Male youth perceptions of violent extremism: towards a test of rational choice theory

Understanding how people perceive the pros and cons of risky behaviors such as terrorism or violent extremism represents a first step in developing research testing rational choice theory aiming to explain and predict peoples’ intentions to engage in, or support, these behaviors. Accordingly, the present study provides a qualitative, exploratory analysis of a sample of 57 male youths’ perceptions of the benefits and drawbacks of: (a) accessing a violent extremist website, (b) joining a violent extremist group, and (c) leaving such a group. Youth perceived significantly more drawbacks than benefits of joining a violent extremist group (p = .001, d = .46) and accessing a violent extremist website (p = .001, d = .46). The perceived benefits of engagement referred to gaining knowledge/awareness, being part of a group/similar people, and fighting the enemy/for a cause. The drawbacks referred to being exposed to negative material and emotions, having violent/criminal beliefs and behaviors, and getting in trouble with the law. The perceived benefits of disengagement referred to no longer committing illegal acts, and regaining independence/not being manipulated. The drawbacks referred to exposing oneself to harm and reprisal. These findings provide an insight into how male youth think about (dis)engagement in violent extremism, and can inform future quantitative research designed to explain and predict (dis)engagement in violent extremism. Eventually, such research may inform the development of evidence based prevention and intervention strategies

Rediscovering architecture : paestum in eighteenth-century architectural experience and theory, by Sigrid de Jong

Book review of: Sigrid de Jong, Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum in Eighteenth-Century Architectural Experience and Theory. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015, 352 pp., 100 color and 185 b/w illus. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978030019575

Judging Innocence

This empirical study examines for the first time how the criminal justice system in the United States handled the cases of people who were subsequently found innocent through postconviction DNA testing. The data collected tell the story of this unique group of exonerees, starting with their criminal trials, moving through levels of direct appeals and habeas corpus review, and ending with their eventual exonerations. Beginning with the trials of these exonerees, this study examines the leading types of evidence supporting their wrongful convictions, which were erroneous eyewitness identifications, forensic evidence, informant testimony, and false confessions. Yet our system of criminal appeals and postconviction review poorly addressed factual deficiencies in these trials. Few exonerees brought claims regarding those facts or claims alleging their innocence. For those who did, hardly any claims were granted by courts. Far from recognizing innocence, courts often denied relief by finding errors to be harmless. Criminal appeals and postconviction proceedings brought before these exonerees proved their innocence using DNA testing yielded apparently high numbers of reversals 14% reversal rate. However, that reversal rate was indistinguishable from the background reversal rates of comparable rape and murder convictions. Our system may produce high rates of reversible errors during rape and murder trials. Finally, even after DNA testing was available, many exonerees had difficulty securing access to testing and ultimately receiving relief. These findings all demonstrate how our criminal system failed to effectively review unreliable factual evidence, and as a result, misjudged innocence

The Rape of Nanking vs. the incident of Nanking: a Literature Review

The Nanking Massacre has become deeply ingrained in the cultural history of both the Chinese and the Japanese; however it has taken on two perhaps contradictory narratives in each of those communities

Factors Influencing Voting Results of Local Transportation Funding Initiatives with a Substantial Transit Component: Case Studies of Ballot Measures in Eleven Communities, MTI Report 01-17

This publication is a follow-up study to MTI publication 00-01, Why Campaigns for Local Transportation Funding Initiatives Succeed or Fail: An Analysis of Four Communities and National Data. The earlier publication was case studies of four local ballot tax measures for transportation packages. The current study, Factors Influencing Voting Results of Local Transportation Funding Initiatives with a Substantial Rail Transit Component: Case Studies of Ballot Measures in Eleven communities, uses the same case study methodology as the prior study, and is expanded to 11 communities from the past four years. Some of the important conclusions identified by the study are as follows: 1) The combination of an energetic and credible opposition and a questionable reputation of the transit agency or transit system make it extremely difficult for a ballot measure to be successful; 2) When a community has no prior rail transit system, a comprehensive rail-only package is unlikely to be successful; 3)Without $1 million or more to spend on a combination of direct mail and television advertising it is difficult for proponents to be successful; 4) Developing a consensus transportation package depends on the specific details of the package and it is very difficult to generalize about the needed details; and 5) Under certain circumstances, voters do not appear to place significant importance on the existence or length of the expiration date of the tax used to fund the transportation package

Choosing to Lead, Chosen to Lead: The Path to Bar Leadership Power for Women in Michigan

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Fraud by Hindsight

In securities-fraud cases, courts routinely admonish plaintiffs that they are not permitted to rely on allegations of fraud by hindsight. In effect, courts disfavor plaintiffs\u27 use of evidence of bad outcomes to support claims of securities fraud. Disfavoring hindsight evidence appears to tap into a well known, well-understood, and intuitively accessible problem of human judgment of 20/20 hindsight. Events come to seem predictable after unfolding, and hence, bad outcomes must have been predicted by people in a position to make forecasts. Psychologists call this phenomenon the hindsight bias. The popularity of this doctrine among judges deciding securities cases suggests that judges actively seek techniques that enable them to correct for psychological biases that might otherwise affect their decision-making. This paper assesses the hypothesis that judges have adopted the fraud-by-hindsight doctrine so as to avoid erroneous judgment infected with the hindsight bias. We find that although judges have identified a real problem in human judgment, they are not developing a doctrine to remedy the influence of hindsight on judgment. Rather, they are using this problem of human judgment as the justification for expanding their authority to manage the complex, high-stakes securities cases that come before them. The result provides judges with the greater case-management authority they seek, but leaves the securities litigation without a meaningful doctrine to ameliorate the influence of hindsight on judgment