Crime,correction, education and welfare in the U.S. – What role does the government play?

As federal, state and local governments continue to allocate a significant share of their resources to law enforcement and correctional spending, concerns have risen that spending in education and welfare is declining. With fiscal pressure in the United States mounting, it is important to determine the effectiveness of public spending in deterring crime. This paper compares the effectiveness of the impact of government spending on welfare and education with that of law enforcement and correction on crime. Using panel data from 50 U.S. states over a time period of 1994–2014, results of linear regression with panel corrected standard errors as well as GMM estimation reveals that public welfare and education spending can potentially lower violent and property crime rates but law enforcement spending can only deter property crime. However, correctional spending can exacerbate both types of crimes. There is little to no evidence of the presence of crowding out of one category of spending by another. This results in the policy implication that more resources be allocated towards welfare and education programs.     

First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble?*

Objective. We investigate the relationship between first name popularity and juvenile delinquency to test the hypothesis that unpopular names are positively correlated with crime. Methods. To compare the names of juveniles in a state's population with the names of juveniles who received substantiated charges in that state's juvenile justice system, we construct a popularity name index. Regression analysis is used to examine the relationship among names, crime, and socioeconomic background of juveniles. Results. The distribution of first names in the state's population is different from the names of juvenile delinquents. Our results show that unpopular names are positively correlated with juvenile delinquency for both blacks and whites. Conclusions. Unpopular names are likely not the cause of crime but correlated with factors that increase the tendency toward juvenile delinquency, such as a disadvantaged home environment and residence in a county with low socioeconomic status.     

Is Immigration Responsible for the Crime Drop? An Assessment of the Influence of Immigration on Changes in Violent Crime Between 1990 and 2000*

Objectives. The idea that immigration increases crime rates has historically occupied an important role in criminological theory and has been central to the public and political discourses and debates on immigration policy. In contrast to the common sentiment, some scholars have recently questioned whether the increase in immigration between 1990 and 2000 may have actually been responsible for part of the national decrease in crime during the 1990s. The current work evaluates the influence of immigration on crime in urban areas across the United States between 1990 and 2000. Methods. Drawing on U.S. Census and Uniform Crime Report data, I first use ordinary least squares regression models to assess the cross‐sectional relationship between immigration patterns and rates of homicide and robbery among U.S. cities with populations of at least 50,000. Second, I employ pooled cross‐sectional time‐series models to determine how changes in immigration influenced changes in homicide and robbery rates between 1990 and 2000. Results. In the ordinary least squares models, immigration is associated with higher levels of homicide and robbery. However, the pooled cross‐sectional time‐series models suggest that cities with the largest increases in immigration between 1990 and 2000 experienced the largest decreases in homicide and robbery during the same time period. Conclusion. The findings offer insights into the complex relationship between immigration and crime and suggest that growth in immigration may have been responsible for part of the precipitous crime drop of the 1990s.     

The Concept of Crime in Chinese Criminal Law Theory: Its Dual Structure and Functions

I. The Concept of Crime witha Dual StructureThe concept of crime is described at two levels in Chinese criminallaw theory. Firstly, the intrinsic nature or essential content of crime isdescribed from the perspective of its basic attributes; a crime involvesconduct that is seriously harmful to society and violates the Chinesecriminal code, and should therefore be criminally punishable. 1 Secondly,the conditions that constitute a crime are described from the perspectiveof concrete characteris…     

H. S. Sullivan and “Interpersonal Learning”

Although many of the basic tenets of Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory have been incorporated into the Relational School of psychoanalysis, Sullivan’s original ideas about clinical practice are, in many respects, distinct from the intersubjective perspective of relational psychotherapists. Using three case examples that addressed a similar clinical problem, Sullivan’s approach to clinical practice will be contrasted with contemporary relational approaches.     

Crime,capital punishment,and knowledge: are criminal justice majors better informed than other majors about crime and capital punishment?

Criminal justice agencies increasingly seek better educated employees, who should have greater knowledge of criminal justice issues. This has lead to an increase in the number of students majoring in criminal justice. This study employed a non-random, convenience sampling design of 730 college students of various ranks and majors at a mid-sized, 4-year public university in Michigan to determine what impact a criminal justice education had on knowledge of the death penalty and other criminal justice facts compared to students in other majors. It was found that there was a difference between criminal justice majors and other majors in knowledge about crime and capital punishment; however, the difference was neither widespread nor striking as the authors had hoped.     

Beyond Husserl and Schütz. Hermann Schmitz and Neophenomenological Sociology

Phenomenological sociology is one of the most recognized approaches for explaining the constitution of social behaviour and the construction of social reality. To this day, phenomenological sociology usually belongs to the tradition of Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and to Alfred Schütz's mundane phenomenology, thus generally presenting itself as sociology of lifeworld, sociology of everyday life, and sociology of knowledge. In contrast to this, this paper intends to outline an alternative kind of phenomenological sociology that finds its philosophical foundation in Hermann Schmitz's “New Phenomenology”. With regards especially to Schmitz's theory of the felt body (“Leib”) and his theory of situation, the basic principles of Neophenomenological Sociology (NPS) will be introduced. Their main components are (1) felt body and affective involvement as the pre-personal apriori of sociality, (2) felt-bodily communication as the basic unit of sociality, and (3) joint situations as the socio-ontological foundation and empirical manifestation of sociality. With these specific key concepts, NPS proves itself to be a socio-theoretical approach whose foremost strength is that it can identify and properly analyse the pathic dimensions of social behaviour and social situations that social sciences tend to overlook.     

China-U.S. Detente and China's Aid to Vietnam to Resist U.S. Intervention ——The Vietnam Factor in China's Foreign-Policy Readjustment

1968年11月至1973年5月中国调整外交战略、实现与美国和解的进程中始终存在着越南因素的影响。中国在处理并存的援越抗美革命外交方针与缓和对美关系务实外交方针这对矛盾时,对越美和谈的态度及对越物质援助的方针相应地不断发生变化。中国以越南问题为轴心推动了美国调整对华政策的步伐,中美关系解冻。随着越战的结束,双方着手进一步落实联合抗苏的战略构想。但与此同时,中越之间的裂痕逐渐加深,越南最终投入了苏联的怀抱。     

U.S.Policy toward China and the Question of Recognition in 1949-1950

InaconversationwithPresidentHarryS.Trumanon17November1949,U.S.SecretaryofStateDeanAchesonsaidthereweretwoobjectivesofU.S.policytowardChina:OnemightbetoopposetheCommunistregime,harassit,needleitandifanopportunityappearedtoattempttooverthrowit.AnotherobjectiveofpolicywouldbetoattempttodetachitfromsubserviencetoMoscowandoveraperiodoftimeencouragethosevlgorousinfluenceswhichmightmodifvit....ThissecondalternativedidnotmeanapolicyanymorethanithadinthecaseofTito.1WiththesewordsAchesonenunciat…     

Partisan effects and policy entrepreneurs. New Labour’s impact on British law and order policy

Under successive New Labour administrations British law and order policy experienced a significant shift. The literature, however, falls short to empirically substantiate whether this change can be attributed to the ideological preferences of the party in power – neither on the aggregate-level nor in terms of a causal mechanism. This study develops a novel partisan effects mechanism linking the notion of policy-seeking party elites with the notion of policy entrepreneurship. The applied mixed-method research design confirms a partisan link in two ways: On the aggregate-level, the first systematic analysis of the complete law and order legislation from 1990 to 2014 allows to assess the significant policy change as well as its correlation with partisan effects. On the micro-level, a qualitative analysis traces these effects within the political process of a single piece of legislation highlighting policy entrepreneurs as a causal mechanism of partisan effects.     

“Build a wall”. “Tax a shed”. “Fix a debt limit”. The constructive and destructive potential of populist anti-statism and “naïve” statism

ABSTRACT

Populist surges, movements and parties often centre around radically simplifying policy proposals, sometimes anti-statist in intent (e.g. fix a limit to state borrowing in cash terms), and at other times pushing naïve statist solutions (e.g. build a giant wall to keep out migrants; or tax companies' activities in a given shed, not their profits). Most liberal political science condemns the crudity and often unrestrained vigour of populist “solutions”. But on occasion, they can have value in counteracting the increasing complexities that elites often build into public policies. Two case studies show populist pressure for simplification working effectively in one instance – the “tax shaming” campaign against multinationals avoiding corporation taxes; and engendering only disorder in another instance – the effort to enforce national debt limits in nominal terms in the USA.     

Does residential segregation help or hurt? Exploring differences in the relationship between segregation and health among U.S. Hispanics by nativity and ethnic subgroup

In order to unpack whether and how self-rated health of Hispanics is linked to residential segregation from non-Hispanic whites, this study employs multi-level analysis combining data from the 1997–2002 National Survey of America's Families (n = 16,753 Hispanic respondents across 82 metropolitan areas) with metropolitan area segregation scores derived from restricted-use Census 2000 data. Separate analyses by nativity (U.S.-born vs. foreign-born Hispanics) and ethnic subgroup (comparing Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans) are also conducted. Net of individual-level controls, findings reveal a small significant negative effect of segregation on health for all Hispanics and for Mexicans in the sample. Nativity does not have a significant interaction effect. Evidence of a positive segregation/health link is found for Cubans, challenging the assumption that segregation is always bad for minority health. This research highlights the value of multi-level analysis in examining segregation as a social determinant of health, and reveals key Hispanic subgroup differences.     

Gains and losses of migrants and income through intercounty migration in the U.S., 1992–1993

Migration alters both the origin and destination of migrants in a variety of ways. This study uses data recently made available by the Internal Revenue Service to document gains and losses of both persons and income accruing to counties in the United States as a result of internal migration between 1992 and 1993. The degree to which migration alters the size of a county's population as well as the amount of income received in that county is assessed by means of effectiveness rates which are ratios of net flows to total flows. The majority of counties, especially those in the South and West gained both migrants and income during the period; losses were confined largely to the Northeast, Great Plains and California. Counties at the edges of large metropolitan areas gained income even more rapidly than people; counties containing large central cities lost income even faster than they lost migrants. Amenity-laden recreational and retirement counties were also among those who gained both people and income via migration. Overall, these results indicate an exacerbation of demographic and economic differences between regions as well as within metropolitan areas.     

III. A comparison of hyperactive and non‐hyperactive problem children 1

This article has been retracted.     

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虎饰品:虎虎生威的另类童话 过去每年进入腊月,窗外寒风怒吼或白雪皑皑.入夜,儿女们都甜甜地睡了,母亲却在盏盏灯下,穿针引线,忙着为孩子们绣制出一件件春节礼物--虎头鞋、虎头帽,虎形玩具等等,室外虽然寒风刺骨,室内母亲的心却是温暖如春.     

“It's not about good taste. It's about tastes good”: Bourdieu and Campbell's Soup…and Beyond

ABSTRACT

We begin with a general discussion of the ways in which the concept of taste has been treated, moving on to what is sometimes taken as a (if not the) controversy in the field. That controversy centers on the apparent differences between socio-political accounts (Bourdieu) and psychological—emotional accounts (Campbell) of taste. What we then show is that the distinction is just that: apparent, on the surface only. What it conceals is a more deep-seated agreement between the two schools about what it is to be a human subject. Here we take our cue from Foucault and Foucault scholarship (Hunter; Rose; Coveney) and make the argument that what appear to be “theories” of taste are, from a pragmatic point of view, in fact rhetorical exercises of the self akin to cookbooks, advertisements and TV cookery shows. This paper, then, problematizes the emergent field of taste studies and presages an approach beyond those predicated on an essentially Kantian version of human being. That approach takes its cue from ethnomethodological insights about techniques of ordinary practical actions and from Hannah Arendt's idea of the disclosure of the self as fundamental to social being.