Daniel R. Hammond,Politics and Policy in China’s Social Assistance Reform; Providing for the Poor?

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The single most polymorphic STR Locus: SE33 performance in U.S. populations

The STR locus SE33 (ACTBP2) located on chromosome 6 (6q14) is arguably the most polymorphic marker examined thus far by the forensic community with a heterozygosity of >0.95 in some populations. Three different primer sets were utilized in this study in order to assess the possibilities of primer binding site mutations. Population variation was measured in 460 U.S. Caucasian, 445 African American, 336 Hispanic, and 202 Asian samples along with mutation rates from almost 400 father–son pairs. In addition, the 10 genomic DNA components in NIST Standard Reference Material SRM 2391b were sequenced and found to exhibit a variety of additional base changes, insertions, and deletions outside of the SE33 repeat region.     

Contradictions in Judicial Support for Capital Punishment in India and Bangladesh: Utilitarian Rationales

India and Bangladesh share a common history, and each has developed somewhat similarly since partition. However, while both countries now have relatively low murder rates, India has seen a decline in the rate of executions, while Bangladesh continues to impose death sentences and carry out executions at a higher rate. There have been challenges to the death penalty in India, restricting its use to exceptional cases. The same has not occurred in Bangladesh. Yet in both countries, systemic flaws in the criminal process are evident. This article draws on two original empirical research projects that explored judges’ opinions on the retention and administration of capital punishment in India and Bangladesh. The data expose justice systems marred by corruption, incompetence, abuses of due process, and arbitrary and inconsistent treatment of defendants from arrest through to conviction and sentencing. It shows that those with the power to sentence to death have little faith in the integrity of the criminal process. Yet, a startling paradox emerges from these studies; despite personal knowledge of its flaws, judges have trust in the death penalty to deter crime and to realise other sentencing aims and feel retention benefits society. This is explained by reference to utilitarian values. Not only did our judges express strongly utilitarian justifications for sentencing people to death, in terms of their erroneous belief in its deterrent effect, but some also articulated utilitarian justifications for misconduct in pre-trial processes, suggesting that it was necessary to break the rules to secure convictions when the system was dysfunctional and ineffective.

     

Presidential Address: “A Thousand Petty Fortresses”: Administrative Burden in U.S. Immigration Policies and Its Consequences

Contradictory elements in U.S. immigration policy, reflecting a long‐time struggle between inclusionary and exclusionary views, have resulted in federal legislation filled with compromises and tradeoffs that, at state and sub‐state levels, play out in unclear interpretations and uneven, highly discretionary administration and enforcement of immigration law and policy. This research describes a tool of discretionary administration—administrative burden—that is increasingly used in enforcing immigration law and policies at state and sub‐state levels and presents a theoretical frame for more fully investigating and addressing its consequences. The application and implications of administrative burden are explored empirically and qualitatively in a case study analysis of an enforcement‐oriented policy change in Texas that denied access to birth certificates for some citizen‐children born to Mexican immigrants. To better understand the potential consequences of this and related policies, interviews with immigrant parents and longitudinal data from a survey of children of immigrants are analyzed to assess both short‐term and later outcomes of children who are denied economic assistance and other benefits under policies that impose barriers to their integration into society. The study findings point to serious, adverse consequences for citizen children of state and sub‐state immigration policies that create administrative burden and perpetuate racial discrimination, while simultaneously diminishing the transparency, fairness, and effectiveness of public administration.     

Older Romantic Partners and Depressive Symptoms During Adolescence

Although developmental theory predicts that adolescent romantic relationships have important benefits, empirical evidence suggests that they may also carry substantial psychosocial risk. This study uses data from 4,948 respondents (50% female) in Wave I and Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the association between involvement with an older romantic partner and depressive symptoms during adolescence. Ordinary least squares regression models compared Wave II depressive symptoms among respondents with older partners (defined as an age difference of 2 or more years) to respondents with same-age or younger partners, controlling for baseline depressive symptoms and sociodemographic characteristics. Ten percent of females and two percent of males reported having an older romantic partner at Wave II. Among females only, involvement with an older romantic partner was associated with a modest but significant increase in depressive symptoms between waves. This association was largely mediated by increases in substance use. Findings suggest that involvement with an older male partner during adolescence may increase the risk of poor emotional outcomes among females.     

Capitalism obscured: the limits of law and rights-based approaches to poverty reduction and development

The Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) was established by the United Nations in 2005 and concluded in 2008. Although inspired by Hernando de Soto's analysis of the role of property rights in economic development, the scope of the Commission was defined as ‘legal empowerment’ in general. This commentary offers a critique of the CLEP report, and argues that its underlying assumptions rest on an idealised version of liberal democratic capitalism in which a dynamic market economy assures ‘win-win’ solutions for all. This implies that there are no tensions between the four ‘pillars’ of legal empowerment identified by CLEP (the rule of law, property rights, labour rights, and business rights). However, in the real world of capitalism, in both democratic and authoritarian versions, there are structural tensions between classes of capital and classes of labour, which result in the economy and its underlying institutional order becoming a key site of contestation. The case of farm labour in rural South Africa is used to illustrate this argument. A focus on legal rights can, however, be ‘empowering’ to a degree, when it helps defend poor people from exploitation and abuse, or is located within broader strategies to eradicate systemic poverty.