From the Ne’er-Do-Well to the Criminal History Category: The Refinement of the Actuarial Model in Criminal Law

Harcourt discusses three developments in 20th century criminal law: the evolution of parole board decision-making in the early 20th century, the development of fixed sentencing guidelines in the late 20th century, and the growth of criminal profiling as a formal law enforcement tool since the 1960s. In each of these case studies, he focuses on the criminal law decision-making

Randomization does not help much, comparability does

Following Fisher, it is widely believed that randomization "relieves the experimenter from the anxiety of considering innumerable causes by which the data may be disturbed." In particular, it is said to control for known and unknown nuisance factors that may considerably challenge the validity of a result. Looking for quantitative advice, we study a number of straightforward, mathematically simple models. However, they all demonstrate that the optimism with respect to randomization is wishful thinking rather than based on fact. In small to medium-sized samples, random allocation of units to treatments typically yields a considerable imbalance between the groups, i.e., confounding due to randomization is the rule rather than the exception. In the second part of this contribution, we extend the reasoning to a number of traditional arguments for and against randomization. This discussion is rather non-technical, and at times even "foundational" (Frequentist vs. Bayesian). However, its result turns out to be quite similar. While randomization's contribution remains questionable, comparability contributes much to a compelling conclusion. Summing up, classical experimentation based on sound background theory and the systematic construction of exchangeable groups seems to be advisable

Institutional complexity and private authority in global climate governance : The cases of climate engineering, REDD+, and short-lived climate pollutants

How and why do institutional architectures, and the roles of private institutions therein, differ across separate areas of climate governance? Here, institutional complexity is explained in terms of the problem-structural characteristics of an issue area and the associated demand for, and supply of, private authority. These characteristics can help explain the degree of centrality of intergovernmental institutions, as well as the distribution of governance functions between these and private governance institutions. This framework is applied to three emerging areas of climate governance: reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), and climate engineering. Conflicts over means and values, as well as over relatively and absolutely assessed goods, lead to considerable variations in the emergence and roles of private institutions across these three cases

The Danger to the Chemical Weapons Convention from Incapacitating Chemicals

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HIGH STREET PROSPECTS Bounce back or recalibrate? A reflection on the prospect for UK high streets and town centres to find a new future in a post COVID-19 world

This article represents the third in series of articles by R3intelligence academics and researchers in the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, at Northumbria University, about analysing town and city centre retail markets using GIS and big data. The article was written during a period of enforced Coronavirus (CV-19) self-isolation during which the author had the opportunity of revisit literature on the challenges facing our high streets and town centres, to provide a contemporary perspective of collective knowledge and understanding on the current plight and future prospects of the UK high street post CV-19