Defensive Gun Uses: New Evidence from a National Survey

The number of civilian defensive gun uses (DGUs) against criminal attackers is regularly invoked in public policy debates as a benefit of widespread private ownership of firearms. Yet there is considerable uncertainty for the prevalence of civilian DGUs, with estimates ranging from 108,000 (using the National Crime Victimization Survey) to 2.5 million (using smaller telephone surveys) per year. In this paper we analyze the results of a new national random-digit-dial telephone survey to estimate the prevalence of DGU and then discuss the plausibility of the results in light of other well-known facts and possible sources of bias in survey data for sensitive behaviors. Because DGU is a relatively rare event by any measure, a small proportion of respondents who falsely report a gun use can produce substantial overestimates of the prevalence of DGU, even if every true defensive gun user conceals his or her use. We find that estimates from this new survey are apparently subject to a large positive bias, which calls into question the accuracy of DGU estimates based on data from general-population surveys. Our analysis also suggests that available survey data are not able to determine whether reported DGU incidents, even if true, add to or detract from public health and safety.     

Juror Sensitivity to the Cross-Race Effect

Black and White mock jurors' sensitivity to the cross-race effect was investigated by varying the race of the eyewitness in a simulated murder trial of a Black defendant. Participants heard an audiotape of a trial after which they rendered a verdict and rated the credibility of the witnesses. White participants found the prosecution witnesses (including the eyewitness) more credible, and the defense witness less credible, than did Black participants; they were also more likely to find the defendant guilty. The Black eyewitness was perceived as more credible than was the White eyewitness, but eyewitness race had no effect on verdict. These results are consistent with the literature indicating that jurors of different races reach different verdicts, and also that jurors are relatively insensitive to factors that affect eyewitness testimony, such as the cross-race effect.     

Predictor Variables in Competency to Stand Trial Decisions

Clinicians possess significant discretion in competency to stand trial assessment. Therefore, it is paramount to explore the contribution of individual variables to ensure that the decision-making process is devoid of bias and solely relates to the legal criterion. To test for the possibility of bias in clinical decision-making, we examined the predictive efficiency of clinical, criminological, and sociodemographic variables in a sample of 468 criminal defendants referred for competency evaluations. Only clinical diagnostic variables and employment status were significant predictors. This finding supports the idea that examiner decisions of competency appear to be unbiased and relate primarily to a defendant's functional ability.     

Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analytic Review of Defendant Treatment

Common wisdom seems to suggest that racial bias, defined as disparate treatment of minority defendants, exists in jury decision-making, with Black defendants being treated more harshly by jurors than White defendants. The empirical research, however, is inconsistent—some studies show racial bias while others do not. Two previous meta-analyses have found conflicting results regarding the existence of racial bias in juror decision-making (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 1315–1344; Sweeney & Haney, 1992, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 10, 179–195). This research takes a meta-analytic approach to further investigate the inconsistencies within the empirical literature on racial bias in juror decision-making by defining racial bias as disparate treatment of racial out-groups (rather than focusing upon the minority group alone). Our results suggest that a small, yet significant, effect of racial bias in decision-making is present across studies, but that the effect becomes more pronounced when certain moderators are considered. The state of the research will be discussed in light of these findings.     

Revisiting Respondent “Fatigue Bias” in the National Crime Victimization Survey

For more than three decades the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)—and its predecessor the National Crime Survey (NCS)—have been used to calculate estimates of nonfatal crime in the United States. Though the survey has contributed much to our understanding of criminal victimization, some aspects of the survey’s methodology continue to be analyzed (e.g., repeat victimizations, proxy interviews, and bounding). Surprisingly, one important aspect of NCVS methodology has escaped this scrutiny: respondent fatigue. A potential source of nonsampling error, fatigue bias is thought to manifest as respondents become “test wise” after repeated exposure to NCVS survey instruments. Using a special longitudinal NCVS data file, we revisit the presence and influence of respondent fatigue in the NCVS. Specifically, we test the theory that respondents exposed to longer interviews during their first interview are more likely to refuse to participate in the survey 6 months later. Contrary to expectations based on the literature, results show that prior reporting of victimization and exposure to a longer interview is not a significant predictor of a noninterview during the following time-in-sample once relevant individual characteristics are accounted for. Findings do demonstrate significant effects of survey mode and several respondent characteristics on subsequent survey non-participation.     

How to Improve Forensic Science

Some institutional structures for inquiry produce better approximations to truth than others. The current institutional structure of police forensics gives each lab a monopoly in the analysis of the police evidence it receives. Forensic workers have inadequate incentives to produce reliable analyses of police evidence. Competition would create such incentives. I outline a system of “competitive self regulation” for police forensics.Each jurisdiction would have several competing forensic labs. Evidence would be divided and sent to one, two, or three separate labs.Chance would determine which labs and how many would receive evidence to analyze.Competitive selfregulation improves forensics by creating incentives for error detection and reducing incentives to produce biased analyses. JEL Classification: K14, K42, H11     

Interpreting UKIP's ‘Earthquake’ in British Politics: UK Television News Coverage of the 2009 and 2014 EU Election Campaigns

UK broadcasters came under fire for the amount of airtime UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage received after the party won the most votes in the 2014 EU election. Our content analysis of television news during the 2009 and 2014 campaigns found little bias in terms of soundbites, but in the more recent election Farage visually appeared in coverage to a greater degree than other party leaders. Moreover, two core UKIP policies—being in or out of Europe and immigration—dominated coverage in 2014. We suggest the ‘UKIP factor’ and the media's fascination with Nigel Farage help explain why the 2014 campaign was more visible on television news than was the case in 2009 and was largely reported through a Westminster prism. Although television news bulletins attempt to impartially report elections, the 2014 campaign agenda was largely contested on UKIP's ideological terrain and the party's electoral fortunes.     

The return of censitary suffrage? The effects of automatic voter registration and voluntary voting in Chile

How does a change from a compulsory voting system to a voluntary one affect election turnout? It is often argued that an electoral regime under which voting is voluntary reproduces class bias or, in other words, that the rich vote more than the poor. This bias is corrected either by the introduction of compulsory voting or the existence of strong left-wing parties and trade unions able to mobilize poorer segments of the population. In this article, we put forward an alternative argument. We assert that when voting is voluntary, class bias can disappear if an election is very competitive since this affects both turnout and its socio-economic composition. To evaluate this argument, we examine the case of Chile's 2012 municipal election when voting was voluntary for the first time, instead of compulsory.     

Evaluating partisan gains from Congressional gerrymandering: Using computer simulations to estimate the effect of gerrymandering in the U.S. House

What is the effect of gerrymandering on the partisan outcomes of United States Congressional elections? A major challenge to answering this question is in determining the outcomes that would have resulted in the absence of gerrymandering. Since we only observe Congressional elections where the districts have potentially been gerrymandered, we lack a non-gerrymandered counterfactual that would allow us to isolate its true effect. To overcome this challenge, we conduct computer simulations of the districting process to redraw the boundaries of Congressional districts without partisan intent. By estimating the outcomes of these non-gerrymandered districts, we are able to establish the non-gerrymandered counterfactual against which the actual outcomes can be compared. The analysis reveals that while Republican and Democratic gerrymandering affects the partisan outcomes of Congressional elections in some states, the net effect across the states is modest, creating no more than one new Republican seat in Congress. Therefore, the partisan composition of Congress can mostly be explained by non-partisan districting, suggesting that much of the electoral bias in Congressional elections is caused by factors other than partisan intent in the districting process.     

Rising Damp in the Suburbs. Or ‘Whatever Happened to the Villa Tory?’

The suburban areas that were initially stereotyped in the late nineteenth century as ‘Villa Tory’ strongholds and exemplified by Hackney and Islington had, by the 1980s, become ‘bedsitter’ areas dominated by the political left. An examination of the evolution of electoral behaviour in these areas shows that conservatism did indeed dominate the villa suburbs, and that although there were previous intimations of decline, it was not until 1945 that Labour broke the Conservatives’ grip. The causes of this are identified as an outward movement of the population to interwar suburbia, the breaking up of villas into flats, and Labour's increasing appeal to middle class electors. In this category of seats, Labour has outperformed the party's national achievement consistently since 1955; the party's exceptional results here in the 2017 election are, therefore, a new peak on a long‐term trend rather than a breakthrough.