Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification: Franz Kafka's Solution to Illegal Immigration

In last summer's debate over immigration reform, Congress treated a national electronic employment eligibility verification (EEV) system as a matter of near consensus. Intended to strengthen internal enforcement of the immigration laws, electronic EEV is an Internet-based employee vetting system that the federal government would require every employer to use. Broad immigration reform failed before Congress thoroughly considered national EEV, but the lines of debate have been drawn. Advocates in Congress will try to attach a nationwide worker registration system to any immigration bill Congress considers, and the Bush administration recently announced steps to promote such a system.A mandatory national EEV system would have substantial costs yet still fail to prevent illegal immigration. It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work. By increasing the value of committing identity fraud, EEV would cause that crime's rates to rise. Creating an accurate EEV system would require a national identification (ID) system, costing about $20 billion to create and hundreds of millions more per year to operate. Even if it were free, the country should reject a national ID system. It would cause law-abiding American citizens to lose more of their privacy as government records about them grew and were converted to untold new purposes. "Mission creep" all but guarantees that the federal government would use an EEV system to extend federal regulatory control over Americans' lives even further

Mental illness in prisons: true diagnosis or social control?

The poster (presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Mental Health Research Network 2013) questions the validity of certain mental health diagnoses within forensic settings

UCI and Entrepreneurship, Blog 1

Student blog posts from the Great VCU Bike Race Book

Information Geometry and Evolutionary Game Theory

The Shahshahani geometry of evolutionary game theory is realized as the information geometry of the simplex, deriving from the Fisher information metric of the manifold of categorical probability distributions. Some essential concepts in evolutionary game theory are realized information-theoretically. Results are extended to the Lotka-Volterra equation and to multiple population systems.Comment: Added reference

Transforming rehabilitation and the creeping marketisation of British public services

This piece addresses issues pertaining to the privatisation of probation services and the 'Transforming Rehabilitation' agenda. I argue here that all of British public services are currently subject to a vreeping marketisation, aimed at reducing central Government expenditure. However, singling out probation services for this type of treatment may be short-sighted given its successes relative to other aspects of the justice system

Representing crime: the media and public criminology in the post-Leveson era

The political fallout post-Leveson has led to the press needing to re-evaluate some of its methods of reporting issues deemed to be ‘in the public interest’. As a part of the Leveson Inquiry, the Howard League made a submission in which it was suggested that the media, and in particular the printed press, are fuelling public outrage at the supposed ‘softness’ of prison, and downplaying the role that community sentencing can play in reducing overall levels of re-offending. This poster presents findings from a recent study that demonstrates that the printed news media’s misrepresentation of criminal justice issues is not confined to the debate about whether ‘prison works’, but rather extends to representations of the prevalence of different crime types. A nine times over-representation of sexual crime was found, along with an almost two-and-a-half times over representation of violent crime, whilst acquisitive crime – the type of offending most prevalent within the UK – was found to be under-represented within British press reports by four-and-a-half times. These findings are considered within the context of linguistically hostile press articles (particularly about sexual crime) as a potential block to engaging the public in informed debate about offending and crime reduction. Opportunities for more representative press reporting are identified, as are the implications of not acting on such a disparity between press reports and the realities of crime in the UK

Addressing attitudes and challenging stereotypes: preparing students for careers in applied psychology

Undergraduate psychologists are among the most likely group to move into therapeutic roles relating to sex offender rehabilitation. A positive attitude and good working knowledge about characteristics of sex offenders improves the therapeutic alliance between psychologist and offender, which is a factor cited as potentially increasing the likelihood of treatment success (Craig, 2005; Timimi 2009). With this in mind, and Given the range of psychology courses now offered by British universities, it was considered important to examine the contributions of different specialities in the breaking down of stereotypical thinking and encouragement of positive attitudes toward stigmatised populations. Establishing success of undergraduate psychology programmes in addressing stereotypical thinking is important for developing courses that produce high-quality psychologists for professional practice in their subsequent careers

Synaesthesia and the creative process: a study of its inspiration in Scriabin’s "Prometheus"

The role of synaesthesia in composition is difficult to assess, but for those who possess it synaesthesia is an inherent source of inspiration. It is not a compositional tool as such, yet synaesthesia is fundamental to the creative and compositional processes of certain artists. The term synaesthesia describes various multi-sensory experiences of artistic expression. Though many are riveted by synaesthesia, there is a lot of literature dismissing it as a gimmick used by artists and composers to increase their popularity among audiences. Synaesthesia, however, has been integral to the compositional processes of composers such as Olivier Messiean, Michael Torke and specifically Alexandre Scriabin. The pieces written by Scriabin were expressions of what he saw, tasted and felt when hearing music. There would not be a Prometheus: The Poem of Fire if Scriabin had not harnessed his synaesthesia to inform his compositional process. This paper will cover several topics in relation to synaesthesia. Firstly synaesthesia will be defined and its historical background will briefly be discussed. Information on academic interest and inventors will follow, shedding light on the research that has already been conducted in this field. This paper will then explore the impact that synaesthesia has on the artistic community and on the lives of particular composers; namely Michael Torke and Alexandre Scriabin. The second section will specifically cover Scriabin’s composition Prometheus. It will be analysed from a synaesthetic point of view, both from the author’s perspective and that of Scriabin, which will take the paper to its conclusion. This paper contributes to a developing academic sector that deals with synaesthesia and how it has been treated over time; with a view to explains its role and impact on musical composition