The Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: A Review of the Issues and the Debate

This is a review of the issues and debate over capital punishment in the United States during the post- Furman era (since 1972). It encompasses a review of the legal issues, highlighting major U.S. Supreme Court cases in which the constitutionality of the death penalty has been challenged. These constitutional challenges have included issues of arbitrariness and race discrimination in the application of the death penalty. Also considered is the Court's 'evolving standards of decency' test in terms of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment – relative to the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded and whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual. The post- Furman era death penalty debate is comprised of two phases, both raised questions about public confidence in the criminal justice system. Phase one, occurring in the 1980s and early 1990s, was concerned with the lengthy appeal process and the lack of finality in capital cases. Phase two emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s and focused on the accuracy (wrongful convictions) and fairness (arbitrariness and discrimination) of the administration of capital punishment. The DNA revolution and a parade of high-profile exonerations in the United States contributed to this latter phase. Finally, the death penalty debate is considered from an international and human rights perspective.     

Elicitation

There are various situations in which it may be important to obtain expert opinion about some unknown quantity or quantities. But it is not enough simply to ask the expert for an estimate of the unknown quantity: we also need to know how far from that estimate the true value might be. Tony O'Hagan describes the process of elicitation: the formulation of the expert's knowledge in the form of a probability distribution.     

Mixture Multi-state Markov Regression Model

Although heterogeneity across individuals may be reduced when a two-state process is extended into a multi-state process, the discrepancy between the observed and the predicted for some states may still exist owing to two possibilities, unobserved mixture distribution in the initial state and the effect of measured covariates on subsequent multi-state disease progression. In the present study, we developed a mixture Markov exponential regression model to take account of the above-mentioned heterogeneity across individuals (subject-to-subject variability) with a systematic model selection based on the likelihood ratio test. The model was successfully demonstrated by an empirical example on surveillance of patients with small hepatocellular carcinoma treated by non-surgical methods. The estimated results suggested that the model with the incorporation of unobserved mixture distribution behaves better than the one without. Complete and partial effects regarding risk factors on different subsequent multi-state transitions were identified using a homogeneous Markov model. The combination of both initial mixture distribution and homogeneous Markov exponential regression model makes a significant contribution to reducing heterogeneity across individuals and over time for disease progression.     

Performativity and helping professions: social theory, power and practice

Drawing on Judith Butler's conception of 'performativity', we would argue that the notion has important implications for contemporary debates in international social welfare over agency, subjection and 'resistance'. Professional social workers embedded in discursive institutions function according to particular expectations around performativity. In addition, this organisational context is complex with multiple demands. In light of technologies of surveillance and control in contemporary social work, performativity offers a response to the pressing need to expand notions of worker opposition beyond traditional forms of organised dissent towards the production of subjective space.     

Using the 2001 census to study human capital movements affecting Britain's larger cities: insights and issues

Summary.  Human capital is increasingly being recognized as crucial to the sustained growth of British cities, and the population census is unrivalled as a source of data on the characteristics of people moving to and from cities. Taking advantage of new features in the 2001 census, the paper examines how successful 27 of Britain's largest cities and their regions are in maintaining their labour force complement, giving particular attention to young adults and people working in high level occupations. Considerable variation is apparent between city regions, but the interpretation of results is somewhat hampered by limitations in the census data, prompting recommendations for future data collection.     

Audience Design and Context Discrepancy: How Online Debates Lead to Opinion Polarization

This article examines how the technical layout of some online platforms shapes the way individuals engage in public debate online. To do so, the research studies an empirical case of how public debating on Weibo—China's equivalent to Twitter—leads to opinion polarization. The technical layout of Weibo strongly influences how users debate with others. The thread‐based message structure fragments the interactional context, preventing users from gaining a clear picture about other discussants and the ongoing conversation. Weibo's technical design, which enables simultaneous interactions with multiple audiences (of which many users are unaware), further complicates the debates. Consequently, users become confused about their audience and where their replies are targeted, and subsequent interpersonal tension sparks as they adopt interactive strategies (sharing personal experiences, adding situational elaborations, and seeking solidarity through opinion) to reduce this confusion. Ironically, these strategies often serve to further polarize opinions. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/U5qdm6eiQ1M .     

MEASURING SELF-PERCEIVED RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION IN SOCIAL SURVEYS

The aim of this article is to encourage a research agenda that attends to methodological considerations regarding measuring self-perceived racial and ethnic discrimination in social surveys. Toward this end, the author compared validity of alternative measures of discrimination. The first measure asks whether something unfair or bad has happened because of race and ethnicity, whereas the second measure asks about generic unfair events independent of attribution to race or ethnicity. In a probability sample of 586 Black respondents living in the Detroit metropolitan area interviewed in 1995, it was found that the prevalence of self-perceived racial and ethnic discrimination depended on question framing. Moreover, different respondents were likely to respond affirmatively to explicit versus generic measures of discrimination; importantly, the mental health consequences of self-perceived racial and ethnic discrimination varied by question framing. The results confirmed that the prevalence, correlates, and psychological impact of self-perceived discrimination should be evaluated on the basis of measurement sensitivity.