The judicial response to crime and the criminal: A utilitarian perspective

This paper examines the hypothesis that the sentencing decision of the criminal court is consistent with utilitarian principles and that the judiciary uses the length of incarceration as an instrument for the maximization of societal well-being. A theoretical model is developed, whose principal arguments are offender and offense attributes, resource costs, the availability of alternative sanctions, and the general crime rate. Four questions are considered: (i) How does a utilitarian court respond to a general increase in crime? (ii) How does the availability of alternative sanctions affect the length of incarceration ? (iii) How does a utilitarian court respond to offenders who are more likely to recidivate? (iv) How does the court respond to offenders who commit more serious offenses? The model is empirically evaluated, using cross-sectional data for the state of Georgia for individuals sentenced to prison in 1978 for a UCR index offense. The theoretical model provides few specific behavioral rules for the court to follow. Answers to the foregoing four questions are shown to depend upon both the efficacy of sanctions and the cost of the administration of those sanctions. It is not possible to predict, for example, how a utilitarian court should respond to a rise in crime or how it should respond to offenders who are likely to commit more serious offenses. The empirical analysis shows that, in fact, the sentence length varied inversely with the general offense rate, with the likelihood of imprisonment, and with the length of postprison probation. The evidence also indicates that sentences vary with the individual's original record but not with the offender's age or race. With the exception of possible gender bias, the court's sentencing behavior was consistent with utilitarian principles.     

农村土地流转制度问题探析

土地是农业最基本的生产要素,土地制度也是三农问题的核心。我国目前的农村土地制度是在家庭联产承包责任制基础上形成的,随着环境的变化和市场经济的发展,急需建立和完善农地流转制度,新制度经济学的产权理论和交易成本理论提供了对我国目前农地流转问题和对策的分析视角。     

基于企业诚信视角的食品安全问题研究

近年来,食品安全事故层出不穷,不少学者认为中国食品市场的监管体制不顺、监管法律不完善是食品安全事故多发的主要原因。诚然,这些都是不争的事实。然而,生产者承担的不安全成本过低,导致食品行业普遍缺乏诚信也是问题食品接连不断被生产出来的一个不容忽视的因素。因此,有必要研究抽样误差、检验误差、追溯误差对食品生产者成本的影响,进而不断创新监管工具和监管思路、改进监管技术,让不安全食品的生产者直接承担不安全食品所带来的成本,以此促使生产者为食品安全付出更多努力。     

违法侦查行为的程序性制裁效果研究——以非法口供排除规则为中心

不断出现的冤案及其背后的违法侦查问题使整个刑事司法的公信力日趋式微。学界和司法部门最高层认识到,只有通过建立非法证据排除规则,剥夺违法侦查者非法取证的利益,才能促使其依法取证。此谓程序性制裁。但是,在目前的机制下,由于我国违法侦查的发现几率极低、无法定罪的成本极小和次级制裁机制的乏力,程序性制裁根本无法成为依法取证的"激励机制"。因此,如果要使程序性制裁的威慑效果发挥作用,必须建立有效的违法侦查行为发现机制,把非法证据排除真正转变为违法侦查的成本,并使法院真正具备作出无罪判决的能力。     

区域成本差异对贵州经济发展的影响--少数民族地区经济发展的个案分析

本文是基于一个宏观的研究视角,从国民经济核算的角度,利用投入产出的方法,定量研究贵州作为一个少数民族省域其经济发展成本与全国、东中西三大经济带、七大经济区域之间的差异.依据贵州的省情,采用定性和定量相结合的分析方法,深入探讨影响贵州发展成本的主要因素,以及区域成本差异对贵州经济发展的影响.     

Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public–public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government

ABSTRACT

In local government systems worldwide, financial pressures have obliged local authorities to focus on cost-efficient methods for providing local services, including inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships. However, in comparison with municipal mergers, privatisation and other approaches to the problem, the cost impact of the cooperative provision has not yet been thoroughly examined empirically. Moreover, available empirical research has largely concentrated on waste disposal in developed countries. The present paper seeks to contribute to the empirical literature on inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships by comparing their impact on costs with ‘stand-alone’ provision in a range of non-waste local services. In contrast to the bulk of existing studies, our analysis takes place in a developing country context by examining Brazilian local government over the period 2013/15. We found that – on the whole – cooperative provision is less expensive than the ‘stand-alone’ provision for the services studied. Our results can be explained by the size and composition of the population, together with the politics for cooperation.     

Weight of authorship evidence with multiple categories of stylometric features: A multinomial-based discrete model

This study empirically demonstrates the efficacy of a two-level Dirichlet-multinomial statistical model (the Multinomial system) for computing likelihood ratios (LR) for linguistic, textual evidence with multiple stylometric feature types with discrete values. The LRs are calculated separately for each feature type, namely, word, character and part of speech N-grams (N = 1,2,3), which are combined as overall LRs through logistic regression fusion. The Multinomial system’s performance is compared with that of a previously proposed system with the cosine distance (the Cosine system) using the same data (i.e., documents collated from 2160 authors). The experimental results show that: (1) the Multinomial system outperforms the Cosine system with the fused feature types by a log-LR cost of ca. 0.01 ～ 0.05 bits; and (2) the Multinomial system is more advantageous in performance with longer documents than the Cosine system. Although the Cosine system is more robust overall against the sampling variability arising from the number of authors included in the reference and calibration databases, the Multinomial system can achieve reasonable stability in performance; for example, the standard deviation value of the log-LR cost becomes lower than 0.01 (10 random samplings of authors for the reference and calibration databases) with 60 or more authors in each database.     

国家赔偿费用支付方式存在的问题及解决办法

我国现行国家赔偿法对国家赔偿费用支付方式的规定,在落实中存在若干问题。建议从以下几个方面对其予以完善：一是建立统一的国家赔偿基金;二是由申请人直接向国家赔偿基金管理部门申请赔偿;三是建立公正合理的国家赔偿评估机制;四是限制国家赔偿基金管理部门的审查权。     

从错失的500万元解读彩票合同

作为格式合同的一种,彩票合同理应受相应的限制。然而,当碰到具体问题时,具体分析当事人的权利之争才是符合公平正义的立法精神的做法。此外,作为射幸合同的一种,符合合同约定的条件是发生相应法律效果的充分以及必要条件;彩票合同法律效果要达到,兑奖期限同样是必要条件。     

成本收益理论：腐败与反腐败的机理

腐败者在进行腐败前大都要对自己的行为所可能带来的收益与可能带来的损失进行比较和衡量,即考虑通过腐败究竟能取得什么样的收益和付出什么样的代价？这就是收益与成本的关系。对于每一个“理性的经济人”来说,只有当腐败收益大于腐败成本时,权力拥有者才会铤而走险并运用其手中的权力实施腐败行为;反腐败同样存在成本与效益的问题。腐败的成本收益和反腐败的成本收益,两者有所区别同时也相互依存,腐败者的收益往往包含于反腐败所能得到的收益中,而反腐败成本的提高往往为了提高腐败者的成本。因此想有效的控制或遏制腐败,就应当从提升腐败成本和降低腐败收益,甚至从减少反腐败成本等方面进行全方位的制度性建设。