Economic Assistance to Impoverished Americans

This study examined the relationship between a measure of public assistance to poor families (adjusted for cost of living differences among SMSAs) and crime rates. The regression analyses controlled for the effects of several other economic and noneconomic factors thought to influence variation in crime rates and utilized census and other data for the S9 SMSAs for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provided cost-of-living data in 1970. The results indicated that level of public assistance to poor families had an independent negative effect on the variation of several crime rates, including rates of homicide, rape, and burglary. The results suggest that a substantial reduction in the level of public assistance to the poor may contribute to significant increase in crime rates.     

Austerity's Wasted Years

Austerity has become the norm of economic management in the EU, Britain and the USA. In each it is offered as the answer to different problems but everywhere the result is cuts in public spending, higher unemployment and low growth, none of which helps recovery from recession. Labour's response should not be to endorse or continue austerity but to initiate a Keynesian expansionary stimulus based on borrowing and spending on a huge programme of building public housing for rent. This should be accompanied by a competitive exchange rate, an industrial policy to boost the manufacturing sector and a National Investment Bank, the aim being to expand the production base so that it can pay the nation's way in the World and support the structure and the improvements Labour needs. This makes the choice at the next election the issue of what kind of Britain the electorate wants to see: a low wage, mean economy or a determined attempt to rebuild a stronger nation with a more powerful economy.     

White-Collar Crime in Socialism: Myth or Reality?

Previous research on the determinants of police expenditures has not risen to the level of empirical understanding in large part because it has failed to explain substantively important variation among local jurisdictions. This suggests a need to reevaluate research strategies and to examine closely those cases which cannot be predicted using traditional, social, economic, and environmental approaches. Incorporating deviant case analysis, the authors outline an alternative approach to determine whether policy maker variables should be added to more broadly based models.