Does resting heart rate at age 18 distinguish general and violent offending up to age 50? Findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

Purpose

There is a sizable literature documenting the relationship between resting heart rate and antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. Absent from the literature is the extent to which heart rate has long-term prediction into late middle adulthood and the extent to which such effects are specific to certain crime types, such as violence, or whether heart rate effects are more general.

Methods

This study uses data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a longitudinal study of 411 South London males followed through age 50 in order to examine these two research questions.

Results

Results suggest that lower heart rates are significantly associated with total conviction frequency and involvement in violence. This pattern of relationships is not altered by the inclusion of additional risk factors such as early childhood risk factors, adolescent involvement in smoking, body mass index, participation in team sports, binge drinking, or a measure of impulsivity.

Conclusions

Heart rate was found to be a significant correlate of criminal offending. Study limitations and implications are discussed.     

Explaining the Divergence in Asylum Grant Rates among Immigration Judges: An Attitudinal and Cognitive Approach

In seeking to understand the variation in asylum grant rates by immigration judges (IJs), we apply a variation of the attitudinal model that we modify by incorporating a cognitive model of decision making, arguing that some pieces of information before IJs are treated objectively while others are treated subjectively. This model allows us to account for informational cues that influence decisions while assessing the impact of national interests and human rights conditions. We find that IJ policy predispositions play a dominant role, and that liberal IJs respond to applicant characteristics differently than conservatives, but also that the law constrains decision making.     

Congressional apportionment and the fourteenth amendment

This paper examines state interest in the nine bases of congressional seat apportionment considered for the House of Representatives as part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. We ask, what if voters preferred apportionments that delivered larger vote shares to their state? We then show that among all states, one basis of apportionment was a weak Condorcet winner, while the others were in a vote cycle. In both chambers of Congress, however, pure majority voting created orderings of the nine bases and a different Condorcet winner. Ironically, Congress did not select either Condorcet winner. Instead, a population-based apportionment was reported out of committee and passed both chambers as a consequence of agenda control and lack of pairwise voting. Our analysis provides an example of how agenda setting with incomplete information unintentionally can produce undesirable outcomes for a legislature.

     

Global policymakers and catastrophic risk

Policy Sciences - There is a rapidly developing literature on risks that threaten the whole of humanity, or a large part of it. Discussion is increasingly turning to how such risks can be governed....     

Gridlock and Delegation in a Changing World

Fixed statutes and regulations often have variable consequences over time. If left unattended, such drift can severely erode the performance of government as an institution of representation. To better understand the mechanics of policy‐making in a changing world, we develop a positive theory that captures political drift in a dynamic separation‐of‐powers system. We show analytically that a distinctive combination of legislative supermajoritarianism and agency discretion—institutional features that, in isolation, elicit widespread criticism—can effectively ameliorate policies' susceptibility to the vicissitudes of exogenous change. The critical mechanism for governmental accommodation of drift is delegation, which increases all decision makers' well‐being by reducing fluctuations in outcomes. Although the complete smoothing of outcomes is attainable in a separation‐of‐ powers system, we show that this is typically not achieved in equilibrium. The presence of drift provides an opportunity for self‐interested legislators to extract a distributional benefit from their fellow legislators at the expense of overall policymaking efficiency.