How Cohorts Changed Crime Rates, 1980–2016

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Identify the effect of differences in criminal activity among birth cohorts on crime rates over time. Determine the extent to which cohort effects are...     

The devil we know and the angel that did not fly: An examination of devil/angel shift in twitter fracking “debates” in NY 2008–2018

Recent work has applied the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine narrative strategies in policy debates on social media platforms. We contribute to the literature by applying the NPF to fracking policy debates in New York using well-established Natural Language Processing tools, including sentiment analysis. We combine this computational approach with a qualitative hand-coding of pro- and antifracking Twitter influentials. This approach allows us to consider a much larger corpus of tweets over a much longer time frame than has been done thus far. We adapt and test NPF propositions related to the use of the devil/angel shift strategies before and after a major state-wide policy change, that is, a state-wide moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Overall, we find evidence for the use of the devil shift narrative strategy by the pro-fracking coalition aimed at the Governor prior to the moratorium. After the moratorium, the relative percentage of Tweets containing devil shift sentiments decreases as the pro-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of angel shift language without a corresponding increase in devil shift language, whereas, conversely, the anti-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of devil shift language without a general increase in angel shift language. When we shifted our analysis to Tweets containing fracking and the Governor, we found a similar postban decrease in devil shift language among anti-fracking users. Our findings offer lessons for using computational tools in the NPF as an approach to expand analytic ability and for the operationalization of concepts such as narrative strategies and policy entrepreneurs.     

Public guardianship

Conclusion Public guardianship provides a useful means of providing care for a very vulnerable group of people—the incapacitated. This vulnerability requires that special care be taken to assure that the guardian does not subordinate the ward's interests to any other considerations. Such subordination of the ward's interests may be inadvertent or well intentioned. It may even, on occasion, be consistent with broader social or governmental policies. Nevertheless, it is a violation of the guardian's duty of loyalty.This article has discussed several methods for reducing the likelihood that the ward's rights will be infringed. Ultimately, however, the avoidance of improprieties and the maintenance of incapacitated persons in dignity depends not on procedural or managerial devices, but on the loyalty of the guardian to the interests of his or her ward.     

Ordinary Heroes vs. Failed Lawyers—Public Interest Litigation in Erin Brockovich and Other Contemporary Films

Although feature films may overpraise lawyers and civil courts as means of securing justice, they caricature lawyers and litigation. Analysis of Erin Brockovich (directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by Danny DeVito, et al., 2000) reveals four motifs—two favorable and two unfavorable to public‐interest litigants and litigation—that characterize similar films in the last decades: Class Action (1991), The Rainmaker (1997), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), A Civil Action (1998), The Insider (1999), Runaway Jury (2003), and North Country (2005). These filmic populist romances promote ordinary heroines (mostly) who redeem a problematic system through common sense and everyday virtue rather than through laws, lawyers, and litigation.     

Bondjo Ethnicity and Colonial Imagination

Cet article, qui porte sur le film Heremakono du Malien-Mauritanien Abderrahmane Sissako, examine les intertextualités cinématographiques, poétiques et picturales. Il démontre comment l'ouvrage se réfère au désert et aux divers modes qu'il engendre: importance de la trace, question du déplacement et de l'exil, tradition poétique mystique. Il analyse également l'importance de l'art abstrait et montre comment le cinéaste construit ses images selon une peinture, traçant en même temps un parallèle à l'art moderne (Kandinski, Mondrian) et à la calligraphie en Islam, où l'usage du figuratif n'est guère sollicité afin de ne pas limiter la représentation de l'Absent à une interprétation.