Charge reduction: An analysis of prosecutorial discretion in burglary and robbery cases

Although a substantial number of researchers have studied charge reductions taking place within the context of guilty plea negotiations, few have focused on estimating the determinants of charge reductions taking place at the initial screening decision. The prosecutor's decision to reduce original felony charges to a misdemeanor has serious social, legal, and economic consequences for the suspect. This paper presents a model of the variables affecting the likelihood of such a reduction in burglary and robbery offenses. Drawing from Littrell's principled charging perspective and earlier research on labeling, the analysis involves estimating logistic regression equations specifying both main and interaction effects of the suspect's gender and race and variables related to suspect character, case seriousness, and legal seriousness. Partial support is found for Littrell's perspective.     

Public Administration Dilemmas: An Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effects of Performance Evaluation in Post-Colonial South Africa

The adoption of the principles of New Public Management by many governments across the world was invariably accompanied by the implementation of performance evaluation. It is generally accepted that performance evaluation optimizes the performance of workers. As part of a broader investigation which employed a mixed methods approach, the study used data from six interviews with high school principals and 100 survey questionnaires with purposively selected high school teachers in uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the analysis of this data, the paper demonstrates that beyond the obvious benefits of performance evaluation such as improvement in performance, there are also unintended consequences such as a narrow focus on measured output, teacher burnout, and falsification of information in order to maximize credit or to avoid punishment. This study illustrates the understandings of high school educators in uMgungundlovu District of the effects of performance evaluation. The findings have important implications for public administration and scholars alike.     

Dyadic Effects,Relevance, and the Empirical Assessment of the Kantian Peace

Dyadic effects to a large extent account for the difficulty of explaining and predicting international conflict. In this study, I derive a statistical model to estimate unobserved dyadic effects in the dyadic analysis of conflict. The proposed model employs a hierarchical modeling approach to estimate dyadic effects, thereby avoiding the problems caused by the use of fixed effects models. Furthermore, it simultaneously addresses the important sample selection issue of identifying relevant dyads. I show that the estimation of dyadic effects significantly improves the model fit and generates several interesting findings. Substantively, this study makes an important contribution to the empirical evaluation of the Kantian peace. It argues that international organizations increase the likelihood of conflict of interest between member states but reduce the probability of militarized conflict. I demonstrate that the positive coefficient of international organizations in Oneal and Russett (1999) is biased in the positive direction. When the proposed statistical model is used, international organizations, together with trade and democracy, reduce the probability of conflict.     

"命案必破"的实践与思索

"命案必破"有特定的涵义,对内来讲是公安机关内部侦破命案的奋斗目标,对外来说,是公安机关向人民群众表达命案侦破的决心和誓言.然而,由于部分公安机关和民警对"命案必破"缺乏正确的理解,致使"命案必破"在认识和实践上出现了误区.为了消除这种误区,防止出现冤假错案,必须坚决杜绝急功近利的思想,以事实为根据,以法律为准绳,排除外界干扰,严格公正执法,构建和谐的命案侦破外部环境.     

Frustration effects in procedural justice research: The case of drug-testing legislation

A scenario methodology was used to investigate reactions to negative outcomes resulting from drug-testing procedures. The drug-testing procedures reflected variations in State law governing the use of drug tests in employee selection. Results suggest that individuals responded most negatively to negative outcomes resulting from the legally mandated procedures. Results are discussed as an example of the frustration effect observed in the procedural justice literature. Frustration effects were most severe for individuals who were most certain, based on personal knowledge, that the drug test results were inaccurate.     

浅析女性犯罪心理形成的社会历史因素

社会历史对女性犯罪心理有着重要的影响，历史上形成的男尊女思想、三从四德的观念以及封建贞节观是女性犯罪心理形成的社会历史根源。家庭教育和学校教育和社会传媒等多方面的共同努力，是消除社会历史上不良因素影响的有效途径。     

Instrumental variables methods in experimental criminological research: what, why and how

Quantitative criminology focuses on straightforward causal questions that are ideally addressed with randomized experiments. In practice, however, traditional randomized trials are difficult to implement in the untidy world of criminal justice. Even when randomized trials are implemented, not everyone is treated as intended and some control subjects may obtain experimental services. Treatments may also be more complicated than a simple yes/no coding can capture. This paper argues that the instrumental variables methods (IV) used by economists to solve omitted variables bias problems in observational studies also solve the major statistical problems that arise in imperfect criminological experiments. In general, IV methods estimate causal effects on subjects who comply with a randomly assigned treatment. The use of IV in criminology is illustrated through a re-analysis of the Minneapolis domestic violence experiment. The results point to substantial selection bias in estimates using treatment delivered as the causal variable, and IV estimation generates deterrent effects of arrest that are about one-third larger than the corresponding intention-to-treat effects.     

中华苏维埃共和国卫生防疫保障成效之考察

中华苏维埃共和国成立后,为了遏制大规模疫病在苏区的蔓延流行,履行人民政府保障人民生命健康的神圣职责,苏维埃临时中央政府在卫生防疫保障上采取了一系列救治和防范措施,把疫病灾害减少到最低程度:构建卫生防疫组织体系;创立疫病、疫情报告制度;开展群众性卫生防疫运动;普及卫生防疫知识。中华苏维埃共和国卫生防疫保障之成效,不仅成为中华医学防疫保障史上的瑰宝,还是中国共产党维护和保障中国人权的历史见证。     

当代文化发展的产业化潮流及其双重效应

文化产业化是文化经济一体化的显性阶段，由于国情的差异，中西方的文化产业化经历了不同的发展道路，并表现出科教产业、休闲娱乐产业、传媒产业、体育产业等共同的产业形态。当代文化产业化在优化经济结构、推动文化独立以及确保经济与文化可持续发展方面的积极功效明显，但同时也带来了文化价值贬损及享乐主义泛滥的负面效应。     

Effects of preconceptions on deception detection and new answers to why lie-catchers often fail

Abstract

This study investigated the extent to which crediting and discrediting background information, given to observers before they watched three video-taped interviews with the same witness, affected their veracity judgments. Our analyses show that the observers' distribution of truth/lie-judgments were more affected by crediting than discrediting background information. We also mapped the subjective cues given to justify the truth/lie-judgments, and found that the most frequently used cue was whether or not the three statements were consistent over time. In addition, our analysis revealed two types of inter-observer disagreements. One type referred to how different cues were perceived (e.g., forty observers perceived the three statements as being inconsistent over time while an equal number perceived the same three statements as being consistent over time). The second type referred to how different cues were used (e.g., the fact that the witness was perceived as not being confident in his testimony worked against him equally as often as it worked for him).