The effects of the electoral calendar on terrorist attacks

The goal of this paper is to study the linkages between the timing of terrorist events and elections. As strategic actors terrorists may respond to electoral environments by altering the frequency of their attacks around election times. Focusing on democracies, we examine variations in transnational and domestic terrorist incidents before elections over a 40 year span. We find distinct pre-electoral changes in the incidence of terrorist events. In the ITERATE data set, where only transnational terrorist events are included, terrorist activities decline in election months, while in the partitioned GTD data set, where only domestic terrorist events are kept, terrorist activities rise in election months. The findings suggest electoral calendars can dissuade and attract terrorist threats, depending on the origin of the threat, but these effects occur only very close to election time.     

大湄公河次区域合作国内外研究：回顾与分析

1992年,大湄公河次区域合作（驻亚洲开发银行的倡导下正式启动。同时,国内外关于大湄公河次区域合作的研究也逐渐兴起。目前大湄公河次区域合作的国内研究以经济路径为主,涵盖诸多议题。国外研究则主要围绕大湄公河次区域的水资源安全、生态环境保护、区域治理3个议题开展。大湄公河次区域合作的国内研究需要“取长补短,拓展视野”,在研究路径和议题选择上有所突破和推进。     

责任阻却性紧急避险的厘清与适用——以受虐妇女杀夫案为视角

目前我国司法实践在处理受虐妇女杀夫案时直接进入量刑阶段,忽视了适用出罪事由实现无罪的可能性。在此类案件中,虽然因不存在正在进行的不法侵害而不能适用正当防卫,但针对危险引发者的防卫行为则可以运用其他紧急权资源。受虐妇女因无法忍受家庭暴力而杀害丈夫的行为,构成防御性紧急避险。然而紧急避险的正当化根据,不应采取功利主义的法益权衡说,而应采取社会团结义务说。即仅在理性人自愿负担的社会团结义务的限度以内才能成立违法阻却事由,因侵害生命的避险行为超出了社会团结义务的限度而无法得以正当化,但可能成立以无期待可能性为基础的责任阻却性紧急避险,这与我国《刑法》第21条的规定并不矛盾。     

The Impact of Officer and Agency Characteristics on the Likelihood of Arrest in Domestic Violence Situations among Rural Law Enforcement Officers

Domestic violence cuts across all demographic groups. The factors related to why police officers arrest in some domestic violence situations but not others have been often studied. Little research, however, has been conducted on the arrest views of rural police officers. One hundred seventy line officers in six rural Midwestern counties were surveyed to determine the impact of officer personal characteristics and agency type on arrest decisions in various hypothetical domestic violence scenarios. First, the same situational factors appeared to be important in shaping the arrest decision in domestic violence calls of rural officers as have previously been found with urban officers. Second, the characteristics of officers and the type of agency had some impact on the likelihood of arrest, particularly if there was evidence of a physical assault. Third, the presence of evidence of a physical assault helped shape the arrest decisions of rural officers. Fourth, situational factors were more important than officer characteristics and the type of agency. Nancy Hogan and Shannon Barton contributed equally to the paper. The authors thank Janet Lambert for editing and proofreading the paper. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.     

Domestic Violence and Children’s Presence: A Population-based Study of Law Enforcement Surveillance of Domestic Violence

The purpose of the present study was twofold: (1) to test whether law enforcement officers could reliably use a standard protocol to collect data on domestic violence events (DVEs) across a large municipality, and (2) to use these data to examine prevalence and nature of the violence and children’s presence. Reliability checks indicated that data were collected reliably on over 5,000 substantiated DVEs. Findings showed that 48% of all assaults in the municipality were DVEs. Victims were predominantly females in their early thirties, and injuries were predominantly minor and resulted from body contact. Children were present in nearly 50% of the DVEs. They were disproportionately present in domestic violence households compared to all other households in the municipality. Domestic violence households with children were more likely to have mothers and fathers involved in the violence and were disproportionately minority households headed by single females in relatively poor neighborhoods.     

Black and Blue Bloods: Protecting Police Officer Families from Domestic Violence

Officer‐involved domestic violence (OIDV) is a national problem, with police officer families having higher rates of domestic violence than non–police officer families. OIDV is also an underresearched problem with few studies or proposed solutions. Many victims of OIDV do not report their abuse precisely because their abuser is a police officer, whom they fear is in a unique position to protect him/herself from any legal consequences. Often, OIDV complaints are not investigated properly in a nonbiased manner. While a handful of police agencies around the country have developed specific policies and procedures to deal with OIDV, Washington State has enacted legislation that requires its police agencies to adopt OIDV‐specific policies. The International Associations of Chiefs of Police (IACP), an organization that addresses various issues confronting law enforcement, has also developed a model policy on OIDV. This Note proposes that, in light of the Washington legislation and the model policy proposed by the IACP, each state should enact a statute that requires its police agencies to develop policies on OIDV. This Note also outlines a specific set of procedures that such statutes should, at a minimum, require its police agencies to adopt, ranging from educating police officers on domestic violence to developing guidelines on responding to and investigating OIDV complaints.     

论人权的国际保护界限

当前,人权保护已被普遍地接受为一项国际法原则。探究人权国际保护的合理内涵,分析人权国际保护的必要性,试以人权的国际保护界限为视角,从基础理论和基本结构两个层面,分别介绍人权国际保护的原则和构成要件。     

Determinants of Domestic Terrorism: An Examination of Ethnic Polarization and Economic Development

ABSTRACT

Many scholars have sought to explain why countries with ethnically heterogeneous populations experience higher levels of political violence, but these studies have produced mixed findings. Unlike most studies that use ethno-linguistic fractionalization indices to examine this relationship, we argue that ethnic polarization is a more appropriate measure to assess the role of ethnicity as a causal factor of domestic terrorism. This paper hypothesizes that high ethnic polarization influences the incidence of domestic terrorism, particularly when intervening economic factors are present. To test three hypotheses, we use negative binomial regression to model data from the Global Terrorism Dataset, World Bank, and the Reynal-Querol (RQ) ethnic polarization index of 116 countries between 1970 and 2012. Our findings show that terrorism is more likely to emerge in societies with high ethnic polarization and economic malaise.     

Murder Followed by Suicide: Filicide–Suicide Mothers in Italy from 1992 to 2010

The international literature shows that in 40–50% of the cases, homicides–suicides involving children under the age of 10 are committed by mothers. Here, we report some results on homicides–suicides, in the mother–child relationship, occurred in Italy between 1992 and 2010. We examined 36 cases of filicide–suicide mothers by consulting the archives of RAI, daily newspapers, and the ANSA news agency. We focused on: mothers and children's age, place of residence, date and place of the murder, number and sex of the murdered children, and modality of the homicide–suicide. At the time of the homicide–suicide, the average age of mothers was 35.4. The number of children killed by each mother was one, except in seven cases. All the women had underestimated psychopathological disorders and only six women were regularly treated. The dynamics and characteristics of the events were much more similar to suicides than homicides, so we can consider them as “extensive suicides.”