The Effects of Urbanisation in South and Central Africa

This represents the bulk of a lecture on the 10th July, underthe Chairmanship of Lord Hailey. Mr. Rheinallt Jones is Presidentof the South African Institute of Race Relations, and Advisoron Native Affairs to the Anglo-American Corporation.     

Row,Row,Row Your Boat...

My afternoon plans to go dragon boat racing on Houhai Lake in downtown Beijing could have started better.Cycling across town,     

Running to Extremes

For some,simply running 21 km, or a full marathon at 42 km, isn’t enough of an achievement. I mean, you can run amarathon in almost every major city in     

THE CONTAGIOUS NATURE OF ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Attention is called to several recently advanced lines of evidence underscoring the role of contagion in antisocial behavior. One line of evidence consists of findings that the onset of antisocial behavior in one sibling increases the risk to other siblings. A second line of evidence shows that the tendency of monozygotic twins to be more concordant for antisocial behavior than dizygotic twins can be explained by contagion as well as heredity. In addition, there are differences in prevalence between same-sexed and opposite-sexed twins that contagion can explain, but heredity cannot, at least not without numerous ad hoc auxiliary suppositions. Third, behavioral contagion is also able to explain, and very precisely, the temporal course of aggregate delinquency through adolescence. Fourth, evidence has been presented that antisocial behavior is an equilibrial phenomenon, that is, that it depends on a balance between antisocial and prosocial forces, a balance (or imbalance) that would explain the sudden leaps and falls that crime statistics sometimes take. Finally, programs to combat drug use are often modestly successful and almost all such programs presuppose that drug use is contagious. The paper closes with two sections on the implications of these findings, first for theory and research and then for policy and practice.     

Taxes,Time, and Support for Security

New technologies have been developed in response to terrorism. These present problems for local officials: implementing technologies will be expensive, and no technologies exist that can be used to gauge demand. We apply contingent valuation methodologies to determine support for additional taxes to pay for new terrorism‐related technologies and services. We present findings from a national survey about people's attitudes toward terrorism prevention and response. We find that respondents generally support new services and technologies and local tax increases to pay for them. We also find that respondents are willing to pay more if programs have everyday uses that would enhance public safety, but are less supportive as inconveniences increase.