Crime and Residential Choice: A Neighborhood Level Analysis of the Impact of Crime on Housing Prices

Crime serves as an important catalyst for change in the socio-economic composition of communities. While such change occurs over a long period of time, crime is capitalized into local housing markets quickly and thus provides an early indicator of neighborhood transition. Using hedonic regression, we quantify this “intangible cost” of crime and extend the crime-housing price literature in several important ways. First, we disaggregate crime to the census tract level. Second, using longitudinal data, we examine changes in crime in addition to the neighborhood levels of crime. Third, we differentiate between the effects of property crime and violent crime. Fourth, we also disaggregate our sample into groups based on per capita income of the census tract. Finally, we show that it is vital to account for the measurement error that is endemic in reported crime statistics. We address this with an instrumental variable approach. Our results indicate that the average impacts of crime rates on house prices are misleading. We find that crime is capitalized at different rates for poor, middle class and wealthy neighborhoods and that violent crime imparts the greatest cost.

新时期中国毒品禁而不绝的原因及对策探析

由于社会环境、毒品的种类及现今中国毒品犯罪形态发生了变化,致使我国毒品禁而不绝。开展禁毒人民战争将是遏止毒品蔓延的有效途径。     

重庆地区毒品犯罪的现状和对策建议

重庆位于长江与嘉陵江交汇之处,历史上是川、藏、滇、黔等西南各省区的水陆交通枢纽。解放前是烟毒的主要集散地。解放后,党和政府采取了一系列果断有效的措施,创造了人类文明史上短短几年彻底禁绝毒品的奇迹,以“无毒国”的光辉形象享誉世界30年。20世纪50年代之后,世界毒品犯罪的格局发生了巨大变化,国际毒品从种植、生产、加工、贩运、销售形成一体化、组织化、集团化、网络化的格局,形成了“供、销两旺”的世界大趋势。重庆面临毒品多头渗入,新型毒品猛增,吸毒人群中的亚文化现象侵蚀青少年的精神意志等严重现状,鉴于此提出一系列的对策及建议。     

Drug and violence prevention: Rediscovering the critical rational dimension of evaluation research

Following criticism of government-funded drug prevention activities of the early 1990s, a spate of best practice or science-based lists of alcohol, drug and violence prevention programs have been produced by federal agencies in recent years. The writings of Donald T. Campbell on validity have had a profound influence on the development of the methodological quality scales that have been utilized in the review processes used to generate these lists. Implicit in this approach to the identification of science-based prevention programs is the idea that science is equivalent to research methodology and study design. Following Karl Popper and Campbell, I contend that, while certain designs are clearly better than others in dealing with threats to internal validity and allow for better generalization of results beyond the study population, utilization of these designs in and of itself is not sufficient to designate an evaluation study as scientific. Nor can the accumulation of data from such studies be used to proclaim an entire area of research a science, as has occurred with the field of so-called prevention science. Rather, the fundamental criterion by which to judge the scientific status of a theory is falsifiability. If the field of drug and violence prevention is truly a science, then it should be subjecting its predictions about the effects of intervention programs to genuinely critical tests and not attempting to verify these hypotheses. It is argued that it has failed to do this, and two specific examples of prevention programs that appear on a number of science-based lists of prevention programs are discussed.     

Parenting,Peer Orientation,Drug Use,and Antisocial Behavior in Late Adolescence: A Cross-National Study

The objective of this study was to investigate the links between maternal and paternal bonding, parental practices, orientation toward peers, and the prevalence of drug use and antisocial behavior during late adolescence. A model was tested using structural equation modeling in order to verify the robustness of the investigated links across 3 countries: Canada, France, and Italy. A self-report questionnaire was given to a sample of 908 adolescents, with an equivalent number of girls and boys, in Grade 11. The questionnaire assessed the following variables: parental bonding, parental supervision, parental tolerance, orientation toward peers, involvement in physically aggressive antisocial behavior, non-physically aggressive antisocial behavior, and drug use. The model was robust across the 3 countries, thus confirming a path that identified quality of emotional bonds between adolescents and their parents as a distal variable acting upon deviant behaviors through the following mediators: parental supervision, parental tolerance, frequency of conflicts, and orientation toward peers. Michel Claes is full professor at the Université de Montréal, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Education from Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His major research interest is in social development in adolescence, with a special focus on intercultural studies.     

吸毒及其相关概念论要

目前全世界有 2亿多人在吸毒 ,截止 2 0 0 1年底 ,中国登记在册吸毒人已达 90 1万人。吸毒以其突出的社会危害性受到当今世界各国及国际社会的共同关注 ,治理吸毒问题是我国禁毒工作的首要任务之一。然而 ,我国对“禁吸”的基础理论研究相对薄弱。本文对吸毒及其相关概念进行初步研究 ,旨在为治理吸毒问题构建必要的理论基础提供参考。     

The Monetary Value of Saving a High-Risk Youth

Programs targeted at high-risk youth are designed to prevent high-school dropout, crime, drug abuse, and other forms of delinquency. Even if shown to be successful in reducing one or more social ill, a key policy question is whether the cost to society from that intervention program exceeds its benefits. Although the costs of intervention programs are often available, the benefits are more illusive. This paper provides estimates of the potential benefits from “saving” a high-risk youth, by estimating the lifetime costs associated with the typical career criminal, drug abuser, and high-school dropout. In the absence of controlled experimental data on the number of career criminals averted, one can ask the reverse question—How many career criminals must be prevented before the program “pays for itself?” Based on a 2% discount rate, the typical career criminal causes $1.3–$1.5 million in external costs; a heavy drug user, $370,000 to $970,000; and a high-school dropout, $243,000 to $388,000. Eliminating duplication between crimes committed by individuals who are both heavy drug users and career criminals results in an overall estimate of the “monetary value of saving a high-risk youth” of $1.7 to $2.3 million.     

Social learning and adolescent deviance abstention: Toward understanding the reasons for initiating,quitting, and avoiding drugs

Tests of theories that attempt to explain why individuals currently use drugs are widespread; however, the theoretical examinations of abstention from drugs and the cessation of their use are rare. For its part, social learning theory has been supported consistently in its delineation of the process by which substance use is learned. We propose that cessation and abstention are also learned behavior. Using logistic regression analysis, we examine the ability of social learning variables to distinguish among abstainers, current users, and former users of illicit drugs within a sample of 1688 middle- and high-school students in two widely separated nonurban communities. Results indicate that social learning variables clearly distinguish abstainers from current users but are less able to distinguish former users and current users or former users from abstainers. The theoretical, research, and policy implications of these findings are examined in detail.     

台湾地区毒品戒治与再犯之研究（节选）

反毒、禁毒的刑事政策归纳其中不外“断绝供给、减少需求”也就是“缉毒、戒毒、拒毒”等三大重点。目前 ,台湾地区参与戒毒工作的有医疗、宗教、矫正机关及观护等四大体系。《毒品危害防制条例》于 1998年 5月 2 2日公告施行以来 ,“缉毒”与“拒毒”已有成效 ,使得药物、毒品滥用之情形获得控制 ,毒品犯占整体犯罪人口之比例减缓增长 ,但“戒毒”却无进展。可见戒治与计划之成效有待加以检讨 ,以达到对毒品及药物成瘾者累犯、再犯严重情形之有效控制。     

打击毒品犯罪应重减少需求——需求供给均衡理论对打击毒品犯罪的启发

虽然世界各国都在大力禁毒,但是全世界的吸毒人数仍在持续增加。禁毒,重的是打击贩毒者(卖方),但是在毒品市场上如果没有需求者(买方)即吸毒者,也就不存在供应者(卖方)即贩毒者。所以,打击毒品犯罪应当重减少需求。