A national population based examination of the association between age-versatility trajectories and recidivism rates

Purpose

To compare theoretical explanations of the age-versatility curve including the hypotheses of: self-control theory stating that versatility is followed by specialization; taxonomic theory stating that adolescent-limited offenders are specialists and life-course offenders are versatile and orthogenetic theory stating that specialization and versatility are present in a large number of offender groups.

Methods

These explanations were tested with Israeli national population-based data on all first and subsequent juvenile offenders (n = 17,176) with 248,114 registered police contacts from 1996 to 2008.

Results

Semi-parametric group-based modeling identified two trajectory-groups that characterized the age-versatility curve of police contacts before first conviction. The trajectory-groups were labeled as versatility (n = 2,447; 14.2%), and specialization (n = 14,729; 85.8%). After controlling for 19 documented demographic, familial, and criminogenic risk factors, Cox regression showed that juvenile offenders in the versatility group were at increased risk of recidivism compared to offenders in the specialization group.

Conclusions

These results partially adhere with taxonomic theory than the remaining theories and indicate that assuming a trajectory of elevated pre-conviction versatility increases the risk of recidivism.     

A decade of dissent: explaining the dissent voting behavior of Bank of England MPC members

We examine the dissent voting record of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. Contrary to findings in the FOMC literature (for example Havrilesky and Schweitzer in The Political Economy of American Monetary Policy, pp. 197?C210, 1990; Chappell et al. in Q. J. Econ. 108(1):185?C218, 1993), the effects of members?? career backgrounds and the political channel of appointment on voting behavior are negligible, reflecting the distinct institutional constraints and incentives associated with UK monetary policy. Our findings also suggest that literature which characterizes voting behavior as being predominantly determined by members?? internal or external status is overly simplistic. This view is supported by econometric results appertaining to the introduction of member-specific fixed-effects, which account for possible unobserved heterogeneity.     

Domestic violence and child participation: contemporary challenges for the 1980 hague child abduction convention

ABSTRACT

This article addresses two contemporary challenges for the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention: (i) domestic violence and (ii) child participation. It also outlines three components of a global socio-legal policy and research initiative undertaken to address these issues and, where relevant, their intersection. The published literature on these topics, including the children’s objections exception, is explored, as are the ways in which these challenges are addressed within some of the 101 Contracting States to the Convention and through the Guide to Good Practice on Article 13(1)(b) of the Convention. Regard is paid to the data provided by the statistical analysis of applications made under the Convention in 2015 by Lowe and Stephens, and the changes which will occur once the Recast of The European Brussels 11a Regulation comes into operation. The likely impact for 1980 Hague Convention abduction proceedings of the UK having left the European Union at 23.00 GMT on 31 January 2020 is contemplated. Other current international initiatives are discussed, including the development of a child-friendly version of the Convention through The International Association of Child Law Researchers. Training is a key to changing attitudes and upskilling family justice professionals to ensure the Convention operates in a fully child-centric way. This will maintain and strengthen the Convention by keeping it ‘fit for purpose’.     

Earning its Wings: a political economy analysis of China's journey toward development of the C-919 commercial airliner

This article examines China's development of its C-919 large passenger aircraft through the lens of Porter's Determinant Model. The model serves as a blueprint for analyzing what China must do to increase its probability of developing a competitive, large passenger aircraft. Success in the industry can be achieved best by developing technologically advanced aircraft and selling a sufficient number to develop economies of scale. To explore underlying questions of what China is doing right and what areas need improvement, the author interviewed key aviation professionals and sampled the limited publications on the topic in both English and Chinese.     

A benefit of one's own: older women's entitlement to Social Security retirement.

This article explores differences in Social Security eligibility and benefit levels for older men and women using survey data from the Health and Retirement Study combined with administrative records on actual work histories and Social Security rules. We are able to determine the fully insured status of those persons, how close they are to meeting eligibility criteria when they are not fully insured, and their prospects for benefits. Around three-quarters of older women nearing retirement today will be fully insured for Social Security old-age benefits on the basis of their own accounts, but the rest would need substantial extra employment to rise above the eligibility threshold. Further, two-thirds of older married women who are fully insured have sufficient lifetime earnings to translate into an age-65 primary insurance amount worth at least half their husband's, but the other one-third can expect no additional retirement benefit from contributing to Social Security late in life. Finally, most wives will not be able to improve their benefits by working more under current rules. These results have mixed implications regarding the potential impact of women's rising labor force attachment on eventual retirement benefits. Working more years could increase women's chances of becoming eligible for Social Security benefits, but that effect is likely to be small. Furthermore, even when women do become fully insured according to the rules, not many wives will receive a higher benefit at the margin. The reason is that married women still receive higher Social Security benefits as a spouse than they do on the basis of their own work record. In fact, the net benefit from Social Security due to additional work is negative once one takes into account the Social Security contributions the women paid while employed. Benefits paid to widows are even more likely to be based on the spouse's work history rather than on the woman's. Hence, the rising labor market attachment of women in the future may increase their eligibility for benefits but will produce only modest (and often negative) impacts on their old-age Social Security benefits under current rules.     

Orientalist Sociology and the Creation of Colonial Sexualities

In what Arjun Appadurai has dubbed the ‘colonial imaginary’ issues of femininity, and who possessed it, were of prime importance. An orientalizing sociology sought to distinguish, and indeed to fix, differences between metropolitan and indigenous women as a rhetoric of hierarchy which secured proper and western femininity to white women. One critical route which colonial commentators and authorities took to produce that knowledge was to measure women's proximity to the practice of prostitution, a means which permitted discussion and judgement of racialized sexualities as well as of proper models of feminine behaviour. This article will explore the ways in which the new sociology of the Victorian period, wielded in a colonial context, served to separate women through race-based ideas of sexual behaviour and sexual order. It will deal with British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

“Apocalypse Now”

Abstract

“Apocalypse Now” is Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam in more ways than he understands. It isn't just a matter of the way the film's cost escalated to an astonishing $30 million, nor even the fact that the director didn't know how to end it. The movie is Coppola's Vietnam because it faithfully recapitulates the war in a much more basic way: it is filled with lies, megalomania, self-deception, high moral intent and real moral failure.