Exploring the crime of identity theft: Prevalence, clearance rates, and victim/offender characteristics

Although the crime of identity theft has garnered a great deal of media attention, relatively little empirical research existed on the prevalence of the crime, its clearance rate by arrest, or the demographic characteristics of the victims and the identifiable offenders. The purpose of this article is to expand the knowledge of this growing crime. Using data from a large municipal police department located in Florida as a database, the findings suggested that the number of reported incidents of identity theft appeared to be growing at a greater rate than other theft-related offenses and the clearance rate for identity theft appeared to be declining. The typical apprehended offender was African American, female, unemployed, working alone, and was unknown to the victims, who tended to be White and male.     

Measuring unnecessary delay in administrative proceedings: The actual versus the predicted

This article discusses various ways of systematically measuring the time one would expect various administrative proceedings to consume relative to the time they actually consume taking into consideration the diverse complexity of such proceedings. The article uses the problem of administrative delay to illustrate the broader problem of creating a dependent criterion variable that measures the gap between the actual, empirical, or real situation on the one hand and the predicted, normative, or ideal situation on the other.Thanks are owed to the following who played a part in the preparation of this article but who are not responsible for the results: (1) the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure for which the author was an assistant counsel when he conducted the research; (2) the Yale Law School-Russell Sage Program in which the author was a Law and Social Science Fellow when he wrote the article; (3) the 1971 Conference on Measuring Public Policy Impact at Florida State University where the article was initially presented; and (4) the National Science Foundation which partly financed the writing under grant GS-2875 as one of a series of policy science studies on measuring and achieving effects of alternative legal policies.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LIFE-SAFETY: THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES AND "HAZARDOUS-STRUCTURE ABATEMENT," 1973–1981

The life-safety threat posed by earthquake-vulnerable buildings is widely recognized. This paper outlines the long battle fought in the City of Los Angeles to enact an ordinance intended to abate the hazard. The author also offers a series of both necessary and sufficient factors explaining Los Angelesl ultimate success.