Scandinavian Prospects for a Place‐Based Randomized Experiment on Burglary Reduction

Despite their widespread implementation, there is a surprising absence of clear‐cut, unambiguous evidence concerning the effectiveness of situational crime prevention approaches (e.g. alarms, neighborhood watch, property‐marking) on residential burglary. This absence of evidence—which should not be confused with a presence of contradictory evidence—stems most notably from the fact that very few of the programs enacted to date have been evaluated under controlled, experimental conditions. The current article describes problems with previous evaluations and advocates the use of a place‐based, randomized experimental design—which this author argues should be easier to implement in Scandinavia than elsewhere.     

Towards a Theory of Institutionalized Judicial Exceptionalism

What happens when the exception becomes the norm, what happens when the law becomes a form for that which cannot have a legal form, that is, the political? The focus of this article is a form of power politics that is institutionalised and set up to work side by side with the existing legal system as a sort of normalized, co‐ordinated court procedure, initiated with the aim of subjecting specific groups (terrorists, criminals) to extended regulatory control and enforcement. These strategic bureaucratic mechanisms of exclusion appear as security enforced measures, which side by side with the existing ‘normal’ legal system govern a specific judicial‐political area. The normalised (or rooted, if one wishes) incorporation of extra‐judicial authority within the legal system will in the article be refered to as institutionalised judicial exceptionalism. The purpose of the article is to theorise and conceptualise the in many ways murky or indistinct phenomenon of institutionalised judicial exceptionalism.This task includes suggesting a model capable of assimilating within its theory the displacement in the relationship between the state, the law and the citizen that stems from the fact that the ever more securitized discourses on terrorism and crime increasingly take priority over the ordinarily non‐derogable principle of equality before the law.     

Chronic Offenders or Socially Disadvantaged Youth? Institutionalized Males as Missing Cases in School‐based Delinquency Research

Previous criminological studies comparing institutional youth populations with community samples have for the most part focused on youths institutionalized primarily as a result of involvements in delinquency. The present study compares levels of social disadvantage and criminal involvement within a nationally representative sample of Swedish schoolboys with those of a national population of institutionalized males that includes both serious young offenders and youths institutionalized for other reasons. Whilst at the aggregate level, mean levels of offending are higher within the institutional sample, the institutional population includes youths from across the entire range of levels of offending. Levels of social disadvantage are substantially elevated among the institutionalized males by comparison with the school sample. The study notes that institutionalized samples, where these include both young offenders and youths institutionalized for other reasons, may provide a fruitful ground for life‐course research into the way involvements in crime interact with other indicators of social disadvantage to affect the likelihood of continued marginalization into adulthood.     

Binary logistic regression models enable miRNA profiling to provide accurate identification of forensically relevant body fluids and tissues

Numerous studies have demonstrated the ability to identify the body fluid of origin of forensic biological stains using messenger (mRNA) profiling. However, the size of the amplification product used in these assays (100–400 bases) may not be ideal for use with environmentally degraded samples. MiRNA profiling represents a potential alternative to mRNA profiling, since the small size of the miRNAs (∼22 bases) might still permit their detection in degraded stains. Previously, we reported the first study involving the forensic use of microRNA (miRNA) profiling, which required screening of 452 candidates. Since our initial screening, hundreds of novel miRNAs have been identified. We have therefore evaluated additional miRNA candidates to further improve the sensitivity and specificity of the body fluid assays. Consequently we have expanded our body fluid identification panel to include 18 miRNAs (comprising 5 original and 13 novel miRNAs). This panel permits the identification of all forensically relevant body fluids and, uniquely, includes miRNAs for the identification of skin.Using normalized miRNA expression data, we constructed body fluid specific binary logistic regression models to permit an accurate identification of the body fluid of interest. Using the developed models, we have obtained 100% accuracy in predicting the body fluid of interest.     

Changing Agendas in Australian Indigenous Policy: Federalism,Competing Principles and Generational Dynamics

This paper identifies two periods of punctuated change in the content and style of Australian Indigenous policy in the last fifty years. It also identifies a third period in which attention to Indigenous policy was heightened through the nationalisation of land issues already well‐established on the agendas of sub‐national jurisdictions. The paper relates all three periods to the changing federal institutions of Australian Indigenous policy, with the Commonwealth slowly exploring its post‐1967 role as a national government in Indigenous affairs. In later sections, the paper identifies some more conceptual bases of changing policy agendas, through ideas of the competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship and the generational moral dynamics of Indigenous affairs.     

Comment on Jean L. Cummings and Denise DiPasquale's “The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit: An Analysis of the First Ten Years”

Abstract

The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (housing credit) that Cummings and Di‐Pasquale portray is effective, efficient, and healthy. However, rapid changes in the industry have turned some of their data stale, and the absence of suitable context and information invalidate some key analyses and findings. Moreover, the researchers sometimes seem to see the glass as 10 percent empty instead of 90 percent full. A practitioners’ perspective is more positive.

The housing credit generates an array of public benefits while harnessing private investors’ business discipline. Genuinely low‐income tenants occupy the housing. The housing revitalizes low‐income communities. Properties are in good financial and physical condition. The housing credit is also cost effective. The economic fundamentals of producing low‐income rental housing, not the housing credit, necessitate substantial subsidies. A remarkably high proportion of the federal tax‐credit subsidy goes into the housing, and investor returns are modest. Nonprofit‐sponsored production appears to cost more because nonprofits are prominent in high‐cost locations and for other similar reasons, not because nonprofit developers are inefficient.     

Comment on Charles C. Bohl's “New urbanism and the city: potential applications and implications for distressed inner‐city neighborhoods"—the politics of design: The new urbanists vs. the grass roots

Abstract

This article briefly reviews the origins of New Urbanism and its manifesto as emerging from the social change movements of the 1960s, which evolved out of ideas of a previous generation of American and European designers living through the rise of modern industrialization. Arising from the same turmoil of the 1960s, and parallel to the New Urbanists, evolved a more loosely affiliated network of progressive academic and practicing planners and architects who have aligned themselves with disenfranchised underclasses not benefiting from the wealth of the postwar era and who take direction not from a manifesto but from a body of thinking linked to a broader intellectual and political agenda. This group works primarily with grassroots organizations in lower‐income communities and intentionally stays out of the limelight to better serve its constituents. The article concludes with ideas for possible collaboration between these professional groups serving different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.     

A new look at creative finance

Abstract

In his seminal work, Stegman contended that creative finance is an inefficient means of financing low‐income housing production. As evidence, he cited the high transaction costs associated with the complex financing structures that make a low‐income housing development feasible. In this article, we extend Stegman's work by examining the impacts of creative finance over time. We rely on data gathered as part of an evaluation of 36 housing developments sponsored by nonprofits.

The data indicate that most of the developments in our study remained financially viable in part because of their reliance on creative finance. We find evidence supporting three positive impacts of creative finance: the establishment of long‐term partnerships, the increased community acceptance of low‐income housing developments, and the improved technical skills of organization staff. We also find that none of the long‐term negative impacts are inherent in creative finance and offer four suggestions on minimizing them.     

The convergence of nonequity housing models in Canada: Changes to housing policy since 1990

Abstract

This study examines the impact of housing policy convergence on the nonequity housing system in Ontario, Canada. Ontario has four distinct nonequity housing models— public, nonprofit cooperative, municipal nonprofit, and private nonprofit. This article argues that since 1990, housing policy in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, has become increasingly influenced by the neoconservative agenda of downsizing and decentralization of government functions found in the United States.

The findings reveal that changes to housing policy have caused the convergence of nonequity housing models in the areas of management and administration. Drawing on the present findings and on an experimental project in tenant management, this article argues that the trend toward convergence will continue and will likely result in one nonequity housing model in Canada. This pattern is interpreted in light of the neoconservative agenda of both countries that emphasizes private sector solutions to housing low‐income families.