Design of Sampling Plan Using Regression Estimator under Indeterminacy

The acceptance sampling plans are one of the most important tools for the inspection of a lot of products. Sometimes, it is difficult to study the variable of interest, and some additional or auxiliary information which is correlated to that variable is available

Evaluating Future Dangerousness and Need for Treatment: The Roles of Expert Testimony, Attributional Complexity, and Victim Type

In the current study, we explored the effect of risk-assessment testimony, attributional complexity, and victim type on participants’ perceptions of the dangerousness of a sexually violent person and his need for treatment. Participants read details of a hypothetical sexual assault of a female minor and of an adult. Expert testimony of his risk assessment consisted of clinical opinion versus structured-clinical judgment (SCJ) versus actuarial assessment. Participants perceived clinical-opinion and SCJ testimony as equally influential when forming judgments of future dangerousness. In the context of treatment, however, participants relied on actuarial testimony when judging potential for risk. In addition, attributional complexity (AC) moderated perceptions of sexual risk. Overall, results point to the need for continued refinement of assessment techniques when determining dangerousness and need for treatment

Mass incarceration: the juggernaut of American penal expansionism

A plethora of evidence confirms that America continues to lead the world in imprisonment. No serious commentator doubts mass incarceration is a major issue for the nation. The America penal industrial complex incarcerates close to a quarter of all the prisoners on the planet. The American rate of incarceration remains stubbornly locked at a substantially higher level than those of comparable parliamentary democracies. There is no doubt that America’s penal institutions contain some individuals who pose a substantial public risk. However, there is significant scope to limit incarceration for a range of offenders, including those convicted of drug offences. There is a recognition the decades-long ‘War on Drugs’ has ultimately been counterproductive. At the end of 2014, some six years into Obama’s presidency, the USA’s total incarcerated population included some 2,306,100 prisoners It is only now that the United States may be witnessing the end of an ill-starred forty year experiment with mass incarceration and that American penal expansionism has finally begun to ease. The overall picture is of a pause, and even a slight reverse, in the race to incarcerate.non

The Economic Way of Looking at Life

Prize Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 9, 1992.Nobel Prize Lecture;

Analysing the impact of being a sole or primary carer for dependent relatives on the sentencing of women in the Crown Court, England and Wales

Most quantitative sentencing research treats women and men as a homogeneous group leading to gaps in the literature regarding women’s experiences of sentencing procedures. This is problematic given the vast array of known harms that result from incarcerating women, particularly those with caring responsibilities for children. This exploratory article shares the findings from a quantitative study which considers the sentencing of women, with a particular focus on the ‘sole or primary carer for dependent relatives’ mitigation when applied to mothers. Using data from the Crown Court Sentencing Survey 2011–2015, a sample of 18,314 women defendants was derived and investigated using descriptive, bivariate and regression analysis to explore the relationship between the ‘caring’ mitigation and non-custodial sentences. The findings suggest that when the mitigation is applied to sentences of women who are carers of dependents, it does not have a strong enough relationship with non-custodial sentences. This article provides hitherto unknown statistical data and highlights the need for further research

The Impact of Incentives on Human Behavior: Can We Make It Disappear? The Case of the Death Penalty

Although decades of empirical research has demonstrated that criminal behavior responds to incentives, non-economists frequently express the belief that human beings are not rational enough to make calculated decisions about the costs and benefits of engaging in crime and therefore, a priori drawing the conclusion that criminal activity cannot be altered by incentives. However, scientific research should not be driven by personal beliefs. Whether or not economic conditions matter or deterrence measures such police, arrests, prison deaths, executions, and commutations provide signals to people is an empirical question, which should be guided by a solid theoretical framework. In this paper we extend the analysis of Mocan and Gittings (2003). We alter the original model in a number of directions to make the relationship between homicide rates and death penalty related outcomes (executions, commutations and removals) disappear. We deliberately deviate from the theoretically consistent measurement of the risk variables originally employed by Mocan and Gittings (2003) in a variety of ways. We also investigate the sensitivity of the results to changes in the estimation sample (removing high executing states for example) and weighting. The basic results are insensitive to these and a variety of other specification tests performed in the paper. The results are often strong enough to even hold up under theoretically meaningless measurements of the risk variables. In summary, the original findings of Mocan and Gittings (2003) are robust, providing evidence that people indeed react to incentives induced by capital punishment. Research findings about the deterrent effect of the death penalty evoke strong feelings, which could be due to political, ideological, religious, or other personal beliefs. Yet, such findings do not mean that capital punishment is good or bad, nor does it provide any judgment about whether capital punishment should be implemented or abolished. It is simply a scientific finding which demonstrates that people react to incentives. Therefore, there is no need to be afraid of this result.

Robustness of the EWMA Sampling Plan to Non-Normality

The effect of non-normality on the OC function of the sampling plan under EWMA is studied by deriving the OC function for a non-normal population represented by the first four terms of an Edgeworth series