To execute or not to execute? Examining public support for capital punishment of sex offenders

In the 1990s, states enacted a plethora of new “get tough” laws targeting sex crime. These included extending the death penalty—a punishment typically reserved for murderers—to convicted sex offenders. Little attention, however, has been given to explaining why these tougher responses emerged and, in particular, whether the public supported extending the use of the death penalty to sex offenders. The goal of this paper was to examine whether public perceptions about executing sex offenders accorded with the punitive shift in policy and, more broadly, to contribute to scholarship on the death penalty. To this end, this paper examined data from a 1991 national public opinion poll, conducted just prior to the punitive shift in sex crime policies. The study found that views about executing sex offenders depended heavily on whether the victim was a child, that support for executing sex offenders was substantially lower than for executing murderers, and that few social and demographic divides differentially predicted support for executing sex offenders versus murderers. Implications of the study are discussed.     

The Nature and Extent of Conservation Policing: Law Enforcement Generalists or Conservation Specialists?

Little is known about law enforcement agencies with responsibility for fish, wildlife, and natural resource protection. Traditional conceptions of fish and wildlife police associate these officers almost entirely with fishing and hunting activities. The relative scarcity of academic literature regarding fish and wildlife police agencies results in a lack of understanding about their role in the criminal justice system in general. The current study seeks to contribute to the limited existing literature by examining conservation policing in Florida, a state not yet studied in this context, by analyzing some 2,910 field events. Findings indicate that officers devote a considerable portion of their attention to traditional law enforcement activities in addition to the type of enforcement customarily associated with fish and wildlife law enforcement.     

An engine of growth or a cog in the wheel： Reality and perceptions of family enterprises in China

Since the economic reforms began in the end of the 1970s, family enterprises have emerged and thrived in the People＇s Republic of China, and have contributed significantly to China＇s phenomenal growth in the last few decades. Yet, little recognition, scholarly or otherwise, was given to family enterprises in China. The author argues that such a lack of recognition of family enterprises in China has to do with various negative perceptions of family firms and entrepreneurs. Among such perceptions is the view that family enterprises are ＂backward＂ and ＂unscientific＂, and as such they need to be modernized or they will disappear. This article calls for more rigorous and ethnographic research of family businesses in China, because such research will not only afford much needed attentions to the issues unique to family businesses, but also provide a comparative case to the study of Confucian capitalism, which is believed to be an alternative to western capitalism.     

NATO Special Operations: Promise and Problem

NATO special operations forces (SOF) are at a crossroads as the NATO role in Afghanistan winds down. After more than a decade of development, NATO SOF have greatly increased their ability to operate together in the field and in headquarters. If the alliance continues to emphasize SOF development, these forces can play a major role in future NATO campaigns, particularly outside Europe. Moreover, SOF can be maintained effectively in times of austerity. Yet intelligence sharing, particularly in real time, is currently one of the major limitations on NATO SOF, creating divisions between United States and United Kingdom on one hand and much of the rest of NATO on the other. In order to make truly effective use of SOF the alliance needs to make fundamental changes to its decades old system for sharing intelligence.     

Prudence and the Obama Doctrine

This article examines the Obama Doctrine's main tenets, assesses its operation— focusing on the geopolitically crucial regions of Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East–and then offers concluding observations about the trajectory and consequences of this doctrine.     

Air-Sea Battle and China's Anti-Access and Area Denial Challenge

The challenge presented by China's military modernization has seemingly altered the conventional balance in the Western Pacific, with significant implications for U.S. national security policy, and, thus, deserves the focus of planners and decision-makers.     

Trust in digital records: An increasingly cloudy legal area

Trust has been defined in many ways, but at its core it involves acting without the knowledge needed to act. Trust in records depends on four types of knowledge about the creator or custodian of the records: reputation, past performance, competence, and the assurance of confidence in future performance. For over half a century society has been developing and adopting new computer technologies for business and communications in both the public and private realm. Frameworks for establishing trust have developed as technology has progressed. Today, individuals and organizations are increasingly saving and accessing records in cloud computing infrastructures, where we cannot assess our trust in records solely on the four types of knowledge used in the past. Drawing on research conducted at the University of British Columbia into the nature of digital records and their trustworthiness, this article presents the conceptual archival and digital forensic frameworks of trust in records and data, and explores the common law legal framework within which questions of trust in documentary evidence are being tested. Issues and challenges specific to cloud computing are introduced.     

A walk in to the cloud and cloudy it remains: The challenges and prospects of ‘processing’ and ‘transferring’ personal data

Cloud computing is an information technology technique that promises greater efficiency and reduced-cost to consumers, businesses and public institutions. However, to the extent it has brought better efficiency and minimal cost, the emergence of cloud computing has posed a significant regulatory challenge on the application of data protection rules particularly on the regime regulating cross-border data flow. The Data Protection Directive (DPD), which dates back to 1995, is at odds with some of the basic technological and business-related features of the cloud. As a result, it is claimed that the Directive hardly offers any help in using the legal bases to ‘process’ and ‘transfer’ data as well as to determine when a transfer to a third country occurs in cloud computing. Despite such assertions, the paper argues that the ECJ's Bodil Lindqvist decision can to a certain extent help to delineate circumstances where transfer should and should not occur in the cloud. Concomitantly, the paper demonstrates that controllers can still make the most of the available possibilities in justifying their ‘processing’ as well as ‘transferring’ of data to a third country in cloud arrangements. In doing so, the paper also portrays the challenges that arise down the road. All legal perspectives are largely drawn from EU level though examples are given from member states and other jurisdictions when relevant.     

Nature and consequences of dismissals: Implications for public safety and crime prevention in criminal courts in America

The role of dismissal as a major case disposition in criminal courts in America has been largely neglected in empirical studies to date, despite long-lasting questions about its nature and important implications for justice goals. This paper is a first attempt to fill in this gap.

Purpose

Drawing on untested assumptions about a possible dismissal-reoffending connection, the paper proposes a public safety framework for examining the nature of dismissals and their consequences for the community. Under this perspective, dismissal is a function of defendants’ risk attributes and contributes to subsequent public safety threat.

Methods

To test these hypotheses, predictive and causal analyses were conducted on an 800-case sample of criminal defendants in one large urban American jurisdiction, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cases were sampled at the first judicial stage and followed as a cohort for one year to record disposition and post-disposition outcomes.

Results

The findings indicate that defendants’ risk attributes contribute to the explanation of dismissal and that dismissal in itself adds to the probability of subsequent offending.

Conclusions

The findings raise questions about the justice system goals, particularly deterrence and have important policy implications for the processing and disposition of criminal cases in American jurisdictions.