Experimental criminology: looking back and forward on the 20th anniversary of the Academy of Experimental Criminology

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This article summarizes key points made in a panel at the American Society of Criminology (ASC) meeting in Atlanta in November 2018, entitled “20th...     

The Search for Comparability: Response to Binder

Lawrence S. Rothenberg Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 e-mail: lrot{at}mail.rochester.edu (corresponding author) Binder (n.d., Taking the measure of Congress: Reply to Chiouand Rothenberg. Political Analysis. Forthcoming) highlightsareas of agreement and disagreement with our discussion of preferencemeasurement and legislative gridlock. We now both agree thatW-NOMINATE scores—employed in Binder (1999, The dynamicsof legislative gridlock. American Political Science Review 9:519–33)to measure key independent variables, including bicameral differences—shouldnot be used when examining multichamber legislatures over time.We continue to disagree over whether Common Space scores orBinder's conference vote measure is superior. In this response,we show that, although several of the theoretical and statisticalobjections that Binder (n.d.) raises to our Common Space measuredo not apply, they are all relevant for her conference voteanalog. Additionally, we detail how, despite protests to thecontrary, the conference vote measure is plagued by insufficientdata. Finally, we demonstrate how new efforts to show that Binder's (1999)results continue to hold are not robust.     

Diaspora Mobilization for Western Military Intervention During the Arab Spring

ABSTRACT

Literature on diaspora interest groups suggests that they exacerbate home-country conflicts by lobbying for hawkish interventions. However, studies fall short of understanding why diasporas support militarized interventions in home-country conflicts. Using original data on Libyan and Syrian pro-revolution activism during the Arab Spring, I demonstrate that extreme escalations in state repression, activists’ transnational ties, and norms supporting the “responsibility to protect” produced perceptions that militarized interventions were necessary countermeasures to mass killings. Overall, analyses of diasporas’ orientations to home-country conflicts should account for annihilative threats to populations at home, diasporas’ relations with those on the ground, and humanitarian intervention norms.     

Poetry Beyond Good and Evil: Bilhaṇa and the Tradition of Patron-centered Court Epic

The eleventh century poet Bilhaṇa’s magnum opus, his Vikramāṅkadevacarita, quickly became one of the most admired and quoted examplars of a newly emergent genre in second millennium Sanskrit poetry, the patron-centered court epic—an extended verse composition dedicated to relating the deeds and celebrating the virtues of the pet’s own patron. But Bilhaṇa’s verse biography of his patron, the Cālukya monarch Vikramāditya VI, while ostensibly singing his praises, is colored throughout by darker suggestions that Vikramāditya may be less than the moral paragon it proclaims him to be, and that the power of poetry lies precisely in its ability to fabricate royal virtue where none exists, and to wash clean the reputation of any king, regardless of his actual deeds. He makes these insinuatons through a variety of formal and narrative techniques, most strikingly by his persistent suggestions that Vikramāditya has perhaps less in common with Rāma, the archetypal paragon of royal virtue, than with his demonic antagonist Rāvaṇa, and, even more corrosively, that Rāma’s own reputation may owe more to his panegyrist’s skill than to his own virtue.     

Validation of Tool Mark Comparisons Obtained Using a Quantitative,Comparative, Statistical Algorithm

Abstract: A statistical analysis and computational algorithm for comparing pairs of tool marks via profilometry data is described. Empirical validation of the method is established through experiments based on tool marks made at selected fixed angles from 50 sequentially manufactured screwdriver tips. Results obtained from three different comparison scenarios are presented and are in agreement with experiential knowledge possessed by practicing examiners. Further comparisons between scores produced by the algorithm and visual assessments of the same tool mark pairs by professional tool mark examiners in a blind study in general show good agreement between the algorithm and human experts. In specific instances where the algorithm had difficulty in assessing a particular comparison pair, results obtained during the collaborative study with professional examiners suggest ways in which algorithm performance may be improved. It is concluded that the addition of contextual information when inputting data into the algorithm should result in better performance.     

A half century of parole rules: Conditions of parole in the United States, 2008

There is growing concern about revocations of parole for technical violations of parole conditions. This article represents a fifth survey of standard conditions of parole in the United States. In 2008 all fifty-two parole jurisdictions were surveyed and the standard conditions of supervision identified. The results indicate that the number and types of standard conditions of parole have increased in the recent past, but that over the past half century, parole rules have retained a focus on criminal behavior and enabling post release supervision. It is more likely that our conceptions about how best to respond to rule violations have undergone change.