Sometimes Ignorance is Bliss: Investigating Citizen Perceptions of the Certainty and Severity of Punishment

Deterrence lies at the heart of the criminal justice system and policy. There is a lack of information on citizen??s perceptions regarding a critical element of the deterrence process as it manifests through the communication of sanction threats. This study uses data from over 400 adults to examine their knowledge regarding the probability of detection and the average punishments for DUI, and also assesses the contribution of demographic and theoretical variables in predicting perceptions of detection probabilities and punishment estimates. Results show that persons over-estimate the likelihood of detection and provide higher estimates for average sentence lengths, but very few variables predict deterrence perceptions. An investigation of the resetting effect shows that persons tend to lower the estimated likelihood of punishment after experiencing a punishment. Deterrence may work better if researchers and policy officials understand what influences these perceptions and how they may be modified.     

Race,Class, and the Development of Criminal Justice Policy1

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are profound and well documented. A range of scholarship has examined these trends to assess the degree to which they result from biased decision making at various levels of the justice system. Also key to understanding the origin of these disparities is an analysis of the race and class determinants of criminal justice policy. This can be seen most clearly in the development of drug policy, but also in the means by which policy choices in law enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing are formulated. To the extent that crime is perceived as a “black problem,” the means by which the problem is addressed and the resulting punitiveness of the approach serve to exacerbate societal inequalities.     

Equity and information: Information regulation,environmental justice,and risks from toxic chemicals

Decreases over time in pounds of industrial chemical emissions have led to concerns that nonminority, higher‐income communities have benefited disproportionately in reductions in risk. Toxic chemical release data, modeled for toxicity and dispersion in square kilometer units across 45 states, are used to test six sets of hypotheses of potential interactions between facilities and the communities surrounding them. The results provide mixed evidence that ethnicity explains chemical emission changes. Stronger support is found that changes in emission patterns are affected by a community's ability to process complex information and its capacity for collective action, and industrial production factors. Some support is found for the efficacy of state environmental policies that both do and do not fit the traditional regulatory model in encouraging risk reductions. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Mitochondrial Genome DNA Analysis of the Domestic Dog: Identifying Informative SNPs Outside of the Control Region*

Abstract: While the mitochondrial control region has proven successful for human forensic evaluations by indicating ethnic origin, domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) of seemingly unrelated breeds often form large groups based on identical control region sequences. In an attempt to break up these large haplotype groups, we have analyzed the remaining c. 15,484 base pairs of the canine mitochondrial genome for 79 dogs and used phylogenetic and population genetic methods to search for additional variability in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We have identified 356 SNPs and 65 haplotypes in the remainder of the mitochondrial genome excluding the control region. The exclusion capacity was found to be 0.018. The mitochondrial control region was also evaluated for the same 79 dogs. The signals from the different fragments do not conflict, but instead support one another and provide a larger fragment of DNA that can be analyzed as forensic evidence.     

THE ROLE OF PUBLIC PROGRAMS AND PRIVATE MARKETS IN REEMPLOYING DISPLACED WORKERS

This paper is about the reemployment difficulties of "mainstream" workers dislocated in mid-career by structural economic change. Contrary to popular assumptions, empirical evidence suggests that most workers in this category do not encounter extraordinary reemployment difficulties.
For those that do, the root problem is not dislocation per se but rather such well-known failures of the private labor market as geographic immobility, underinvestment in training, and inefficient labor exchange institutions. Public policy should be structured in terms of correcting these market failures, not in terms of dislocated workers as atarget group.     

The long way from electronic traces to electronic evidence

Generally, traces of Internet communications established by a citizen's computer are routinely recorded on and dated by Internet servers in so‐called ‘log files’. As far as the correct dating of the electronic offence is crucial for the potential identification of the author, convincing traces need to be date‐ and time‐stamped by a Trusted Third Party (TTP). Such a time stamp does not give any assurance about the correctness of the data and dates collected, but only proves that the traffic data were in a given state at a given date and time. If the Internet Provider (IP) address appears to be one used by the company, it is foreseeable that the system administrator within the company will be able to identify the computer owning a particular IP address. In others cases, only law enforcement agencies, in the circumstances and the conditions required by the law, are entitled to identify, with the help of Internet Access Providers (IAPs), the communication line suspected to have been used beside a given IP address. Putting together the traces left at the IAP side and in the log files of the attacked server site may lead, in the best cases, to an identified communication terminal. Nevertheless, in many cases, this will not be a formal authentication of a wrongdoer.     

When the Line is Crossed... Paths to Control and Sanction Behaviour Necessitating a State Reaction

This article provides an overview of the various forms of proceedings available within 11 European criminal justice systems and reflects upon their core features. It also provides a picture of how far alternative, non-criminal proceedings are used by some of the systems as a different path to imposing a state reaction upon wrong-doers.