Canada–USA Bilateral Fisheries Management in the Gulf of Maine: Under the Radar Screen

Canada and the USA have developed a series of cooperative initiatives that address transboundary fisheries issues in the Gulf of Maine. The Canada–USA Steering Committee serves as an umbrella forum for discussing and coordinating transboundary management measures. Through the work of the Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee and the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee, the Steering Committee has overseen the development of joint scientific stock assessments and a sharing agreement for groundfish resources in the vicinity of the eastern Georges Bank. The bilateral Fisheries Enforcement Agreement helps ensure the success of such cooperative management initiatives by combating illegal fishing in the vicinity of the international boundary. However, the largely informal 'under the radar screen' arrangements, while positive on many fronts, to date fall short of fully implementing key principles of sustainable development, such as public participation, the ecosystem approach, integration and precaution.     

Patrolling Public Schools: The Impact of Funding for School Police on Student Discipline and Long‐term Education Outcomes

As police officers have become increasingly common in U.S. public schools, their role in school discipline has often expanded. While there is growing public debate about the consequences of police presence in schools, there is scant evidence of the impact of police on student discipline and academic outcomes. This paper provides the first quasi‐experimental estimate of funding for school police on student outcomes, leveraging variation in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. Exploiting detailed data on over 2.5 million students in Texas, I find that federal grants for police in schools increase middle school discipline rates by 6 percent. The rise in discipline is driven by sanctions for low‐level offenses or school code of conduct violations. Further, I find that Black students experience the largest increases in discipline. I also find that exposure to a three‐year federal grant for school police is associated with a 2.5 percent decrease in high school graduation rates and a 4 percent decrease in college enrollment rates.     

The saliency of gestural misinformation in the perception of a violent crime

Recent research has revealed that misinformation from gestures can influence eyewitness memory. However, it is still unclear whether gestural misinformation can emulate the effects of verbal misinformation on the reporting of major details in serious crimes. To investigate the salience of suggestions provided nonverbally, and how these compare to those made verbally, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, participants watched footage of a crime scene and were presented with one of two types of gestures during questioning that suggested different interpretations of the crime. The results confirmed that the gestures influenced responses, with participants altering their interpretation of the crime according to the information gestured to them. Experiment 2 built on this to investigate how comparable gestural influence was to verbal influence. The results revealed that gestural misinformation caused participants to alter their interpretation of the crime and elicited the same effects as verbal misinformation. Across the two experiments, participants were unlikely to identify the misleading gestures or report feeling misled by them. These results reveal new insights into the strength of gestural misinformation and show that, despite their subtle nature in communication, gestures can exert a powerful influence in eyewitness interviews.     

The Reasons Behind Early Adolescents’ Responses to Peer Victimization

Victims of school-based peer harassment face a range of risks including psycho-social, physical, and academic harm. The aim of the present study was to examine the behavioral coping responses used by early adolescents when they face peer victimization. To meet this aim, 216 sixth grade students (55 % girls) from two urban middle schools and 254 students (50 % girls) from one suburban middle school completed structured open-ended questions about a recent peer victimization experience. In both school settings, the results supported both previously- and newly-identified coping responses that fit within the approach-avoidance coping framework, reasoning that maps on to social information processing models, and systematic associations between reasoning and the coping responses adopted by the adolescents. In both school settings, approach responses were associated with having the goal of defending oneself against the victimization whereas avoidance responses were associated with wanting to prevent the escalation of the peer victimization event. The discussion argues that knowledge about the link between reasoning and coping responses can be informative to understanding what coping responses are effective for victims.