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.     

The Silence of the Lambdas: Deterring Incapacitation Research

This essay provides an economist’s perspective on criminological research into incapacitation effects on crime. Our central argument is that criminologists would do well to substantially scale back the enterprise of trying to estimate the various behavioral parameters central to a micro-level approach to measuring incapacitation effects, including the annual rate of offending outside of prison (λ) and the lengths of criminal careers. One problem with this line of research is practical: for example, mean estimates of self-reported criminal activity by incarcerated prisoners are quite sensitive to reports by the most criminally active offenders. But the larger concern is conceptual—the incapacitation effects from a given change in sentencing policy may be undermined by the possibility of replacement effects, and at the same time omit other benefits that may arise from deterrent effects on crime. A more promising approach is to identify plausibly exogenous changes in sentencing policy in order to estimate the net impact on crime from the combined effects of incapacitation, deterrence and replacement.

20 Jahre Sandoz – vom Desaster zur Chance

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Servitut auf Licht und Luft; ruhende Eigentümerservitut

Bei übereignung einer von zwei Liegenschaften desselben Eigentümers, von denen eine offenkundig der anderen dient und weiterhin dienen soll, entsteht eine Dienstbarkeit auch ohne spezifische Vereinbarung und Verbücherung. Dabei entspricht der mittels des übertragungsakts tats?chlich geschaffene Zustand der Natur einer Dienstbarkeit und die Dienstbarkeit entsteht somit unmittelbar durch den übertragungsakt, weil iZw anzunehmen ist, dass ein bestehender Zustand aufrecht bleiben und demnach die Eigentümerbefugnis als Grunddienstbarkeit fortbestehen soll ("ruhende Eigentümerservitut"). Eine Baubeh?rde darf grunds?tzlich nicht über Privatrechte entscheiden, eine Baubewilligung berührt daher auch zivilrechtliche Ansprüche nicht. Auch auf die zivilrechtliche Stellung eines aus einer Servitut allenfalls verpflichteten Eigentümers hat die dingliche Wirkung eines Baubewilligungsbescheids keinen Einfluss.     

Zur Rekurslegitimation im Grundbuchsverfahren

In Grundbuchsachen ist die Rekurslegitimation nur bei Beschwer des Rechtsmittelwerbers zu bejahen, welche auch noch im Zeitpunkt der Entscheidung über das Rechtsmittel fortbestehen muss. Weicht zwar die angefochtene Entscheidung von dem vom Rechtsmittelwerber in der Vorinstanz gestellten Antrag ab, ist er also formell beschwert, ist sein Rechtsmittel dennoch zurückzuweisen, wenn seine Rechtsstellung durch die Entscheidung nicht beeintr?chtigt wird.     

Anti-depressants, suicide, and drug regulation.

Policymakers are increasingly concerned that a relatively new class of anti-depressant drugs, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI), may increase the risk of suicide for at least some patients, particularly children. Prior randomized trials are not informative on this question because of small sample sizes and other limitations. Using variation across countries over time in SSRI sales and suicide, we find that an increase of one pill per capita (a 13 percent increase over 1999 levels) is associated with a 2.5 percent reduction in suicide rates, a relationship that is more pronounced for adults than for children. Our findings suggest that expanding access to SSRIs for adults may be a cost-effective way to save lives, although policymakers are right to remain cautious about pediatric use of SSRIs.