Fixed parameter tractability of crossing minimization of almost-trees

We investigate exact crossing minimization for graphs that differ from trees by a small number of additional edges, for several variants of the crossing minimization problem. In particular, we provide fixed parameter tractable algorithms for the 1-page book crossing number, the 2-page book crossing number, and the minimum number of crossed edges in 1-page and 2-page book drawings.Comment: Graph Drawing 201

Vicarious Snitching: Crime, Cooperation, and Good Corporate Citizenship

(Excerpt) This Article will examine corporate cooperation and the difficulties it can create for corporate decision-makers. Part I describes the principles of vicarious guilt that give prosecutors the power to demand corporate cooperation. Part II examines how prosecutors exercise their discretion in deciding whether to charge corporations with crimes. In Part III, the Article examines the cooperators. Just as a corporation\u27s guilt is only vicarious, so too its cooperation can be only vicarious. In the end, it is not the corporation that cooperates, but its officers and directors-the men and women who make decisions for the corporation. For these vicarious snitches, the process can be a minefield, filled with conflicting loyalties and inevitable self-interest

Vicarious Snitching: Crime, Cooperation, and Good Corporate Citizenship

(Excerpt) This Article will examine corporate cooperation and the difficulties it can create for corporate decision-makers. Part I describes the principles of vicarious guilt that give prosecutors the power to demand corporate cooperation. Part II examines how prosecutors exercise their discretion in deciding whether to charge corporations with crimes. In Part III, the Article examines the cooperators. Just as a corporation\u27s guilt is only vicarious, so too its cooperation can be only vicarious. In the end, it is not the corporation that cooperates, but its officers and directors-the men and women who make decisions for the corporation. For these vicarious snitches, the process can be a minefield, filled with conflicting loyalties and inevitable self-interest

Sense and Sentencing: Our Imprisonment Epidemic

(Excerpt) Over the past thirty years, the most important sentencing development has not been the legislative adoption of mandatory guidelines, or the judicial creation of advisory guidelines, or the adoption of a wide variety of guidelines systems in the states, or the widespread elimination of parole, or the abandonment of rehabilitation as a sentencing goal. No, the most important sentencing development has been our rejection of the principal of parsimony: the notion that a sentence should be as long as - but no longer than - necessary to accomplish the goals of punishment. Instead, we have replaced parsimony with severity, which has resulted in ever longer prison sentences and a sharp increase in incarceration rates. Consider this statistic: over 2.3 million Americans, or about one in every 131 people, are currently incarcerated. As a country, we are suffering from an incarceration epidemic. Part I of this article will trace the history of that epidemic. And yet, in the midst of this epidemic, there is evidence that the sentencing pendulum may have finally started to swing back toward moderation, as Part II of this essay will discuss. Indeed, some politicians have even begun to recognize that it is politically feasible to replace being tough on crime with being smart on crime. After thirty-years of ever increasing severity, there may be reason for hope. We may finally be ready to talk sense about sentencing

Retribution for Rats: Cooperation, Punishment, and Atonement

To mobsters, he is a rat ; to drug dealers, a snitch. To school children, he is a tattletale ; to corporate executives, a whistle- blower. To cops, he is an informant ; to prosecutors, a cooperator. By whatever name he is known, the person who betrays his associates to the authorities is almost universally reviled. In movies, on television, in literature, the cooperator embodies all that society holds in contempt: he is disloyal, deceitful, greedy, selfish, and weak. The cooperator, though, has long been a mainstay of our criminal justice system. For centuries, criminal defendants have received leniency in return for testimony incriminating accomplices and associates. Cooperation has flourished because the participants in the process (primarily prosecutors and cooperators) reap tremendous benefits. Prosecutors want what only cooperators can offer: inside information about criminal organizations. And cooperators want what only prosecutors can offer: leniency, or at least a recommendation for leniency. Cooperation has never been more prevalent than it is today. And as cooperation has increased, so too have its critics. Not surprisingly, the typical academic view of cooperation is consistent with the cultural view of cooperators: cooperation is almost always seen as an evil-a necessary evil, no doubt, but an evil nonetheless. As a result, cooperation is usually discussed in terms that are starkly utilitarian. The cooperator is given leniency not because he deserves it, but because leniency is a necessary part of the prosecutor\u27s bargain with the devil. In the language of the marketplace, leniency is the price that a prosecutor must pay to purchase the cooperator\u27s information and services. A criminal\u27s cooperation is valuable-it is worth buying-because the prosecutor can use it to convict other criminals, who are often more culpable or more dangerous than the cooperator. From the prosecutor\u27s perspective, paying the cooperator in leniency is a worthwhile investment because the benefit to the prosecutor (and, by extension, to society) in increased convictions outweighs the cost to the prosecutor (and, by extension, to society) in leniency. While intuitively appealing and largely accurate, this utilitarian view of cooperation is incomplete. It is true that most participants in the cooperation process-cooperators, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, defense counsel, and judges-view cooperation in utilitarian terms. Yet cooperation also contains hidden, but important, retributive components

Prosecutorial Discretion in the Shadow of Advisory Guidelines and Mandatory Minimums

(Excerpt) Imagine the following rather run-of-the-mill crime spree: Three young men, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty and without significant criminal histories, get together to rob a convenience store in New York City. They take an unloaded an inoperable gun, go into the store, point the gun at the clerk behind the counter, and take a few hundred dollars from the cash register. Flush with success, they decide to do it again, this time at a jewelry store down the block. One of the young men points the unloaded gun at the store employees, another stands guard by the door, and the third jumps over the counter and grabs as many jewels as he can. Their total take is approximately $20,000. Realizing that they cannot continue to rob stores on the same block without getting caught, they branch out and rob a jewelry store in New Jersey, another Connecticut, and a third in Massachusetts, using the same pattern. After the fifth robbery, they are caught. What sentences would these three young men get for committing five robberies in four different states using an inoperable gun? And what would the federal prosecutor\u27s role be in determining a just sentence? The answer to these questions would depend on when the robberies were committed. In the decades before the United States Sentencing Guidelines went into effect in 1987, the sentencing judge would have had almost unfettered discretion to individualize sentences for our three defendants. Although the prosecutor had the power to decide which charges to bring, the charging decision set only the broadest parameters for the sentence, giving prosecutors little incentive to reflect on the justice of possible sentencing