Prison Conditions, Capital Punishment, and Deterrence

Previous research has attempted to identify a deterrent effectof capital punishment. We argue that the quality of life inprison is likely to have a greater impact on criminal behaviorthan the death penalty. Using state-level panel data coveringthe period 1950–90, we demonstrate that the death rateamong prisoners (the best available proxy for prison conditions)is negatively correlated with crime rates, consistent with deterrence.This finding is shown to be quite robust. In contrast, thereis little systematic evidence that the execution rate influencescrime rates in this time period.     

The Taiwan Strait: A Continuing Status Quo of Deadlock?

Relations across the Taiwan Strait have demonstrated over the past 50 years a cyclical nature, revolving between states of limited tension or conflict and generally peaceful and politically acceptable stalemate. Individual policy directions followed by all of the three main actors in cross-Strait relations--China, Taiwan and the United States--continue to be pursued with a high degree of ambivalence, as countervailing political imperatives mean that any policy contains within itself the seeds for its own reversal. Any equilibrium is consequently inherently unstable, yet also drives relations back to a status quo of deadlock from which a new cycle can again commence. Given the full range of objectives on all sides, there is little likelihood of the presently existing deadlocked status quo moving towards a stable resolution. The state of neither war nor peace will continue in the Taiwan Strait, but the margin for error in probable future cycles of tension and stability remains very small.     

The Greater Yellowstone policy debate: What is the policy problem?

Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding mountainous region comprise the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), a 19 million acre area that is one of the few relatively intact ecosystems in the lower 48 states. Conservationists believe that continuation of present land management practices in the region will disrupt the ecological integrity of the GYE. Many authors have identified and described these threats, but as yet there has been no sustained effort to make sense of these threats in the context of the ongoing dynamic policy debate. We develop the foundation for such understanding by examining the implicit problem definitions that have emerged from this debate. They fall into three general categories: 1) a scientific definition, 2) an economic definition, and 3) a bureaucratic definition. This process produces an exploratory definition of the policy problem, which suggests a strategy for better understanding and policy design. We propose several intervention points at which substantive, one-the-ground improvements in the management of the GYE are possible.     

Of battered wives,self-defense and double standards of justice: A research note

In what appears to be an outgrowth of the feminist movement and concomitant revelations concerning spousal abuse in America, a new concept in criminal jurisprudence, popularly known as the battered wife syndrome defense, has arisen. Increasingly, abused women who kill their husbands are claiming that their acts were justified, not solely because of the exigency of the circumstance which directly led to the death, but because of sociological, psychological, and legal factors which operate effectively to deprive them of alternatives. This note discusses the validity of the new defense in light of existing law and posits that the claim rests upon a contorted legal foundation, that it could not stand but for an invidious gender-based discrimination violative of Fourteenth-Amendment guarantees, and that it promotes family violence.     

Exploring the consequences of erratic data reporting for cross-national research on homicide

This paper examines the common practice in cross-national research on homicide of using crime estimates for a multiyear period based on a smaller number of years than theoretically desired because of erratic data reporting for selected nations. Correlations between hypothetical baseline rates and various alternative estimates are examined to simulate the potential consequences of using temporally incomplete data rather than data for the full multiyear period of interest. The results reveal that this common practice is likely to be highly acceptable for certain national samples but less acceptable for others. The paper concludes with suggestions for dealing with potentially problematic cases.