A Race for the Regs: Unified Government,Statutory Deadlines,and Federal Agency Rulemaking

Theory suggests that Congress should delegate more policymaking authority to the bureaucracy under unified government, where lawmakers are less worried about the president orchestrating “bureaucratic drift.” Yet, all unified governments come to an end, making broad delegations potentially advantageous to future lawmaking coalitions (“coalitional drift”). We seek to assess how lawmakers simultaneously limit the risk of each of these pitfalls of delegation. Our answer is rooted in Congress’s ability to spur agency rulemaking activity under unified government. Specifically, we expect statutes passed under unified government to require agencies to issue regulations quickly and for enacting coalitions to use oversight tools to influence agency policy choices. Such “proximate oversight” allows coalitions to cement policy decisions before a new election changes the configuration of preferences within Congress and the executive branch. We assess our argument using unique data on both congressional rulemaking deadlines (1995–2014) and the speed with which agencies issue regulations (1997–2014).     

Do Schools Cause Crime in Neighborhoods? Evidence from the Opening of Schools in Philadelphia

Objectives

To assess the impact of schools on crime in neighborhoods.

Methods

We utilize data of charter and public schools in Philadelphia to estimate the effect of school openings on neighborhood crime patterns between 1998 and 2010. We estimate the change in crime in areas surrounding schools before and after their opening compared to areas where schools were always open with Poisson regression models. We also estimate changes in crime in census tracts as schools are added compared to census tracts that never had schools. Finally, we compare estimates from Poisson regression models to those derived from permutation tests where schools are randomly assigned different opening dates.

Results

We find no evidence that school openings increase crime relative to locations where schools were always open or never had schools. The models generally produce null effects, though there is some evidence for a reduction in property crimes for public school openings and a reduction in violent crimes for charter school openings within certain distances. Estimates at the census tract level show that changes in the number of schools are not associated with any changes in crime relative to tracts with no schools.

Conclusions

Contrary to a large theoretical and empirical literature, the results suggest that school locations play a minimal role in neighborhood crime production in Philadelphia. Future research should investigate specific contexts and mechanisms, such as land-use characteristics and travel patterns to schools, which may interact with specific school settings in ways that are related to crime production.

     

Self-Control,Violent Offending,and Homicide Victimization: Assessing the General Theory of Crime

Criminologists have long recognized that offending and victimization share common ground. Using Gottfredson and Hirschis general theory of crime, with its emphasis on self-control as a theoretical backdrop, we examine the extent to which self-control is related to both violent offending and homicide victimization. To examine this issue, we use 5-year post-parole data on violent offending and homicide victimization from a sample of parolees from the California Youth Authority. Using rare-events logistic regression models, results indicate that self-control is related to each outcome, but that other risk factors are also uniquely related to each outcome. The implications of this study for theory and future research are addressed.To whom correspondence should be addressed: Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of Florida, P.O. Box 115950, 201 Walker Hall, Gainesville, FL 32611-5950; Phone: +1-352-392-1025, ext. 213; E-mail: apiquero@ufl.edu     

Ontario's agencies,boards, and commissions come of age

Abstract: Ontario's 580 agencies, boards, and commissions (ABCs), including the 91 administrative tribunals, have been a collection of bodies, the product of ad hoc government decisions, with no overall planning or coordination of their operations. During the past decade, on their own initiative, they have developed a coordinating capacity which, if responded to by the government, can enhance their operations as well as assure a more effective program of reform. Sommaire: Les 580 agences et commissions de l'Ontario, y compris les 91 tribunaux administratifs, constituent un groupe d'organismes résultant de décisions gouvernementales ad hoc, sans aucune planification ou coordination globale quant à leur fonctionnement. Au cours de la dernière décennie, suivant leur propre initiative, elles ont développé leur propre fonction de coordination. Si le gouvernement répond à cette initiative, il sera dès lors possible d'améliorer leur fonctionnement et de rendre plus efficace leur programme de réforme.     

Afghanistan’s drug trade

He is author of four books, including Dancing on a Volcano: The Latin American Drug Trade,and co-editor of five books, one of which is the forthcoming International Drug Control Handbook.     

POLICY MODELING TO SUPPORT ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONMAKING ON THE NEW YORK STATE HIV TESTING LAW

A recent New York law requires medical providers to offer HIV tests as part of routine care. We developed a system dynamics simulation model of the HIV testing and care system to help administrators understand the law's potential epidemic impact, resource needs, strategies to improve implementation, and appropriate outcome indicators for future policy evaluations once postlaw data become available. Policy modeling allowed us to synthesize information from numerous sources including quantitative administrative data sets and practitioners’ content expertise, structure the information to be viewed both numerically and visually, and organize consensus for decisionmaking purposes. This case illustrates how policy modeling can provide an integrated framework for administrators to examine policy problems in complex systems, particularly when data time lags limit pre–post comparisons and key outcomes cannot be measured directly.     

An Evaluation of Standardized Software for Processing GC/MS Data from Different Vendors' Instruments in a Forensic Laboratory

Forensic science laboratories perform analyses on a variety of materials using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Instruments from different vendors may be used, requiring analysts to be proficient in the use of multiple proprietary software packages for collecting and processing data. There is no standardized GC/MS software available that can acquire data from different vendors' instruments. However, there are third‐party processing software products that can import data files in different formats. The Centre of Forensic Sciences compared the data processing performance of one such product, ACD/MS Manager Suite, with three instrument vendors' software used for casework analysis. This product was tested for its compatibility with the existing software, its capability to load and present data, and to initiate searches of commercial libraries. The study shows that the MS Manager module provides a means for the forensic analyst to view, process, and report on data from different sources in one software package.