Mixed-member proportional electoral systems – the best of both worlds?

Mixed electoral systems are often associated with the hope of combining proportional election outcomes with a concentrated party system, and thus achieving the best of both worlds in electoral system design. It is especially the mixed-member proportional (MMP) variant that has retained a good reputation in this regard. Via a comparative analysis, we analyze whether or not the general praise for MMP systems is corroborated empirically. Our results show that the performance of MMP systems is heavily influenced by technical details, and elections conducted under MMP vary broadly with regard to possible proportionality–concentration combinations.     

Police use of force: examining the relationship between calls for service and the balance of police force and suspect resistance

Over the past decade, the use of force by the police has become an important public policy concern and topic of social science research. A number of researchers hypothesized about the factors that explain the amount of force used by police officers. Prior research focused almost exclusively on the highest level of force used in police-citizen interactions and neglected to examine the relative amount of forced used by the police compared to that used by suspects. To address this shortcoming, this study analyzed data from three years of official use-of-force reports in the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD). Contrary to studies that examine only the use of force by the police, this study found that the relative amount of force used by the police was greatest in the less threatening types of offenses. The implications of this study for research and policy are discussed.     

ADOLESCENTS' VIEWS ON THE FAIRNESS OF PARENTING AND FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS AFTER SEPARATION

Interviews were conducted with 60 young people aged 12–19 in Australia, concerning their views about parenting and financial arrangements after separation. Half the young people reported that they had no say at all in where they would live after separation. A quarter said they were never able to see their nonresident parent when they wanted to. There was a strong relationship between young people's perceptions of the fairness of the parenting arrangements and the extent to which they were allowed to participate in making those arrangements. Half said that they did not have enough time with their nonresident parent. Having a continuing and meaningful relationship with both parents and with siblings was very important to them. More than a third favored arrangements of spending equal time with each parent. The young people were also very concerned with issues about fairness between first and second families, both in terms of time availability and financial provisions.     

Self-destructing prophecies: Long-term forecasting of municipal correctional bed need

Although municipal jails consume a significant amount of resources and the number of inmates housed in such facilities exploded in the 1990s, the literature on forecasting jail populations is sparse. Jail administrators have available discussions on jail crowding and its causes, but do not have ready access to applications of forecasting techniques or practical demonstrations of a jail inmate population forecast. This article argues that the underlying reason for this deficiency is the inherent unpredictability of local long-term correctional population levels. The driving forces behind correctional bed need render local jail population forecasts empirically valid only for a brief time frame. These inherent difficulties include the volatile nature of jail populations and their greater sensitivity when compared with prison populations to local conditions; the gap between the data needed for local correctional population forecasting and what is realistically available to forecasters; the lack of reliable lead variables for long-term local correctional population forecasts; the clash of the mathematics of forecasting and the substantive issues involved in the interpretation of forecast models; and the significant political and policy impacts of forecasts on local criminal justice systems and subsequent correctional population trends.The differences between the accuracy of short-term versus long-term jail bed need forecasts means that forecasting local correctional bed need is empirically valid for, at best, one to two years. As the temporal cast is extended, longer-term forecasts quickly become error prone. Except for unique situations where jails exist in highly stable local political, social, and criminal justice environments, long-term forecasts of two years or greater are fatally flawed and have little empirical accuracy. Long-term forecasts of local jail bed needs are useful, though, as policy catalysts to encourage policymakers to consider possible long-term impacts of current decisions, but forecasts should be thought of and presented as one possible future scenario rather than a likely reality. Utilizing a demonstration of a local jail forecast based upon two common empirical forecasting approaches, ARIMA and autoregression, this article presents a case study of the inherent difficulties in the long-term forecasting of local jail bed need.     

Perceived crime seriousness: Consensus and disparity

In this article, the statistical technique for setting up the consensus of perceived crime seriousness in previous studies is critically reviewed. The conventional method, when applied to a data set of crime seriousness, is found to have exaggerated the consensus because, by using a more appropriate model, which assumes perfect agreement in crime severity between subgroups, the consensus is reduced unanimously. By breaking down the population by gender, age, and educational level, sociodemographic differentials in crime seriousness are set up. The disparity is then further examined in details by paired comparisons between a target crime with fourteen other crimes. The three factors are all found to be important in affecting perceived crime seriousness. This conclusion is different from that of previous studies. The scaling method is found to be responsible for the difference. As the Thurstone method used in this study is more responsive and can produce more discriminating results, it is recommended for future research in crime severity. Finally, the implications of the findings on some important issues, like the appropriateness of legal penalty and the construction of a crime index, are discussed.     

Social and Political Cultural Effects on the Outcomes of Mediation in Militarized Interstate Disputes

The article investigates the relationship between cultural similarities and differences on the part of the representatives of contending states and mediators, and outcomes of mediation efforts in militarized disputes. A distinction is made between social culture, defined primarily in terms of religious identity, and political culture, defined according to the state's political system. Analysis of 752 mediation attempts in militarized disputes occurring between 1945 and 1995 yields support for the hypothesis that mediation is more likely to succeed when the parties are from similar social cultures. The results, however, suggest that the relationship is more complex than that suggested by a simple categorization of states based on Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis. We also find that mediation is more likely to succeed when the parties share democratic political cultures, a finding that is consistent with the cultural/normative explanation for the democratic peace.     

Discovering the Archimedean Element in (Judicial) Judgment

Law and Philosophy -