American Criminal Justice Exposed

In The Ethics of Capital Punishment: A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and Its Consequences, Matthew Kramer argues that none of the standard rationales used to justify capital punishment successfully vindicates it and that a new justification, the purgative rationale, justifies capital punishment for defilingly evil offenders. In this article, it is argued, first, that a version of retributivism that adheres to the lex talionis as Kramer understands it does seem to call exclusively for the death penalty. Second, it is submitted that the purgative rationale is over-inclusive inasmuch as Kramer considers it applicable to certain offenders with abusive or deprived backgrounds, some offenders indoctrinated to adhere to pernicious ideologies that have impelled their crimes, and wrongdoers who have sincerely repented. Third, doubts are expressed about whether the purgative rationale justifies the execution of any offenders. Even if it is true that the continued existence of an extravagantly evil offender represents an affront to humanity, as Kramer suggests, a moral obligation to execute him does not follow. Since repentance is intrinsically valuable and since repentance would extinguish the affront to humanity, the community in which an unrepentant evil offender abides is duty-bound to foster repentance on the part of the offender by imposing banishment or life imprisonment, sanctions that afford the offender the most extensive opportunity for repentance. The community is therefore obligated to impose one of these sanctions instead of capital punishment.     

Majority Party Power and Procedural Motions in the U.S. Senate

While the metaphor of House parties as cartels is widely accepted, its application to the Senate is difficult as the majority party lacks the power to unilaterally manipulate rules and pass legislation. Nevertheless, several scholars have argued that the Senate majority party is able to employ nondebatable motions to table to exclude unwanted amendments with procedural rather than substantive votes. Does the motion to table yield negative agenda control or special party influence? Using an analysis of individual Senators' behavior on thousands of votes and an assessment of interest group scores, we find that motions to table do not elicit higher party influence or provide much political cover. A desire to speed up the legislative process, rather than to insulate members from electoral scrutiny, seems to motivate the use of motions to table.     

Fathers’ patenting behavior and the propensity of offspring to patent: an intergenerational analysis

In this paper we show that the patenting behavior of innovators is correlated with the patenting behavior of their fathers. Our argument for exploring this relationship stems from established theories of entrepreneurial behavior, specifically theories on intergenerational behavior. Our empirical analyses are based on survey data collected from MIT’s Technology Review (TR) winners.     

Significant Gender Differences in Factors Related to the Detention of Youthful Offenders

An important priority of the U.S. juvenile justice system is to reduce the number of youthful offenders who are placed into secure detention placement. Though significant research examining these predictors exists, there is limited analysis of gender-specific predictors. Using existing juvenile court and mental health assessment case records of 433 youthful offenders from two Midwestern U.S. counties, this study sought to identify separately for males and females the legal (including number of delinquency adjudications, age at first delinquency adjudication, number of court offenses, and type of offense) and extralegal (including demographic, maltreatment, mental health, and school-related disabilities) factors that impact recidivism to detention placement. Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that the predictors of recidivism leading to repeat secure detention placement were indeed different for males and females, although there were some shared predictors. For both genders, the number of court offenses and having a previous suicide attempt were significant predictors. In addition, for females, having a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and a misdemeanor offense were protective against recidivism. For males, three other variables significantly predicted recidivism: age, race, and a conduct disorder diagnosis.     

Two Ecological Models of Academic Achievement Among Diverse Students With and Without Disabilities in Transition

School experiences can have positive effects on student academic achievement, yet less is known about intermediary processes that contribute to these positive effects. We examined pathways between school experiences and academic achievement among 117 low-income urban students of color, many with disabilities, who transitioned to other schools following a school closure. Using structural equation modeling, we tested two ecological models that examined the relationships among self-reported school experiences, school support, academic self-efficacy, and school-reported academic achievement. The model in which the relationship between school experiences and academic achievement is mediated by both school support and academic self-efficacy, and that takes previous academic achievement into account, was an excellent fit with the data. The roles of contextual and individual factors as they relate to academic achievement, and the implications of these findings, are discussed.     

Making It Personal: Regime Type and Nuclear Proliferation

Study after study has found that regime type has little or no effect on states’ decisions to pursue nuclear weapons. We argue, however, that conventional approaches comparing the behavior of democracies to that of nondemocracies have resulted in incorrect inferences. We disaggregate types of nondemocracies and argue that leaders of highly centralized, “personalistic” dictatorships are particularly likely to view nuclear weapons as an attractive solution to their concerns about regime security and face fewer constraints in pursuing nuclear weapons than leaders of other types of regimes. Combining our more nuanced classification of regime type with a more theoretically appropriate empirical approach, we find that personalist regimes are substantially more likely to pursue nuclear weapons than other regime types. This finding is robust to different codings of proliferation dates and a range of modeling approaches and specifications and has significant implications for both theory and policy.     

The Public’s Anger: White Racial Attitudes and Opinions Toward Health Care Reform

Pundits and politicians debated whether race was implicated in the rancorous public forums and demonstrations over health care reform. Research suggests that for many white Americans, racial predispositions play a greater role in their opinions on health care than non-racial predispositions. Building on this work, I examine the extent to which anger uniquely activates white racial attitudes and increases their effect on preferences for health care reform. My theory suggests this effect occurs because anger and thoughts about race are tightly linked in memory. Using a nationally representative experiment over two waves, I induced several emotions to elicit anger, fear, enthusiasm, or relaxation. The results show that anger uniquely pushes racial conservatives to be more opposing of health care reform while it triggers more support among racial liberals. On the other hand, anger does not enhance the effect of race-neutral principles on health care reform.     

Waging War on Poverty: Poverty Trends Using a Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the March Current Population Survey, we provide poverty estimates for 1967 to 2012 based on a historical supplemental poverty measure (SPM). During this period, poverty, as officially measured, has stagnated. However, the official poverty measure (OPM) does not account for the effect of near‐cash transfers on the financial resources available to families, an important omission since such transfers have become an increasingly important part of government antipoverty policy. Applying the historical SPM, which does count such transfers, we find that trends in poverty have been more favorable than the OPM suggests and that government policies have played an important and growing role in reducing poverty—a role that is not evident when the OPM is used to assess poverty. We also find that government programs have played a particularly important role in alleviating child poverty and deep poverty, especially during economic downturns.