Urban Change and Policing: Mass Private Property Re-considered

This article examines a key explanation for the growth of private policing in North America and Western Europe - the influential mass private property thesis (Shearing and Stenning 1981). The discussion of private policing in Western Europe still tends to be heavily influenced by theories developed in the North American context, theories which may be problematic in the contrasting legal, social and economic contexts of Western European nations. The development of more Eurocentric theories has to date been inhibited by the relative paucity of empirical data on the rise of private policing in European countries. Recent research in Britain (Jones and Newburn 1998b) has begun to address this problem, and to map out some important contrasts with the North American experience. By considering these contrasts, it is possible to identify some key areas for future research on private policing in European countries and thus provide a more contextually-grounded series of explanations for what is happening to policing.Joseph Rowntree Foundation Professor of Urban Social Policy     

Assessing Stability and Change in Criminal Offending: A Comparison of Random Effects, Semiparametric, and Fixed Effects Modeling Strategies

An important theoretical problem for criminologists is an explanation forthe robust positive correlation between prior and future criminaloffending. Nagin and Paternoster (1991) have suggested that the correlationcould be due to time-stable population differences in the underlyingproneness to commit crimes (population heterogeneity) and/or thecriminogenic effect that crime has on social bonds, conventionalattachments, and the like (state dependence). Because of data andmeasurement limitations, the disentangling of population heterogeneityand state dependence requires that researchers control for unmeasuredpersistent heterogeneity. Frequently, random effects probit models havebeen employed, which, while user-friendly, make a strong parametricassumption that the unobserved heterogeneity in the population follows anormal distribution. Although semiparametric alternatives to the randomeffects probit model have recently appeared in the literature to avoid thisproblem, in this paper we return to reconsider the fully parametric model. Viasimulation evidence, we first show that the random effects probit modelproduces biased estimates as the departure of heterogeneity from normalitybecomes more substantial. Using the 1958 Philadelphia cohort data, we thencompare the results from a random effects probit model with a semiparametricprobit model and a fixed effects logit model that makes no assumptions aboutthe distribution of unobserved heterogeneity. We found that with this dataset all three models converged on the same substantive result—evenafter controlling for unobserved persistent heterogeneity, with models thattreat the unobserved heterogeneity very differently, prior conduct had apronounced effect on subsequent offending. These results are inconsistentwith a model that attributes all of the positive correlation between priorand future offending to differences in criminal propensity. Sinceresearchers will often be completely blind with respect to the tenabilityof the normality assumption, we conclude that different estimationstrategies should be brought to bear on the data.     

论我国政府职能的转变——以政府行政手段的转变为研究视角

当前，我国政府在运用行政手段对社会经济进行管理和调节时还存在着较多的问题，影响了国家经济的正常运行，行政手段的转变成为必然。实现我国政府行政手段转变的路径主要有六个方面：宏观调控与微观管理相结合；有限广度与合理深度相结合；政府主导与社会参与相结合；行政成本与行政绩效相结合；刚性行政与柔性行政相结合；依法行政与行为救济相结合。     

检察机关在刑事审判中的两种职能及其关系

检察机关在刑事审判程序中担负的职能如何定性，是一个颇具争议的问题。检察机关在一审、二审及再审中的活动表明其在刑事审判中实际行使公诉和审判监督两种职能。两种职能的性质不同，二者是互相独立的，因而不宜再由同一机关行使，刑事审判监督职能应该从检察机关的职能中分离出来     

利与弊：评公诉人“一身兼二职”

公诉人在庭审中"一身兼二职"是司法实践的一贯做法,但从立法修改的精神看,公诉人的这种做法不仅没有必要,而且在具体操作中困难重重。因此,为实现司法公正,这种"一身兼二职"的做法亟待改变。     

共同犯罪人分类模式的比较与优化

共同犯罪人定罪量刑的科学解决,有赖于刑法对其正确分类。由于历史文化传统的差异,导致各国刑法在对共同犯罪人分类上的不同。运用比较研究的方法,探讨各国在共同犯罪人分类上的优劣,倡导共同犯罪人分类的二元论立法结构模式,将有益于我国共同犯罪刑法立法的完善。     

辩论主义:溯源与变迁——民事诉讼中当事人与法院作用分担的再思考

强调当事人自我责任的辩论主义是19世纪自由主义思潮在民事诉讼中的反映。辩论主义提供的只是关于民事诉讼基本构造的指导性法理,而不是彻底否定法院职权探知的理由。在辩论主义的百年变迁中,始终伴随着对其内涵的全面限制及法院协助当事人提供事实与证据义务的普遍强化。我国《民事诉讼法》在确立辩论主义原则时,应重视在诉讼资料收集层面当事人与法院的协作,强化法院的实体性诉讼指挥义务并赋予辩论主义新的内涵。     

Assessing Readiness to Change among Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence: Analysis of Two Self-report Measures

Recent interest in the construct of motivation to change among male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) has led to development of two self-report measures of this construct: the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment for Domestic Violence (URICA-DV; Levesque et al. 2000) and the Safe at Home Inventory (SAH; Begun et al. 2003). We examined the internal structure of these instruments using confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses in a sample of 199 male IPV perpetrators waiting to begin court-mandated batterer intervention programs. Results indicated that the scales had adequate internal consistency. However, using confirmatory factor analyses, the hypothesized structural models of each instrument fit the data poorly. Subsequent models suggested by a series of exploratory factor analyses failed to improve model fit substantially for both scales. For the URICA-DV, a 3-factor model including items from the Precontemplation, Contemplation, and Action subscales fit the data adequately. No acceptable model fit could be found for the SAH. Intercorrelations among similar subscales across the two inventories suggested only a modest degree of intercorrelation (r’s = 0.16–0.52), and a factor structure more dependent on scale of origin than item latent content, suggesting that the scales assess different facets of the readiness to change construct. These results suggest that before the stages of change construct can be fully applied to the IPV area, more research and evaluation are needed on how to accurately assess abuser readiness to change.     

建设人民满意的服务型政府

建设人民满意的服务型政府是我国政治体制改革的重要目标和主要内容。建设服务型政府是建设有中国特色社会主义的本质要求,是促进中国特色社会主义民主政治建设的必然要求,是完善社会主义市场经济体制的客观要求,是行政管理体制改革的内在要求。建设服务型政府,应当确立以民为本的服务理念,转变政府职能,推行政务公开,实施绩效评估,改善工作作风。     

The “Science of Science Policy”: reflections on the important questions and the challenges they present

Developing the “Science of Science Policy” will require data collection and analysis related to the processes of innovation and technological change, and the effects of government policy on those processes. There has been much work on these topics in the last three decades, but there remain difficult problems of finding proxies for subtle concepts, endogeneity, distinguishing private and social returns, untangling cumulative effects, measuring the impact of government programs in a true “but for” sense, and sorting out national and global effects. I offer observations on how to think about these issues. This paper was presented as the Keynote Address at the NSF Workshop on Advancing Measures of Innovation: Knowledge Flows, Business Metrics, and Measurement Strategies, Arlington, VA, June 2006.