Long-term effects of the Moving to Opportunity residential mobility experiment on crime and delinquency

Objectives

Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.

Methods

We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization.

Results

We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.     

Representative versus direct democracy: The role of informational asymmetries

The paper studies the relative merits of direct and representative legislation in a setting where voters are uncertain both with respect to the likely consequences of different policies and with respect to the political preferences of their fellow citizens. Under representative legislation, the latter translates into uncertainty on the elected official’s future policy intentions which involves a loss of control. The resulting discretionary power, however, also leads officials to endogenously acquire competence on the issues they oversee and specialize in policy formation. Policies determined in representative democracies are therefore better tailored to relevant contingencies but less close to the preferences of a majority than those determined in popular ballots. It is shown that the extent of the resulting trade-off depends on the set of alternatives among which the policy is to be chosen. Two extensions, referenda and the possibility of re-election, are briefly considered.     

How to Think (Like a Lawyer) About Rape

From the American Law Institute to college campuses, there is a renewed interest in the law of rape. Law school faculty, however, may be reluctant to teach this deeply debated topic. This article begins from the premise that controversial and contested questions can be best resolved when participants understand the conceptual architecture that surrounds and delineates the normative questions. This allows participants to talk to one another instead of past each other. Accordingly, in this article, we begin by diffusing two non-debates: the apparent conflict created when speakers use “consent” to mean two different things and the question of whether rape law ought to be formulated in terms of consent or force. From here, we turn to the conceptual apparatuses that surround the normative questions of freedom from force, knowledge, and capacity. Here, we suggest how better understanding these concepts can frame the underlying discussions as to what sorts of coercion undermine consent, what kinds of deception invalidate consent, and when the victim is too incapacitated to consent. Finally, we turn to different formulations of consent, demonstrating that one conception better captures the harm of rape but that other formulations may better protect victims. We show how clarifying these questions allows discussants to see why different formulations are valuable and to debate the best all-things-considered formulation. Although this article is framed as a question of how (to teach students) to think like lawyers about rape, its ambition is to set forth a framework that is useful to reformers as well.     

Probing the Depths of the Responsible Corporate Officer’s Duty

Many criminal law scholars have criticized the responsible corporate officer doctrine as a form of strict and vicarious liability. It is neither. It is merely a doctrine that supplies a duty in instances of omissions. Siding with Todd Aagaard in this debate, I argue that a proper reading of the cases yields that the responsible corporate officer doctrine is just duty supplying, and does not allow for strict liability when the underlying statute requires mens rea. After analyzing Dotterweich, Park, and their progeny, I probe the depths of this duty-supplying doctrine, including to whom the duty is owed, whether the duty is grounded in statute, cause of peril, or contract, and what the content of the duty is. Although the responsible corporate officer doctrine unveils questions we may have about duty generally, it is no more problematic than other duty-supplying doctrines in the criminal law.     

The role of a small town in rural development: A Sierra Leone case study

The distribution of services, personnel, and infrastructure in rural development projects has not usually been subject to a thorough scrutiny. Locational decisions have been arbitrary, without reference to the needs and mobility of the rural population. This study advocates one particular revision of past policies: the incorporation of small towns into programs designed to improve agricultural production and economic opportunity in rural regions. When such towns already function as a center for political activity, marketing, employment, and service provision, a development project can reinforce these linkages in ways that enhance productivity. A case study is used to illustrate the efficacy of this proposal: the town of Panguma, Kenema District, Sierra Leone and its role in development programs. Panguma has several features that make it an ideal focal point, but it has not been incorporated into regional projects in any systematic way. This town and its hinterland provide an illustration of how rural-urban interaction at a local scale can further the achievement of rural development goals. C.A.R.E.