the idea, due to principle and practical objections. It also became clear that the key problem in the three countries lay in the inability to establish consensus between divergent perspectives on dominant interest and social responsibility, and the entrenched values of the fourth estate/market liberalism.