The Roles a “Civil Society” Can Play in International Dispute Resolution

Since its very inception, the United Nations has worked with NGOs (non-governmental organizations) or, to use the contemporary term, a "civil society." In fact, every single U.N. department now has an NGO liaison. As the world becomes increasingly smaller, the role and influence of NGOs will continue to be significant in international negotiations.     

Extending the EITC to noncustodial parents: Potential impacts and design considerations

This paper examines the noncustodial parent earned income tax credit (NCP EITC), a new type of credit recently enacted in New York and Washington, D.C., and proposed by Senator Bayh and then‐Senator Obama in 2007. The NCP EITC offers an earned income tax credit to low‐income noncustodial parents who work and pay their full child support. This paper provides background information about the policy and presents national estimates of eligibility and benefits for an NCP EITC under three alternative policy scenarios. It also discusses several key design and implementation issues. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Comparative proportionality review: A nationwide examination of reversed death sentences

A required part of the appellate review of death sentences in many capital punishment jurisdictions is comparative proportionality review. This procedure requires the court to compare the death sentence under review with sentences in similar cases to determine whether it is excessive. This article examines those death sentences from across the country that have been reversed on comparative proportionality grounds. Relatively few death sentences have been reversed on these grounds, and the number of reversals is decreasing. The reviews that reverse sentences infrequently compare only to other death sentences, commonly use a method that requires more than a mere common aggravating factor for selecting comparison cases, and rarely use the frequency method of comparative proportionality review.     

Histopathological changes in selenium-exposed fish

Redear sunfish (Lepomis microlophus) were collected from Martin Lake in east Texas. For at least 8 months, 1 year earlier, aqueous selenium-laden effluent from man-made sources was released into this 5,000-acre reservoir (unpublished data). Redear sunfish from a reference lake, 8 km upstream, were collected for comparison to Martin Lake fish. The hepatopancreas (i.e., liver and associated, disseminated exocrine pancrease), mesonephros (i.e., kidney), gonads, heart, spleen, stomach, and gill arches were preserved for histopathological examination using optical and/or transmission electron microscopy. Livers from Martin Lake redear sunfish (which had accumulated approximately 20 ppm selenium in the liver) showed central necrosis, reduced quantities of rough endoplasmic reticulum and glycogen particles, and increased numbers of lysosome-like structures. Kidneys showed proliferative glomerulonephritis, and exocrine pancreas showed marked hypertrophy at the optical level. Ultrastructurally, architectural disorganization, reduced rough endoplasmic reticulum, increased cisternal space, and proliferation of smooth endoplasmic reticulum were evident. The stomach, spleen, gill, heart, and gonads showed no abnormalities.     

Deadbeats and turnips in child support reform

Child support reforms have focused almost exclusively on punitive measures, driven by the stereotypical image of a “deadbeat dad” who can afford to pay child support but refuses to do so. This image fits some noncustodial fathers, but ignores the diverse nature of this population. We show that lack of income is a significant barrier to child support payments for 16 to 33 percent of young noncustodial fathers, whom we call “turnips” after the common saying that “You can't get blood from a turnip.” Furthermore, the characteristics of turnips are similar to those of custodial mothers who are long-term welfare recipients—both are disproportionately composed of young, poorly educated, never-married minorities with little work experience. These findings suggest that a new approach to child support enforcement is needed, one that offers these fathers flexible child support orders that both reflect their current economic circumstances and provide employment and training assistance to enable them to meet their child support obligations in the future.     

Violent criminals locked up: Examining the effect of incarceration on behavioral continuity

Purpose

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether, and the degree to which, inmates committing specific types of violent crimes in the community were prone to commit acts of violence while incarcerated.

Materials and methods

Data were collected from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on the prison stock population and a restricted admissions cohort serving time during FY 2008.

Results

After controlling for pre-prison and post-conviction characteristics, crime of conviction retained a modest degree of influence on inmates’ propensity to commit dangerous rule violations in prison. Inmates convicted of assault, robbery and other miscellaneous violent crimes were more likely to commit dangerous rule infractions than inmates convicted of property crimes, supporting the behavioral continuity thesis. Inmates convicted of homicide were no more likely, and those convicted of sexual assault less likely, to commit dangerous rule violations in comparison to those convicted of property crimes.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that researchers and prison officials should not view all inmates convicted of one of a broad category of “violent crimes” in the community as being equivalent in their propensity for violence while incarcerated.     

Party Platforms and Public Childcare: Structural and Ideational Factors Shaping Policy in Norway and Sweden

While the Scandinavian countries are well‐known for their gender‐egalitarian policies, there are important intra‐Scandinavian policy differences. Through a comparative‐historical analysis of Norway and Sweden, this article illustrates how structural factors (economic and political) and ideational factors (gender and religion) interact and combine to produce the particular national policy outcomes in the post‐ Second World War period, using public childcare as a comparative case study. The economic developments pursued by the countries in the postwar period are key to understanding the political party dynamics, the perpetuation (or lack thereof) of religious and centre‐periphery cleavages, as well as the change in the political leadership's gender‐ideological orientations, and the consequences of these factors for the evolution of public childcare policy. Norway has no institutionalised childcare guarantee, private ownership of childcare is high and religion plays a role in the national preschool curriculum. In contrast, Sweden has a binding national childcare guarantee, public ownership remains high and religion plays no role in the preschool curriculum. The policy differences are theoretically interesting as factors commonly hypothesised as important to gender‐egalitarian policy outcome – on their own, or combined – cannot explain these differences. Thus, this article contributes important knowledge about the causal mechanisms behind gender‐egalitarian policy development. The study fills a gap in the comparative welfare state literature by showing how structural and ideational factors are mutually reinforcing.     

An assessment of the relative impact of criminal justice and criminology journals

The current study was undertaken to provide an impact assessment of criminal justice and criminology journals as an alternative measure to the prestige survey ratings reported by Sorensen, Snell, and Rodriguez (2006). Citations to sixty-seven target journals were tallied from ten top criminal justice and criminology journals. Various impact measures were fairly consistent with one another and the prestige survey ratings, particularly for a “top tier” of journals. With a couple of notable exceptions, a long-standing core of these elite journals has held their relative positions from early impact studies relying on data from the 1970s and 1980s; nevertheless, significant deviations were noted based on the measurement utilized for all but the top journals. Findings from the current study suggested that the quality of journals is multifaceted and warns against employing a scale based on one dimension of journal quality.