Deterrence, Death, and the Victims of Crime: A Common Sense Approach

The concept of deterrence is one of the most important in the formulations of the victim advocate, primarily because of two essential premises that underlie the entire field of victim advocacy.The first, but not necessarily the most important, of these premises concerns the policy that favors assuaging the plight of persons after they have been victimized. This relief can be provided in a number of different ways: compensation to innocent victims from the states; restitution to victims as a condition of granting probation to the criminal; victim counselling; and victim/witness assistance programs.\u27 The second premise of victim advocacy, namely,preventing victimization from ever occurring, is also of critical importance because, obviously, in each instance in which a given act of victimization is prevented, the palliative measures described above will not be necessary. This preventive goal can be effectuated through two types of activity. First, victim advocates often engage in activity that encourages and assists the potential victim of crime to help himself in programs such as neighborhood watch, inscription of identifying serial numbers on personal property, and other citizen crime prevention programs. The second type of activity, with which this Article primarily deals, entails efforts by victim advocates to structure the system to deter would-be criminals from engaging in acts of victimization. It also requires efforts to deter third parties--for example, parole officials, whose duties include making decisions that may place dangerous criminals in a position to victimize again--from acting to the detriment of potential victims. In sum, the notion of deterrence has assumed critical dimensions in the area of victim advocacy and assistance. Part II of this Article deals with deterrence generally as a common sense concept and emphasizes the potential impact that different attitudes to-ward this concept have on crime victims. Part III then focuses on particular aspects of deterrence in the capital punishment controversy-again by emphasizing the effect on victims. The final part of the Article explores a rather new area of the law that applies the concept of deterrence-by threatening civil liability for gross negligence in the handling and release of prisoners--to third party custodial officials in an attempt to prevent future victimization. The Article concludes that a common sense approach to the question of deterrence, rather than one which is based on delaying any decision until all the empirical evidence is compiled, is necessary to combat the serious crime problem that now faces the country

White privilege, empathy and alterity in higher education : Teaching about race and racism in the sociology of PE and sport

In this chapter we provide a reflexive account on personal experiences teaching in HE in order to consider the extent to which our status as white HE practitioners reinforces and/or undermines white privilege in HE. As lecturers teaching within the discipline of sociology in physical education (PE) and sport contexts, we question whether our delivery of lectures on race and racism effectively challenges racialised discourses and encourages social action within our field. Despite the fact that the undergraduate programmes we work on incorporate lectures on race and ethnicity as a crucial part of the curriculum, these sessions have rarely been delivered by black and minority ethnic (BME) academics. We therefore consider whether our practice can provide a critical pedagogic voice, or if it simply provides a platform for white academics to unconsciously reinforce the institutional whiteness of HE. In particular, we reflect upon the possibility for white academics to empathise with the racialised social experiences of BME students in our cohorts, and the potential risk that our practice simply offers tokenistic discussion of race which reinforce the current forms of inequality and white privilege, whilst violating the alterity of our students

Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law

Gindis, David, Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law (October 27, 2017). Journal of Institutional Economics, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905547, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905547The rise of large business corporations in the late 19th century compelled many American observers to admit that the nature of the corporation had yet to be understood. Published in this context, Ernst Freund's little-known The Legal Nature of Corporations (1897) was an original attempt to come to terms with a new legal and economic reality. But it can also be described, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the earliest example of the rational study of corporate law. The paper shows that Freund had the intuitions of an institutional economist, and engaged in what today would be called comparative institutional analysis. Remarkably, his argument that the corporate form secures property against insider defection and against outsiders anticipated recent work on entity shielding and capital lock-in, and can be read as an early contribution to what today would be called the theory of the firm.Peer reviewe

Reduced Reactivation from Dormancy but Maintained Lineage Choice of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Donor Age

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are promising for cell-based regeneration therapies but up to date it is still controversial whether their function is maintained throughout ageing. Aim of this study was to address whether frequency, activation in vitro, replicative function, and in vitro lineage choice of MSC is maintained throughout ageing to answer the question whether MSC-based regeneration strategies should be restricted to younger individuals. MSC from bone marrow aspirates of 28 donors (5–80 years) were characterized regarding colony-forming unit-fibroblast (CFU-F) numbers, single cell cloning efficiency (SSCE), osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic differentiation capacity in vitro. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, mineralization, Oil Red O content, proteoglycan- and collagen type II deposition were quantified. While CFU-F frequency was maintained, SSCE and early proliferation rate decreased significantly with advanced donor age. MSC with higher proliferation rate before start of induction showed stronger osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic differentiation. MSC with high osteogenic capacity underwent better chondrogenesis and showed a trend to better adipogenesis. Lineage choice was, however, unaltered with age. Conclusion: Ageing influenced activation from dormancy and replicative function of MSC in a way that it may be more demanding to mobilize MSC to fast cell growth at advanced age. Since fast proliferation came along with high multilineage capacity, the proliferation status of expanded MSC rather than donor age may provide an argument to restrict MSC-based therapies to certain individuals

Identification and Characterization of MicroRNAs in Normal Equine Tissues by Next Generation Sequencing

The role of microRNAs (miRNAs) as a post-transcriptional gene regulator has been elucidated in a broad range of organisms including domestic animals. Characterization of miRNAs in normal tissues is an important step to investigate the functions of miRNAs in various physiological and pathological conditions. Using Illumina Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology, we identified a total of 292 known and 329 novel miRNAs in normal horse tissues including skeletal muscle, colon and liver. Distinct sets of miRNAs were differentially expressed in a tissue-specific manner. The miRNA genes were distributed across all the chromosomes except chromosomes 29 and 31 in the horse reference genome. In some chromosomes, multiple miRNAs were clustered and considered to be polycistronic transcript. A base composition analysis showed that equine miRNAs had a higher frequency of A+U than G+C. Furthermore, U tended to be more frequent at the 59 end of miRNA sequences. This is the first experimental study that identifies and characterizes the global miRNA expression profile in normal horse tissues. The present study enriches the horse miRNA database and provides useful information for further research dissecting biological functions of miRNAs in horse.open2

Discovery of novel targets for multi-epitope vaccines: Screening of HIV-1 genomes using association rule mining

© 2009 Paul and Piontkivska; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

The Global Spread of Hepatitis C Virus 1a and 1b: A Phylodynamic and Phylogeographic Analysis

Using phylodynamic and phylogeographic methods, Angelos Hatzakis and colleagues find that the global spread of Hepatitis C virus coincided with widespread use of transfused blood and with the expansion of intravenous drug use