Symposium-The Challenge In The Gulf: Building a Bridge From Containment to Stability

The following is an edited text of the proceedings of a Capitol Hill conference convened by the Middle East Policy Council on March 5, 1997, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Michael Collins Dunn, senior analyst at the International Estimate, was the moderator/discussant.     

The Privatisation of GIO Australia: Success or Failure?

The privatisation of GIO Australia took place amidst acrimonious public debate on the merits of selling this government trading enterprise. Yet the innovative methods employed in the privatisation process represented a landmark in contemporary Australian economic history, With the passage of time and the attendant flow of information, it is now possible to assess the outcome of the privatisation of GIO Australia. Without considering the wider philosophical dimensions of privatisation, we conclude that from a tripartite perspective that the privatisation of GIO Australia should be regarded as successful.
The article is subdivided into four main parts. Section 1 provides a brief synopsis of the historical evolution of GIO; Section 2 details the actual privatisation process. Section 3 analyses the impact of the privatisation in terms of its effects on the GIO, the wider insurance market in Australia, and the 'net worth' of the NSW government. The article ends with some brief concluding remarks in Section 4.     

Selective incapacitation and the Philadelphia cohort data

The University of Pennsylvania study of delinquency in a Philadelphia birth cohort has been described byNewsweek as perhaps the most influential piece of criminal justice research in the last decade (March 23, 1981). Many have construed the findings as showing that, if imprisonment were focused on the minority of offenders with especially bad prognoses, the rate of crime could be reduced substantially. But others have taken the opposite view that the cohort data, far from endorsing such a selective incapacitation strategy, might actually provide strong evidence that such an approach is futile. Through some further analyses of the Philadelphia data, we attempt to clarify their policy implications.