Securing the Global City: Crime, Consulting, Risk, and Ratings in the Production of Urban Space

The last decade has witnessed the rise of private transnational institutions that increasingly influence the organization and management of urban space. Two institutions are especially powerful in this regard: bond-rating agencies and global security firms. Bolstered by a discourse of risk and the need to securitize cities, these institutions have garnered enormous amounts of power with respect to urban social and spatial control. They are implicated in the imprisonment and displacement of marginalized populations, the intensification of gentrification, and general shifts in municipal funding priorities. The authors illustrate these themes through a case study of New York City, followed by an example of the transnational movement of these forces and their exportation to sites such as Mexico City. Democracy and the Transnational Private Sector, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington, April 12-13, 2007

Race, Death, and Justice: Capital Sentencing in Washington State, 1981-2014

This Article examines the role of race in the application of the death penalty in the wake of the Furman v. Georgia decision. Although contemporary death penalty statutes were designed to reduce arbitrariness and discrimination in capital sentencing, many studies indicate that race continues to play a significant role in determining which capital defendants live and which die in the post-Furman era. To date, however, no published study has examined the role of race in capital sentencing in Washington State, where the statutory framework effectively reduces the number of homicide cases that are eligible for capital punishment and prosecutorial discretion is therefore comparatively circumscribed. This Article assesses whether race influences the administration of capital punishment in Washington State, and if so, where in the process it matters. On the one hand, the narrowness of the statutory framework may effectively constrain prosecutorial discretion in ways that minimize the role of race. On the other hand, experimental research suggests that unconscious stereotypes that link Blacks to violence are widespread, and that jury selection and deliberations tend to amplify jurors’ implicit biases. We therefore hypothesize that race will matter most at the sentencing (as opposed to the filing) stage of the process. To test this, we analyze prosecutorial and jury decision-making in all Washington aggravated murder cases adjudicated since 1981 for which information is available. The results of statistical regression analyses support this hypothesis: although neither the race of the defendant nor the victim affect prosecutorial decision-making, jurors are more than four times more likely to impose a death sentence when the defendant is Black. These findings suggest that race plays a significant role in capital sentencing even where the statutory framework effectively narrows the pool of homicide cases that may result in the death penalty

Investing in Alternatives: Three Logics of Criminal System Replacement

What logics underlie the call to “defund the police,” and how do those logics matter in policy debate? In the wake of widespread protests after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other victims of police violence during the summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement’s call to “defund the police” captured the national imagination. Several municipal governments promised to cut funding and contracts for their respective police departments, with mixed results. Because we expect police defunding and reinvestment to remain a central movement demand, this Article explores the demand’s discursive and normative terrain. It does so by describing and critically engaging three logics of criminal system alternatives that we have observed in activists’ demands and organizing efforts. Specifically, we theorize investments in social welfare, safety production, and racial reparation as deeply connected but distinct logics that might guide decisions about where and how money should be spent as part of defund initiatives, and we discuss some implications of each for transformational change within and beyond policing

Whose Tweets are Surveilled for the Police: An Audit of Social-Media Monitoring Tool via Log Files

Social media monitoring by law enforcement is becoming commonplace, but little is known about what software packages for it do. Through public records requests, we obtained log files from the Corvallis (Oregon) Police Department's use of social media monitoring software called DigitalStakeout. These log files include the results of proprietary searches by DigitalStakeout that were running over a period of 13 months and include 7240 social media posts. In this paper, we focus on the Tweets logged in this data and consider the racial and ethnic identity (through manual coding) of the users that are therein flagged by DigitalStakeout. We observe differences in the demographics of the users whose Tweets are flagged by DigitalStakeout compared to the demographics of the Twitter users in the region, however, our sample size is too small to determine significance. Further, the demographics of the Twitter users in the region do not seem to reflect that of the residents of the region, with an apparent higher representation of Black and Hispanic people. We also reconstruct the keywords related to a Narcotics report set up by DigitalStakeout for the Corvallis Police Department and find that these keywords flag Tweets unrelated to narcotics or flag Tweets related to marijuana, a drug that is legal for recreational use in Oregon. Almost all of the keywords have a common meaning unrelated to narcotics (e.g.\ broken, snow, hop, high) that call into question the utility that such a keyword based search could have to law enforcement.Comment: 21 Pages, 2 figures. To to be Published in FAT* 2020 Proceeding

Reengineering the clinical research enterprise to involve more community clinicians

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The National Institutes of Health has called for expansion of practice-based research to improve the clinical research enterprise.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This paper presents a model for the reorganization of clinical research to foster long-term participation by community clinicians.</p> <p>Based on the literature and interviews with clinicians and other stakeholders, we posited a model, conducted further interviews to test the viability of the model, and further adapted it.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose a three-dimensional system of checks and balances to support community clinicians using research support organizations, community outreach, a web-based registry of clinicians and studies, web-based training services, quality audits, and a feedback mechanism for clinicians engaged in research.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The proposed model is designed to offer a systemic mechanism to address current barriers that prevent clinicians from participation in research. Transparent mechanisms to guarantee the safety of patients and the integrity of the research enterprise paired with efficiencies and economies of scale are maintained by centralizing some of the functions. Assigning other responsibilities to more local levels assures flexibility with respect to the size of the clinician networks and the changing needs of researchers.</p

Bridging the gap between basic science and clinical practice: The role of organizations in addressing clinician barriers

New National Institutes of Health policies call for expansion of practice-based research to improve the clinical research enterprise and facilitate dissemination of evidence-based medicine. This paper describes organizational strategies that influence clinicians' decisions to participate in clinical research. We reviewed the literature and interviewed over 200 clinicians and stakeholders. The most common barriers to community clinician participation in clinical research relate to beliefs that clinical research is too burdensome and has little benefit for the participating clinician or patient. We identified a number of approaches healthcare organizations can use to encourage clinicians to participate in research, including an outreach campaign to promote the benefits of clinical research; selection of study topics of interest to clinicians; establishment and enforcement of a set of research principles valuing the clinician and patient; development of a transparent schedule of reimbursement for research tasks; provision of technological and technical assistance to practices as needed; and promotion of a sense of community among clinicians involved in practice-based research. Many types of existing healthcare organizations could provide the technical and intellectual assistance community clinicians need to participate in clinical research. Multiple approaches are possible

Combinatorial CRISPR-Cas9 screens for de novo mapping of genetic interactions.

We developed a systematic approach to map human genetic networks by combinatorial CRISPR-Cas9 perturbations coupled to robust analysis of growth kinetics. We targeted all pairs of 73 cancer genes with dual guide RNAs in three cell lines, comprising 141,912 tests of interaction. Numerous therapeutically relevant interactions were identified, and these patterns replicated with combinatorial drugs at 75% precision. From these results, we anticipate that cellular context will be critical to synthetic-lethal therapies

Nonhuman Animal Pain and Capital Punishment in Beckett’s “Dante and the Lobster”

This article offers a fresh examination of the representation of nonhuman animals in Beckett’s early aesthetics, using ‘Dante and the Lobster’ as a case study. Beckett’s story is illuminated by historical documents including newspaper articles which will allow readers to see more clearly the deliberate parallels drawn between the question of the lobster’s suffering and the planned execution of a criminal which Belacqua contemplates throughout the day. An alternative reading model of the text, focusing on the Joycean concept of parallax rather than the Dantean concept of pity will be developed. The article closes by examining Beckett’s views on allegorical readings of texts containing representations of nonhuman animals and his later notes on E. P. Evans’s 1906 work, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals