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.     

Raman Spectroscopy as a Simple,Rapid, Nondestructive Screening Test for Methamphetamine in Clandestine Laboratory Liquids

Raman spectroscopy has found increased use in the forensic controlled substances laboratory in recent years due to its rapid and nondestructive analysis capabilities. Here, Raman spectroscopy as a screening test for methamphetamine in clandestine laboratory liquid samples is discussed as a way to improve the efficiency of a laboratory by identifying the most probative samples for further workup among multiple samples submitted for analysis. Solutions of methamphetamine in ethanol, diethyl ether, and Coleman fuel were prepared in concentrations ranging from 0.5% to 10% w/v, and Raman spectra of each were collected. A concentration‐dependant Raman peak was observed at 1003 per cm in each solution in 4% w/v and greater solutions. Case samples were analyzed and also found to reliably contain this diagnostic peak when methamphetamine was present. The use of this diagnostic indicator can save the forensic controlled substances laboratory time and materials when analyzing clandestine laboratory liquid submissions.     

Justinian's Institutional Classification and the Class of Quasi-Delict

This article examines the records of free-standing proof-of-age hearings from their probable introduction around the mid thirteenth century to their formal consolidation by the beginning of the fourteenth. It traces the gradual establishment of a hybrid legal form, unique to proof hearings, whereby individual jurors were routinely questioned as to the basis of their knowledge of an heir's birth and replied with a statement of plausible personal connection with the birth. It shows in detail how a rationalising legal bureaucracy encountered the expectations and practices of local jurors and recorders and the compromises that resulted in an enduring legal form.     

“Another World is Possible”: Theorizing the Radical Politics of Democracy,North and South

This article examines the cultural politics of organizing in the Occupy LA movement. Utilizing ethnographic methods and the analysis of digital media sources produced by a variety of Occupy activists, this study focuses on how members of Occupy LA, in the post camp eviction period, made efforts to infuse a new kind of class politics among members of the newly and structurally dispossessed in the Los Angeles area. It focuses mainly on their efforts to build bridges among a variety of community based social movements during specific actions such as May Day 2012 and their efforts to ally themselves with organizations fighting the gentrification of Downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row in particular. Utilizing the theoretical lens of David Harvey's notion of “accumulation by dispossession” it concludes that Occupy LA has helped to open up new opportunities for rethinking the concept of “class consciousness” and its relationship to the structural dispossession of black and Latino communities. It also concludes that while this new politics is tentative and fragile, it has also opened up a creativity in thinking through the practical organizational issues of dealing with organizing across lines of race, class, and gender.     

Regulating the race: Aboriginal children in private European homes in colonial Australia

Abstract

This article focuses on the incorporation of Aboriginal children into European families on a private basis in the colonial era. While state-based missions and reserves were central sites where Aboriginal children were placed, other Aboriginal children were privately placed with European families during the colonial era. This article explores the shifting reasons for this practice. It finds that Aboriginal children who entered European families away from the control of the state came under the control of Europeans through a variety of ways. Initially, Aboriginal child removals were conducted during the course of violent frontier conflict or involved children who had been impacted by introduced European diseases. Smaller numbers of Indigenous children were taken as objects of curiosity. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, it became increasingly common for settlers to take Indigenous children for labour purposes. The article argues that the white middle-class family was positioned as a site for “civilising” children, where the moral regulation of childhood was conducted. This article adds a new dimension to colonial understandings about the role and structure of the family. It also expands understandings about Indigenous child removal in Australia's past.     

Police Response to Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: Do Victim Characteristics Matter?

This study examines the role of sociodemographic factors and violence characteristics in influencing women's reporting behaviors and types of police intervention received in response to intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada. A subset of female respondents to Canada's 1999 General Social Survey who experienced physical or sexual IPV by a male perpetrator and who had contact with the police as a result of the violence was used for this analysis (n = 383). Findings suggest significant racial, economic, and social variations in women's motivation for self-reporting violence to the police as well as in the types of law enforcement interventions administered by police in response to reports of IPV. Implications for policy development are examined.     

One perspective on sentencing reform in the United States

Summary and Conclusion The most difficult part of constructing a system of criminal sentencing is to be able to give a rationale for each sentence. Historically, this has been an unsurmountable hurdle because it required reformers to resolve the irresolvable conflict between utility and desert as sentencing goals and to measure the immeasurably complex relative utility of the alterative utilitarian strategies of deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. The good news is that we need not try to leap these insurmountable hurdles: the greatest utility is found in a desert distribution of liability and punishment. By following desert, the criminal law can establish its moral credibility with the public and thereby harness the real sources of social control—the power of social sanctions and internalized norms. In the context of criminal sentencing, this means the system must establish a reputation for giving offenders the precise amount of punishment they deserve. Despite the utilitarian importance of desert, however, nondesert concerns can govern the selection of the sanctioning method. As long as the total punitive bite of all aspects of an offender’s sentence is what the offender deserves, judges otherwise can be left free to construct the sentence they think will best avoid future crime. With a system of punishment units and punishment equivalencies, a desert-based determination of the amount of punishment can co-exist with a selection of sanctioning methods looking to nondesert, utilitarian considerations, such as the need for deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. This essay is based upon lectures given at the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute (UNAFEI) for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan. B.S., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1970; LL.M., Harvard University 1975; J.D., University of California-Los Angeles 1973; Dip. Leg. Stud., Cambridge University 1976.