FACTORS INFLUENCING GUN CARRYING AMONG YOUNG URBAN MALES OVER THE ADOLESCENT‐YOUNG ADULT LIFE COURSE*

This paper uses data from an ongoing panel study of urban youth to examine the causes and correlates of hidden gun carrying among young urban males. The analysis assesses the changing impact of gang membership, drug sales, and peer gun ownership for protection on gun carrying at nine separate points over the early adolescent to young adult life course. In early adolescence, gang membership is a strong motivation for gun carrying. At somewhat older ages, drug dealing, particularly high drug sales, and illegal peer gun ownership replace gang membership as the primary determinants of illegal gun carrying.     

When Oil Prices were Low: Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) and Economic Policy-making in Venezuela since 1989

Abstract — There has been a considerable literature on the role of institutions in economic performance in general, in Latin America as a whole, and in Venezuela in particular. Venezuelan state institutions have been seen as highly patrimonialist and poorly performing, despite the advantages of long-standing democracy and large-scale resource wealth. This discussion calls attention to the highly significant 'special case' of the oil sector where the state company, PdVSA, has been bureaucratically autonomous and relatively efficient. Such a situation creates rather unusual policy-making problems given the fact that the economy is structured around oil income, in many respects to its disadvantage. There has been a considerable literature on economic policy reform in Venezuela which has hardly mentioned the oil sector at all. This article discusses the oil industry under Presidents Perez (1989–93) and Caldera (since 1994) to rectify the balance and to use insights derived from the study of the oil sector to offer some fresh perspectives on Venezuelan political history since 1989.     

Public Finance,Governance, and Cash Transfers in Alleviating Poverty and Inequality in Chile

As the Chilean government seeks to reduce poverty and inequality through cash transfers to poor households, local governments are responsible for both identifying the poor and allocating transfers. Until recently, however, evaluating the effectiveness of local governments in enacting these policies has been restricted by data limitations. This paper builds on recent evidence that cash transfers have highly variable impacts on poverty and inequality at the county level. In particular, we explore how local public finance and the strength of the governing mandate influence the efficiency of cash transfers. With a richly specified model, we find that public spending on goods and services, the fraction of available subsidies claimed by the local government, and the share of county land that is zoned for industrial purposes are all correlated with considerable reductions in poverty and inequality. In addition, the strength of the governing mandate weakly influences the efficiency of transfers in reducing poverty, but not inequality. These results demonstrate that a better understanding of such institutions can lead to more efficient targeting for social programs.     

Under the Knife

Last summer, I decided my impending move to Beijing should coincide with a shift in emphasis to health.Gone would be the     

THE CASCADING EFFECTS OF ADOLESCENT GANG INVOLVEMENT ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE*

The short‐run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal behavior in adulthood. Drawing on the life‐course perspective, this study argues that gang involvement will lead to precocious transitions that, in turn, will have adverse consequences on the fulfillment of adulthood roles and statuses in the economic and family spheres. Moreover, problems fulfilling these conventional roles are hypothesized then to lead to sustained involvement in criminal behavior in adulthood. Using data from a sample of males from the Rochester Youth Development Study, results from structural equation models support the indirect link between gang membership and noncriminal and criminal outcomes in adulthood. Specifically, gang involvement leads to an increase in the number of precocious transitions experienced that result in both economic hardship and family problems in adulthood. These failures in the economic and family realms, in turn, contribute to involvement in street crime and/or arrest in adulthood. Implications for the criminal desistance process are discussed.     

The Expenses Scandal and the Politics of Electoral Reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.     

U.S. National Identity,Political Elites,and a Patriotic Press Following September 11

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001, U.S. government and military leaders often articulated distinctly pro-American themes in their public communications. We argue that this national identity discourse was at the heart of the U.S. government's attempt to unite the American public and to mobilize support for the ensuing "war on terrorism." With this perspective, we content analyzed Time and Newsweek newsmagazines for the five weeks following September 11 to identify potential communication strategies employed by government and military leaders to promote a sense of U.S. national identity. Findings suggest (a) that government and military officials consistently emphasized American core values and themes of U.S. strength and power while simultaneously demonizing the "enemy," and (b) that journalists closely paralleled these nationalist themes in their language.     

A Framework for Comparison of Intensive and Special Probation Projects

This paper presents a conceptual framework to consider the activities and outcomes of probation projects. It is based on twenty site visits at which probation staffs described how project activities interrelated to produce desired effects. Based upon comparative analysis of these projects, alternative probation strategies are contrasted in six areas: (1) caseload reduction as a means to increase contact time; (2) in-house versus out-house treatment services; (3) helping relationships and tightened surveillance for probationers; (4) ways to enhance community acceptance; (5) usefulness of attempting to change probationer attitudes versus behaviors; and (6) goals of reduced criminal activity during, versus after, probation. The analysis points up underlying assumptions of probation programs and leads to three recommendations. First, contact character is a more superior measure of probation intensity than is caseload reduction. Second, probation projects should prepare conceptual frameworks to better understand the relationship between project activities and desired outcomes, but they should not be subject to elaborate evaluation requirements. Third, multiple measures of criminal activity allow a more balanced appraisal than is possible with single measures such as revocation rate or recidivism.