STATE URBAN POLICY: "New" Federalism In Virginia, New Jersey and Florida

The recent rediscovery of federalism has left the nation's governors with expanded responsibility and limited federal support. In return, they were promised greater fiscal flexibility, a real partnership in program design, and protection from unfunded mandates. However, states seem unwilling to offer the same guarantees to their cities that they sought from the federal government, even as they expand city responsibilities and limit state aid. This paper explores the extent to which Virginia, New Jersey and Florida have provided the fiscal flexibility and partnership, except in the area of economic development, but the diminished fiscal capacity of some distressed communities relative to their suburban counterparts render them unable to benefit from such efforts.     

Wealth-Transfer Taxes in U.S. Fiscal Federalism: A Levy Still in Need of Reform

Wealth-transfer taxes are federal and state levies on the valueof estates, inheritances, and gifts. Because the federal governmentallows a limited tax credit, repeal of the federal tax has implicationsfor state governments. This article discusses the economic justificationof taxing wealth transfers and provides data on the importanceof the tax from 1977 to 1997. We measure the degree of variationin the use of the tax among the states and pinpoint those statesfor which death taxation is most important. Wealth-transfertaxation needs reform but, repeal of the federal tax is inappropriate.Instead, the state levies should be abandoned. We conclude byproposing to repeal the state taxes and reduce the federal taxby an amount equivalent to the value of the federal tax-credit.The resulting revenues, however, would not to be garnered bythe federal government but returned as revenue-sharing fundsto the resident state of the decedent.     

Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences

This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to distributional outcomes but shows that government is generally just as responsive to the poor as to the rich. Utilizing theoretical insights from comparative political economy and time‐series data from 1952 to 2006, supplemented with cross‐sectional analysis where appropriate, we show that economic inequality is, in fact, self‐reinforcing, but that this is fully consistent with the idea that government tends to respond equally to rich and poor in its policy enactments.     

The Future of Northern Ireland: the Role of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement Institutions

Since the 2016 Brexit referendum a series of crises has gripped Northern Ireland's politics. This has had a destabilising effect across society, which has arguably been felt most acutely by political unionism. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) of 1998 created a series of institutions to deal with political conflict in Northern Ireland, manage cross-border cooperation and normalise relations between the UK and Ireland. However, many aspects of it have been sparingly and ineffectually deployed, most notably the second and third strands dealing with north/south and east/west relations respectively. In this article, the authors argue that regular use of the institutional arrangements created by the Agreement would help to deal with the challenges currently facing Northern Ireland and help address unionist anxieties over the Protocol. Use of the North-South Ministerial Council (NSMC), the British Irish Council (BIC) and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) should be prioritised. The unresolved issues arising from Brexit require a recommitment to the intergovernmental logic at the heart of the 1998 Agreement, despite the obstacles.     

Systemic Dissemination of Injected Foreign Material

A 32‐year‐old woman collapsed following an intravenous injection of material that included crushed pharmaceutical tablets. Resuscitation was attempted but was unsuccessful. She had an extensive past medical history of complications resulting from intravenous drug use. Death was due to mixed drug toxicity. The major findings at autopsy included a 10 mm deep skin sinus over the right femoral vein that was used as an injection site. Polarizable foreign material was present at the injection site and also within the lungs with a granulomatous reaction. Of note, a probe‐patent foramen ovale had permitted paradoxical embolization of this material into the systemic circulation with lodgement within the liver, portal lymph nodes, myocardium, spleen, kidneys, and pancreas. This case highlights the importance of checking for any intracardiac shunts, which may be quite small, and systemic dissemination of foreign material to multiple organs in intravenous drug users who present for medicolegal assessment.     

Maximizing order or harm? Arrests among a social network of people who inject drugs in a large urban city

Encountering the criminal justice system at the first point of entry---an arrest---is associated with heightened HIV and Hepatitis risk behavior among people who inject drugs (PWIDS). Intervening structurally through the criminal justice system impacts public health; therefore, determining arrest patterns is an important tool for risk reduction. Among a sample of 740 PWIDs, and their social network members recruited from predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore City, a third were recently arrested in the previous six months, and of those, the arrests were disproportionately African-American persons and characterized as nonviolent, i.e., drug possession/attempt to purchase (38%) and loitering (29%). Poisson regression models were built adjusted for age, sex, race, education level, homelessness, and monthly income after exploring bivariable characteristics of arrests using chi-squared tests. Active drug use was associated with a recent arrest (adjusted prevalence ratio: aPR 2.38 95% CI 1.6, 3.6), in addition to participants who recently reported attending a syringe exchange program (aPR 1.45 95% CI 1.1, 2.0). Our findings are suggestive of recent media coverage and burgeoning research revealing the prioritization of policing resources toward both communities of color and neighborhoods of intensified drug trafficking. Further research is warranted to contextualize the operationalization of criminal justice resources and the impact on community health.     

The importance of dark adaptation for forensic examinations; an evaluation of the Crime-lite Eye™

Forensic practitioners are recommended to dark adapt their eyes prior to conducting evidential searches in the dark. The dark adaptation process remains poorly standardised across the discipline, with little quantified regarding the benefits of such preparative steps. Herein, we report the findings of a study that recruited 50 participants to assess the effectiveness of the Crime-lite Eye?, a darkness adaptation device developed to assist forensic practitioners both in the laboratory and in field. Participants were tasked with searching for the fluorescent signatures left by reaction of 1,8-diazafluoren-9-one (DFO) with amino acids, in a manner akin to the fluorogenic fingerprint treatment of porous evidence. Using an Epson Stylus Photo R265 inkjet printer, ink cartridges were filled with alanine solutions of various concentrations, allowing different motifs to be printed onto copy paper and subsequently developed using DFO. Participants searched for this ‘evidence’ both with and without dark adapted vision. On average, participants were able to locate and correctly recognise 16% more evidence once dark adapted using the Crime-lite Eye?.The increase in evidence located by participants once dark adapted suggests that crime scene officers should be dark adapting in order to visualise as much as possible. The time taken to dark adapt, 10?min on average during this study, is not excessively long, and should not significantly slow the investigation.     

Origin,Analytical Characterization,and Use of Human Odor in Forensics

Developing a strategy to characterize the odor prints of individuals should be relevant to support identification obtained using dogs in courts of justice. This article proposes an overview of the techniques used for the forensic profiling of human odor. After reviewing the origin of human odor—both genetic and physiological—the different analytical steps from sample collection to statistical data processing are presented. The first challenge is the collection of odor, whether by direct sampling with polymer patches, cotton gauze, etc., or indirect sampling with devices like Scent Transfer Unit. Then, analytical techniques are presented. Analyses are commonly performed with gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. As they yield large amounts of data, advanced statistical tools are needed to provide efficient and reliable data processing, which is essential to give more probative value to information.     

Law and Institutional Legitimacy in the Practice of Human Rights

The Heart of Human Rights develops an account of human rights as legal entities that serve important moral purposes in a legitimate international human rights practice. This paper examines Allen Buchanan’s general concept of institutional legitimacy and aims to expand that concept by emphasizing its connection with several ideas developed in the book about the nature and function of a system of international human rights. When it incorporates those ideas, Buchanan’s ‘Metacoordination View’ can be seen to set a standard of legitimacy not only for assessments of an international scheme of human rights institutions, but also for the basic institutional structures of domestic states. Furthermore, we can see how the nature and function of human rights in the international practice of human rights bears on legitimacy assessments of particular domestic institutions.     

Religious Motivated Hate Crimes: Reporting to Law Enforcement and Case Outcomes

Relative to non-bias motivated crimes, hate crimes have much graver consequences for victims and their community. Despite the large increase in religious hate crimes over the past decade relative to all other hate crime, little is known about these types of crimes and the factors associated with both reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Utilizing the National Crime Victimization Survey and National Incident-Based Reporting System datasets, this study examines the relationship between victim, offender, and incident characteristics on reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Most religious hate crimes are not reported (41.3 %) in part due to perceptions of law enforcement’s perceived response. Of the violent incidents that are reported, the vast majority do not result in the arrest of an offender (22.2 %). Whereas only a small number of variables related to the seriousness of the offense are associated with both reporting and arrest, these exhibited large effect sizes.