160 research outputs found

    Alaska Correctional Requirements: A Forecast of Prison Population through the Year 2000

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    This report is part of the Fire Island Prison Feasibility Study, a project conducted jointly by the School of Justice and School of Engineering at University of Alaska, Anchorage under contract to the Alaska Department of Corrections. The project undertook to assess the feasibility of locating a correctional facility on a 4,240 acre tract of land on Fire Island, which lies in Upper Cook Inlet about three miles off Point Campbell within the Municipality of Anchorage. The project was divided into three major phases: (1) an assessment of future bed space needs of the Alaska Department of Corrections; (2) an evaluation of the physical site and cost estimates for prison construction and operation; and (3) a public opinion survey and open discussion.The growth of the Alaska prison inmate population over the past fifteen years has been substantial. According to available statistics there were 482 institutionalized adult prisoners under control of the Alaska Division of Corrections in January 1971; by January 1980 this population had increased to 770 inmates; and between 1980 and 1985, the number of Alaska inmates almost tripled, rising from 770 to 2,073. Accurate forecasts of the future size and makeup of the prison population are needed as a basis for long-range programs and capital planning. This report presents long and short-term forecasts of the Alaska incarcerated prisoner population and bedspace needs of the Alaska Department of Corrections through the year 2000. The forecasts were developed by taking into consideration historical facts and status quo assumptions. Attention is also given to the impact of the 1980 Alaska criminal code revision on unsentenced and sentenced populations. The forecast derived from this study provides evidence of the need for additional institutional capacity in Southcentral Alaska by 1990. Planning should proceed for a capacity of 1,000 beds to be available for use by 1990.Alaska Department of CorrectionsAcknowledgments / Summary of Study / I. Introduction / II. Long-Range Forecasts / III. Short-Range Forecasts / IV. Regional Forecasts / V. Conclusions / APPENDICES / A. Inmate Population Forecasting: Statistical Model / B. JUSSIM Forecasting Model / C. Bibliography of Inmate Population Forecastin

    Do \u27Off-Site\u27 Adult Businesses Have Secondary Effects? Legal Doctrine, Social Theory, and Empirical Evidence

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    Recent federal court decisions appear to limit the ability of cities to mitigate the ambient crime risks associated with adult entertainment businesses. In one instance, a court has assumed that criminological theories do not apply to “off-site” adult businesses. After developing the legal doctrine of secondary effects, we demonstrate that the prevailing criminological theory applies to all adult business models. To corroborate the theory, we report the results of a before/after quasi-experiment for an off-site adult business. When an off-site adult business opens, ambient crime risk doubles compared to a control area. As theory predicts, moreover, ambient victimization risk is most acute in night-time hours. The theoretical development and empirical results have obvious implications for the evolving legal doctrine of secondary effects

    The Association of Adult Businesses with Secondary Effects: Legal Doctrine, Social Theory, and Empirical Evidence

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    In the decade since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Alameda Books v. City of Los Angeles, 535 U.S. 425 (2002), the adult entertainment industry has attacked the legal rationale local governments rely upon as the justification for their regulation of adult businesses: that such businesses are associated with so-called negative secondary effects. These attacks have taken a variety of forms, including: trying to subject the studies of secondary effects relied upon by local governments to the Daubert standard for admission of scientific evidence in federal litigation; producing studies that purport to show no association between adult businesses and negative secondary effects in a given jurisdiction; and claims that distinct business models and/or specific local conditions are not associated with the secondary effects demonstrated in the studies relied on by many local governments. In this Article, we demonstrate that, contrary to the industry’s claims, methodologically appropriate studies confirm criminological theory’s prediction that adult businesses are associated with heightened incidences of crime regardless of jurisdiction, business model or location and thus, such studies should have legal and policy effects supporting regulation of adult businesses

    Impact Evaluation of the Louisville-Shively-Jefferson County Traffic Alcohol Programs

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    This report is an evaluation of alcohol enforcement programs conducted by the Louisville, Jefferson County, and Shively police agencies in the Louisville metropolitan area. The following four types of data were collected in order to evaluate the traffic alcohol programs; accident data, arrest and adjudication data, cost-effectiveness, and public opinion data. Results from the before-and-after comparisons and time-series analysis show alcohol-related accidents decreased significantly during the study period, There was a 34.4 percent reduction in alcohol-related accidents during hours of special enforcement and a 30.4 percent reduction during all hours of the day. Time-series analysis of accident data showed a 27.1 percent decrease during hours of increased enforcement and a 26.1 percent decrease during all hours. Results from time-series analysis also indicated that the enforcement programs increased the DUI arrest rate by at least 50 percent in each of the jurisdictions studied. Inclusion of the Slammer Law as a control variable revealed the proportion of convictions among DUI arrests increased by nearly 449 percent. Based on costs associated with the program (enforcement, jail costs, and court costs) and benefits (reduced accident costs and DUI fines); the benefit-cost ratio was 2.81 to 5.67 depending upon the basis for accident costs. The public opinion survey showed strong support for the traffic alcohol programs and 87 percent of the respondents indicated that increased enforcement was an effective means of reducing drinking and driving. In addition, 82 percent of those responding indicated the programs had reduced their chances of an accident

    Assessing the feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity of a tele-retinopathy-based intervention to encourage greater attendance to diabetic retinopathy screening in immigrants living with diabetes from China and African-Caribbean countries in Ottawa, Canada: a protocol

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    Background: Diabetic retinopathy is a leading cause of preventable blindness in Canada. Clinical guidelines recommend annual diabetic retinopathy screening for people living with diabetes to reduce the risk and progression of vision loss. However, many Canadians with diabetes do not attend screening. Screening rates are even lower in immigrants to Canada including people from China, Africa, and the Caribbean, and these groups are also at higher risk of developing diabetes complications. We aim to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity of a co-developed, linguistically and culturally tailored tele-retinopathy screening intervention for Mandarin-speaking immigrants from China and French-speaking immigrants from African-Caribbean countries living with diabetes in Ottawa, Canada, and identify how many from each population group attend screening during the pilot period. // Methods: We will work with our health system and patient partners to conduct a 6-month feasibility pilot of a tele-retinopathy screening intervention in a Community Health Centre in Ottawa. We anticipate recruiting 50–150 patients and 5–10 health care providers involved in delivering the intervention for the pilot. Acceptability will be assessed via a Theoretical Framework of Acceptability-informed survey with patients and health care providers. To assess feasibility, we will use a Theoretical Domains Framework-informed interview guide and to assess fidelity, and we will use a survey informed by the National Institutes of Health framework from the perspective of health care providers. We will also collect patient demographics (i.e., age, gender, ethnicity, health insurance status, and immigration information), screening outcomes (i.e., patients with retinopathy identified, patients requiring specialist care), patient costs, and other intervention-related variables such as preferred language. Survey data will be descriptively analyzed and qualitative data will undergo content analysis. // Discussion: This feasibility pilot study will capture how many people living with diabetes from each group attend the diabetic retinopathy screening, costs, and implementation processes for the tele-retinopathy screening intervention. The study will indicate the practicability and suitability of the intervention in increasing screening attendance in the target population groups. The study results will inform a patient-randomized trial, provide evidence to conduct an economic evaluation of the intervention, and optimize the community-based intervention

    Lensing in the Blue. II. Estimating the Sensitivity of Stratospheric Balloons to Weak Gravitational Lensing

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    The Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a diffraction-limited, wide-field, 0.5 m, near-infrared to near-ultraviolet observatory designed to exploit the stratosphere's space-like conditions. SuperBIT's 2023 science flight will deliver deep, blue imaging of galaxy clusters for gravitational lensing analysis. In preparation, we have developed a weak-lensing measurement pipeline with modern algorithms for PSF characterization, shape measurement, and shear calibration. We validate our pipeline and forecast SuperBIT survey properties with simulated galaxy cluster observations in SuperBIT's near-UV and blue bandpasses. We predict imaging depth, galaxy number (source) density, and redshift distribution for observations in SuperBIT's three bluest filters; the effect of lensing sample selections is also considered. We find that, in three hours of on-sky integration, SuperBIT can attain a depth of b = 26 mag and a total source density exceeding 40 galaxies per square arcminute. Even with the application of lensing-analysis catalog selections, we find b-band source densities between 25 and 30 galaxies per square arcminute with a median redshift of z = 1.1. Our analysis confirms SuperBIT's capability for weak gravitational lensing measurements in the blue
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