Increasing Evidence-Based Programs in Criminal and Juvenile Justice: A Report from the Front Line

For the past 5 years in the United States, there has been an increased emphasis on evidence-based programs, and, in particular, the promotion of experimental designs as the highest standard of evidence. This interest has been fueled by the Federal government's demand for accountability that links budget allocation with program performance. The National Institute of Justice, the research, development and evaluation agency within the Office of Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice is undertaking a number of efforts to improve the quality of evaluation research and address the need for evidence-based programs. These efforts have focused on making improvements upfront in the grant selection process so that well-designed evaluations will be undertaken and in the management and monitoring of ongoing evaluation research grants so that implementation and design issues can be identified and addressed. Evaluability assessments is a key strategy that NIJ is relying on increasingly to identify programs that have a high likelihood of being successfully evaluated. Whether these efforts will lead to an overall increase in the rigor of NIJ-supported evaluations remains unanswered at this time. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of The National Academies or the National Institute of Justice.     

Taiwan: An Internal Affair! How China’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Interact on the Taiwan Issue?

Taiwan may be an internal affair but the domestic public opinion is not invited to participate very much in a debate and a decision-making process that have remained confined to the Chinese Communist Party and the military top leadership and, on purpose, involves a very small number of officials and experts. Conservative and nationalist forces do constrain Beijing’s Taiwan policy. And some leaders are tempted to use the Taiwan issue for unrelated domestic or foreign policy purpose. Nevertheless, what is striking is the potential for flexibility in China’s Taiwan policy. While Chinese local governments and companies’ increasing interests in business-as-usual in the Strait and the unbearable cost of any armed conflict tend to narrow the government’s options, concentration of power and the efficiency of the propaganda machine allow it to rather smoothly manage, in particular vis-à-vis the elites’ conservative opinion group as well as its own public opinion, this flexibility.     

John Locke and the Limits of Religious Liberty: Marriage License Refusal,Religious Freedom Laws,Vaccine Refusal,Contraception Mandate Exemptions,and Ultrasound Requirements

Nearly two hundred fifty years into its existence, the American polity faces a conundrum over a core founding principle: religious liberty. Multiple debates have emerged over the extent and limits of religious liberty, including arguments over how far any one person’s religious liberty extends into the public sphere as well as into the private lives of other citizens. Highly influential on James Madison’s crafting of the First Amendment, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration outlines a strong conception of both religious toleration and of religious liberty. In the “Letter,” Locke’s reasoning is sympathetic to the concerns and convictions of believers while remaining cognizant of the calamities to which religious differences can give rise. Further, he provides a robust explication of the mutually exclusive domains of ecclesiastical and civil authorities, now known more colloquially as the division of church and state. In the following article, I illustrate how the principles put forth by Locke offer guidance in adjudicating religious liberty claims in the cases of Kim Davis, religious freedom laws, vaccine refusal, contraception mandate exemptions, and ultrasound requirements.     

Indigenous Land Policies,Culture and Resistance in Latin America

Considered here are three edited collections about Latin America that address a wide variety of key rural development issues arising from landholding. The latter include not just methodological approaches (anthropology, political economy) but also questions of identity (gender, indigenous) and sustainability (the environment). Two seemingly antithetical interpretations of the impact of neoliberal project on indigenous populations are in evidence: as economically disempowering, but as politically empowering. A possible synthesis of these contrasting positions is suggested.     

Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians

This paper analyzes principal-agent slack in the context of a political market composed of voters, challengers, and incumbents. The introduction of a last period (via finite-livedness) in combination with voters' imperfect information about politicians' preferences causes time-varying shirking behavior on the part of politicians. Political markets eventually sort out those politicians with significantly deviant policy preferences, potentially providing a solution to the last period problem and enabling politicians to make credible commitments. In the extreme, sorting can insure that it is not worthwhile for potential shirkers to run for office. A systematic relationship between political shirking and number of terms in office may exist, and depends on how quickly sorting takes place. We show that evidence of little if any shirking is quite consistent with politicians having diverse and strongly held policy preferences. In addition, if sorting is a significant feature of political markets, cross-sectional studies will tend to oversample little- and non-shirking politicians compared to longitudinal studies. Reinterpretations of existing empirical work are also discussed.We wish to thank John Bond, Donald Deere, Gertrud Fremling, Tim Gronberg, Michael Munger, Russell Roberts, and the participants of workshops at Dartmouth College, Texas A&M University, University of Houston, University of Texas, Yale Law School, and the 1987 Public Choice Meetings for valuable discussions on earlier drafts of this paper. An earlier version of this paper was issued as working paper E-87-34 by the Hoover Institution. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Sentencing Commission nor those of any of its Commissioners. Any remaining errors are of course our own.     

Glycated hemoglobin: a useful post-mortem reference marker in determining diabetes

Glycated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)) has been demonstrated to be a useful marker for long-term glucose control in diabetes. This parameter characterizes each non-enzymatic fixation of glucose on hemoglobin. It is a useful test in addition to periodic glycemia controls since it reflects the mean glycemia of the past 60 days. We studied the conservation of HbA(1c) at 4 degrees C as a function of time with different anti-coagulants and preservatives (3, 6 months, 1 year). A total of 106 tests were performed using the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method dedicated to the semi-automatic analysis of HbA(1c) (Bio-Rad) and we applied the method in forensic cases. Conservation at 4 degrees C was good for as long as 3 months in blood samples collected with fluoride and 6 months in samples collected in a dry or in a heparinized tube. In non-diabetic subjects, HbA(1c) reference values obtained from forensic samples were identical to those of living controls (3.5-6.25% of total hemoglobin). All positive HbA(1c) results were confirmed by a medical evaluation. This method was successfully applied to five forensic cases. In cases of increased acetonemia, acetone or isopropanol are easily measured. However, in some unexplained post-mortem circumstances, increased HbA(1c) permits to differentiate alcoholic or starvation ketoacidosis from the diabetic cases. Glycated hemoglobin should, therefore, be considered the forensic marker of choice in the post-mortem diagnosis of a diabetic disorder and demonstrates its usefulness in post-mortem validation.