Schools as Criminal \u27Hot Spots\u27: A Replication and Extension

The rise of youth involvement in crime and the increase in crime associated with schools has prompted growing national concern and evoked serious scholarly attention. Traditionally, research involving youth and crime centers on offender rather than environmental characteristics. The purpose of this work is to shift the emphasis from the individual to the environment by replicating and extending the work of Roncek and associates which was based, in part, on Cohen and Felson’s Routine Activities theory. The work by Roncek and associates demonstrated that residential blocks with or adjacent to public high schools have higher incidence of crime than other residential blocks. In this study, all Cleveland schools registered with the Ohio Department of Education were used as independent variable measures for the dependent variable of Cleveland burglaries from 1989 to 1991. The school measures were decomposed into separate categories for public and private as well as for grade levels served. Thus, these distinctions differentiate between elementary, middle and high schools. Additionally, measures of adjacency and the effects of enrollment size were taken into account as independent variables. Other independent variables that controlled for social and environmental characteristics were also included. The analyses conducted were t-tests, regression analysis and Tobit analysis. The results are somewhat surprising. Unlike the work by Roncek and associates, here public high schools were not found to have a significant effect—either for presence or adjacency. In fact, the only schools found to have significant effects were public elementary schools serving grades kindergarten through five (k-5)—which had statistical significance for presence and primary adjacency. Also, unlike previous findings, this study found that size of enrollment was a statistically significant variable. As indicated by the Tobit analyses, the effect above the limit for k-5 enrollment/presence shows an increase of .101 in burglaries per additional student on blocks with burglaries while the probability effect shows a .019 increase in the probability of a block without burglaries having one. For primary adjacency the effect above the limit shows an increase in the number of burglaries by .028 per additional student in the school to which the block with burglaries is adjacent while the probability effect indicates a .005 increase in the probability of an adjacent block without burglaries to have a burglary per additional student. It is unclear from the data why these public elementary schools demonstrated an effect while other public elementary schools did not. Since most of the grades serviced overlap, the overall environment, facilities and activity levels should be relatively comparable for all public elementary schools. One possible explanation of this difference is that the majority of the public elementary schools are k-5 rather than any of the other variations. The effect could be based on sheer numbers. In any case, the need for further replications of these findings is clearly necessary before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn regarding the relationship between burglary and such schools. Clearly, the potential dividends of reducing burglary through controlling school enrollments are great and merit further attention

Sentencing Outcomes Under Competing But Coexisting Sentencing Interventions: Untying The Gordian Knot

The latest evolutionary phase of criminal sentencing is a return to determinate sentencing structures. However, the concurrent application of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum statutes in various jurisdictions often distorts and convolutes evaluations of such interventions’ effectiveness. To remedy this problem, the effects of such distinct reforms must be separated from one another. Previous research has been unsuccessful in accomplishing this task. The authors attempt to remedy this deficiency by using 1997-1998 federal sentencing data to isolate the effects of the minima from those of the guidelines and assessing how the predictors and conditioners of sentencing outcomes vary between them. The authors find several significant and some unexpected differences in the effect of predictors across models of incarceration and sentence length for the two intervention type

British signals intelligence and the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland

Historians for decades have placed Room 40, the First World War British naval signals intelligence organization, at the centre of narratives about the British anticipation of and response to the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. A series of crucial decrypts of telegrams between the German embassy in Washington and Berlin, it has been believed, provided significant advance intelligence about the Rising before it took place. This article upends previous accounts by demonstrating that Room 40 possessed far less advance knowledge about the Rising than has been believed, with most of the supposedly key decrypts not being generated until months after the Rising had taken place

Ecological divergence of Chaetopteryx rugulosa species complex (Insecta, Trichoptera) linked to climatic niche diversification

Climate is often considered to be an important, but indirect driver of speciation. Indeed, environmental factors may contribute to the formation of biodiversity, but to date this crucial relationship remains largely unexplored. Here we investigate the possible role of climate, geological factors, and biogeographical processes in the formation of a freshwater insect species group, the Chaetopteryx rugulosa species complex (Trichoptera) in the Western Balkans. We used multi-locus DNA sequence data to establish a dated phylogenetic hypothesis for the group. The comparison of the dated phylogeny with the geological history of the Western Balkans shows that lineage formation coincided with major past Earth surface and climatic events in the region. By reconstructing present-day habitat conditions (climate, bedrock geology), we show that the lineages of C. rugulosa species complex have distinct climatic but not bedrock geological niches. Without exception, all splits associated with Pliocene/Pleistocene transition led to independent, parallel split into ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ sister lineages. This indicates a non-random diversification on the C. rugulosa species complex associated with late Pliocene climate in the region. We interpreted the results as the diversification of the species complex were mainly driven by ecological diversification linked to past climate change, along with geographical isolation

Rapid niche expansion by selection on functional genomic variation after ecosystem recovery

It is well recognized that environmental degradation caused by human activities can result in dramatic losses of species and diversity. However, comparatively little is known about the ability of biodiversity to re-emerge following ecosystem recovery. Here, we show that a European whitefish subspecies, the gangfisch Coregonus lavaretus macrophthalmus, rapidly increased its ecologically functional diversity following the restoration of Lake Constance after anthropogenic eutrophication. In fewer than ten generations, gangfisch evolved a greater range of gill raker numbers (GRNs) to utilize a broader ecological niche. A sparse genetic architecture underlies this variation in GRN. Several co-expressed gene modules and genes showing signals of positive selection were associated with GRN and body shape. These were enriched for biological pathways related to trophic niche expansion in fishes. Our findings demonstrate the potential of functional diversity to expand following habitat restoration, given a fortuitous combination of genetic architecture, genetic diversity and selection