A LATENT TRAIT APPROACH TO UNIFYING CRIMINAL CAREERS *

We propose a latent trait model that simultaneously accounts for both participation in crime and the frequency of crimes, phenomena that the criminal career model attributes to different causal processes. The criminal career model is predicated on a categorical distinction between active offenders and nonoffenders, but the latent trait model assumes a continuous distribution of propensity to offend. Our specific statistical model relates a relatively stable and general latent propensity to engage in crime to the frequency of criminal behavior. The latent trait model successfully fit both the proportion of offenders (participation) and frequency of offending for several samples and several measures of offending. The model fit both samples of whites and nonwhites and both males and females. This shows that separate causal processes are not necessary to account for group differences in frequency and in participation, which disproves the major evidence in favor of the criminal career model. Finally, the latent trait model yielded evidence that disparate sex differences in rates of participation for different categories of offenses are consistent with a single difference on a latent trait. This demonstrates the latent trait model's potential for parsimoniously unifying knowledge about criminal careers.     

Police enforcement of alcohol-related laws

Data are presented that indicate that the Southern region of the United States has a much higher arrest rate for drunkenness than other regions of the country; that the state of Kentucky has a much higher arrest rate for drunkenness and for alcohol offenses in total than even the Southern region; and that Madison County, Kentucky has much higher rates than even the state of Kentucky. Data collected from court records in Madison County are then presented to describe the people arrested for alcoholrelated offenses, the circumstances of their arrests, and the legal processing of their cases. Finally, speculative hypotheses for the higher arrest rates for alcohol-related offenses in the South, in Kentucky, and in Madison County are discussed.     

Neoclassical Difficulties: Tort Deterrence for Latent Injuries*

Economists often claim that the tort system leads firms to provide consumers and workers with the socially optimal level of safety. Moreover, in the case of work-related hazards, employers are alleged to have another source of incentives to take precautions. If wages are sensitive to job-related risks, employers should spend money to reduce such risks when, by doing so, they can save more in wage costs than the costs of the precautions taken. Whatever their merits in other settings, in the case of latent injuries such as workplace exposure to asbestos neither tort nor market are likely to provide an optimal level of safety; indeed, they have failed to do so in the examples we discuss. We find that the introduction of a long delay between the exposure to a hazard and the onset of symptoms introduces a variety of empirical complications that overwhelm the assumptions on which the neoclassical model rests. Our conclusion is thus that comparisons between tort and alternative systems of deterrence/compensation should start from an empirical assessment of how the tort system actually works (and doesn't work), rather than beginning with misleading theoretical claims about the system's optimality.     

Fatal cocaine poisoning

A case of lethal cocaine poisoning after parenteral application is described. The results of the quantitative gas chromatographic determination in blood, liver, urine, stomach contents and muscle are reported.     

The semiotics of international law: Interpretation of the abm treaty

Loyola Law School, 1441 West Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90015, U.S.A. My thanks to Jacqueline Grunfeld for valuable research assistance.