Regime type and good governance in low and high income states: what is the empirical link?

This analysis looks at the link between regime type and good governance across four different levels of development – low income countries, medium-low income countries, medium-high income countries, and high income countries. Through pooled time series analysis of more than 170 countries with yearly or bi-yearly data from 1996 to 2009, I find that democracies are better governed than non-democracies. This relationship is robust across all regime types. Even at a low level of development, countries that elect their representatives in free and fair elections have a better regulatory framework and are more efficient and transparent. The practical implications of this finding are that a democratically governed state will most likely have a superior social and economic track record than a non-democracy.     

The Effect of Incarceration on Re-Offending: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Pennsylvania

Objectives

This paper uses a sample of convicted offenders from Pennsylvania to estimate the effect of incarceration on post-release criminality.

Methods

To do so, we capitalize on a feature of the criminal justice system in Pennsylvania—the county-level randomization of cases to judges. We begin by identifying five counties in which there is substantial variation across judges in the uses of incarceration, but no evidence indicating that the randomization process had failed. The estimated effect of incarceration on rearrest is based on comparison of the rearrest rates of the caseloads of judges with different proclivities for the use of incarceration.

Results

Using judge as an instrumental variable, we estimate a series of confidence intervals for the effect of incarceration on one year, two year, five year, and ten year rearrest rates.

Conclusions

On the whole, there is little evidence in our data that incarceration impacts rearrest.     

Self-Control Theory and Nonlinear Effects on Offending

Objectives

This paper examines Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (A general theory of crime. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990) self-control theory and develops theoretical arguments for why self-control may have a differential effect on offending depending on the level of self-control.

Methods

We test the argument that the association between self-control and violent offending (n = 5,681) and non-violent offending (5,672) is nonlinear by using generalized propensity score analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Results

The results indicate that self-control and offending are nonlinearly related in a manner that involves two thresholds. Specifically, among individuals at the high end of the self-control spectrum, there was little evidence of an association between variation in self-control and offending. However, among individuals in the middle part of the self-control spectrum, a positive association obtained—that is, the greater the level of low self-control, the greater the likelihood of offending. Finally, among individuals at the low end of the self-control spectrum, there was, once again, little evidence of an association.

Conclusions

A nonlinear association between self-control and offending may exist and have implications for self-control theory and tests of it. Studies are needed to investigate further the possibility of a nonlinear association and to test empirically the mechanisms that give rise to it.     

When Abuse Happens Again: Women's Reasons for Not Reporting New Incidents of Intimate Partner Abuse to Law Enforcement

Although most women abused by intimate partners experience a patterned behavior of abuse (by either the same or new partners), little is known about their decision making regarding whether to call the police for subsequent abuse. The current study found that 90 percent of women who had encountered the criminal legal system for previous intimate partner abuse victimizations did not contact the police for some or all recurrences. Qualitative analysis was conducted among a sample of 102 women regarding their reasons for not re-engaging the legal system for subsequent victimizations. The results suggested 5 overall reasons as to why women involved with the criminal legal system choose not to engage the system again.     

Defence lawyers and probation officers: offenders' allies or adversaries?

The shift in recent decades towards an explicitly punitive agenda for criminal justice in Western jurisdictions has been well-documented in the criminological literature. People accused of offences and convicted offenders progress through a punitive criminal justice system replete with crime control values. Furthermore, in criminal justice policy development, the notion of victims' rights and the quest to rebalance the system in favour of victims now override concerns about rights. In the light of this state of affairs, it seems necessary to assess the role of practitioners within the criminal justice system who, by virtue of their professional mandates, can be expected to act as much needed allies for defendants as they progress through the system. These practitioners are defence lawyers and probation officers. Insufficient attention has been paid to the role of both and they have not previously been considered as two parts of a greater whole despite their obviously complimentary nature. In an effort to address this gap in knowledge, this article draws on two different studies to offer an exploratory discussion of how both practitioners interact with their clients and whether or not the practitioners can be viewed as effective allies of those implicated with the criminal process.     

The Interplay Between Diabetes and Pancreatitis: Two Case Reports of Sudden,Natural Deaths and a Review of the Literature

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common disease involving insulin resistance or deficit that, when left unchecked, may cause severe hyperglycemia and subsequent end‐organ damage. Acute pancreatitis (AP) is inflammation of the pancreas that can lead to significant morbidity and mortality. AP and DM both account for a significant amount of sudden deaths, and rarely both disease processes may be present in the same decedent, causing some difficulty in wording the cause of death statement. Although much research has been directed at studying the causes and risk factors for AP and DM, there is a complex interplay between these diseases that is not fully understood. This study presents two autopsy cases of sudden, natural deaths that illustrate this interplay, along with a review of the literature. An algorithm for differentiating AP and DM is then discussed in the context of the presented cases as a proposed aid for forensic pathologists in the certification of such deaths.