Reducing the Harm of Criminal Victimization: The Role of Restitution

Restitution is a court-ordered payment by offenders to their victims to cover the victims\u27 economic losses resulting from the crime. These losses can be substantial and can harm victims and victims\u27 families both directly and indirectly. But most victims do not receive reparation for their injuries, both because judges do not always impose restitution and because of problems with collecting restitution payments, even if there is a court order to do so. In this article, we review the literature on restitution and suggest that this compensatory mechanism is necessary to restore victims to where they were before the crime occurred. But monetary restitution alone is not sufficient. Making victims whole requires not only financial compensation from the offender but also procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice from the criminal justice system

Sigma-model soliton intersections from exceptional calibrations

A first-order `BPS' equation is obtained for 1/8 supersymmetric intersections of soliton-membranes (lumps) of supersymmetric (4+1)-dimensional massless sigma models, and a special non-singular solution is found that preserves 1/4 supersymmetry. For 4-dimensional hyper-K\"ahler target spaces ($HK_4$) the BPS equation is shown to be the low-energy limit of the equation for a Cayley-calibrated 4-surface in \bE^4\times HK_4. Similar first-order equations are found for stationary intersections of Q-lump-membranes of the massive sigma model, but now generic solutions preserve either 1/8 supersymmetry or no supersymmetry, depending on the time orientation.Comment: 21 pages. Version 3: Minor corrections and one further reference: version published in JHE

More on scattering of Chern-Simons vortices

I derive a general formalism for finding kinetic terms of the effective Lagrangian for slowly moving Chern-Simons vortices. Deformations of fields linear in velocities are taken into account. From the equations they must satisfy I extract the kinetic term in the limit of coincident vortices. For vortices passing one over the other there is locally the right-angle scattering. The method is based on analysis of field equations instead of action functional so it may be useful also for nonvariational equations in nonrelativistic models of Condensed Matter Physics.Comment: discussion around Eq.(45) is generalised, one more condition for the local right-angle scattering is adde

Remarks on gauge vortex scattering

In the abelian Higgs model, among other situations, it has recently been realized that the head-on scattering of $n$ solitons distributed symmetrically around the point of scattering is by an angle $\pi/n$, independant of various details of the scattering. In this note, it is first observed that this result is in fact not entirely surprising: the above is one of only two possible outcomes. Then, a generalization of an argument given by Ruback for the case of two gauge theory vortices in the Bogomol'nyi limit is used to show that in the geodesic approximation the above result follows from purely geometric considerations.Comment: 6 pages, revtex, missing authors added to one referenc

Magnetic bubble refraction and quasibreathers in inhomogeneous antiferromagnets

The dynamics of magnetic bubble solitons in a two-dimensional isotropic antiferromagnetic spin lattice is studied, in the case where the exchange integral J(x,y) is position dependent. In the near continuum regime, this system is described by the relativistic O(3) sigma model on a spacetime with a spatially inhomogeneous metric, determined by J. The geodesic approximation is used to describe low energy soliton dynamics in this system: n-soliton motion is approximated by geodesic motion in the moduli space of static n-solitons, equipped with the L^2 metric. Explicit formulae for this metric for various natural choices of J(x,y) are obtained. From these it is shown that single soliton trajectories experience refraction, with 1/J analogous to the refractive index, and that this refraction effect allows the construction of simple bubble lenses and bubble guides. The case where J has a disk inhomogeneity (taking the value J_1 outside a disk, and J_2<J_1 inside) is considered in detail. It is argued that, for sufficiently large J_1/J_2 this type of antiferromagnet supports approximate quasibreathers: two or more coincident bubbles confined within the disk which spin internally while their shape undergoes periodic oscillations with a generically incommensurate period.Comment: Conference proceedings paper for talk given at Nonlinear Physics Theory and Experiment IV, Gallipoli, Italy, June 200

Vortex Dynamics in Selfdual Maxwell-Higgs Systems with Uniform Background Electric Charge Density

We introduce selfdual Maxwell-Higgs systems with uniform background electric charge density and show that the selfdual equations satisfied by topological vortices can be reduced to the original Bogomol'nyi equations without any background. These vortices are shown to carry no spin but to feel the Magnus force due to the shielding charge carried by the Higgs field. We also study the dynamics of slowly moving vortices and show that the spin-statistics theorem holds to our vortices.Comment: 24 pages + 2 figures ( not included), Cu-TP-611, IASSNS-HEP-93/33, NSF-ITP-93-13