8,136 research outputs found
1991 NCCD Prison Population Forecast: The Impact of Declining Drug Arrests (FOCUS)
According to the National Council and Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), prison populations will increase by 35 percent over the next five years under the current criminal justice policies. This rate of growth is significantly lower than NCCD's 1989 estimates of a 60 percent increase over five years. The principal reason for the lower growth rate is a 20 percent reduction in drug arrests, which in turn is reducing projected jail and prison admissions. The declining number of drug arrests are related to the fiscal crisis of state and local governments, drug asset and seizure laws, and lower drug use. However, prison populations will continue to grow despite reductions in admissions due to the passage of mandatory minimum sentencing statutes and lengthier prison terms for certain crimes. Assuming that the 16 states researched are representative of trends that are on-going in other states and the Federal Prison System, the nation's prison population will reach 1 million inmates by 1994
How New York City Reduced Mass Incarceration: A Model for Change?
In this report, leading criminologists examine the connection between New York City's shift in policing strategies and the dramatic decrease in the City's incarcerated and correctional population
Axiomatic Information Thermodynamics
We present an axiomatic framework for thermodynamics that incorporates
information as a fundamental concept. The axioms describe both ordinary
thermodynamic processes and those in which information is acquired, used and
erased, as in the operation of Maxwell's demon. This system, like previous
axiomatic systems for thermodynamics, supports the construction of conserved
quantities and an entropy function governing state changes. Here, however, the
entropy exhibits both information and thermodynamic aspects. Although our
axioms are not based upon probabilistic concepts, a natural and highly useful
concept of probability emerges from the entropy function itself. Our abstract
system has many models, including both classical and quantum examples.Comment: 52 pages, 5 figures. Revised 28 Mar 201
Design of the primary and secondary Pre-TRMM and TRMM ground truth sites
Results generated over six months are covered in five manuscripts: (1) estimates of rain volume over the Peninsula of Florida during the summer season based upon the Manually Digitized Radar data; (2) the diurnal characteristics of rainfall over Florida and over the near shore waters; (3) convective rainfall as measured over the east coast of central Florida; (4) the spatial and temporal variability of rainfall over Florida; and (5) comparisons between the land based radar and an optical raingage onboard an anchored buoy 50 km offshore
Useful Fictions
âWe tell ourselves stories in order to live,â Joan Didion observed in The White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, in Useful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our speciesâ need for stories? Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a âuseful fiction,â a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual one. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examplesâfrom the Bible to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Don Quixote to No ExitâAustinâs work offers a new way of understanding the relationship between fiction and evolutionary processesâand, perhaps, the very origins of literature
Useful Fictions
âWe tell ourselves stories in order to live,â Joan Didion observed in The White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, in Useful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our speciesâ need for stories? Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a âuseful fiction,â a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual one. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examplesâfrom the Bible to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Don Quixote to No ExitâAustinâs work offers a new way of understanding the relationship between fiction and evolutionary processesâand, perhaps, the very origins of literature
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