Young offenders speak about meeting their victims

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Abrams, L. S., Umbreit, M., & Gordon, A. (2006). Young offenders speak about meeting their victims: Implications for future programs. Contemporary Justice Review, 9(3), 243-256.

“Explaining Racial/Ethnic Gaps In Spatial Mismatch: The Primacy of Racial Segregation”

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Despite declines in racial segregation across most U.S. metropolitan areas in recent years, racial and ethnic minorities still display uneven geographic access to jobs. In this article, we provide a detailed analysis of the factors driving racial and ethnic gaps in spatial mismatch conditions across U.S. metropolitan areas. Using data primarily from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census, and the 1994 and 1999 Economic Census and the Zip Code Business Pattern files we generate descriptive, multivariate, and decompositional evidence to address why blacks and to a lesser extent Latinos display greater degrees of spatial mismatch than whites. The results indicate that racial segregation in housing markets among many other factors including job sprawl, is the most important factor. Our models indicate that racial differences in spatial mismatch conditions, particularly between blacks and whites, should be eliminated in 45 to 50 years should racial segregation levels continue to decline in the future at similar rates observed over the 1990s.

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“Demand for Environmental Policies to Improve Health: Evaluating Community-level Policy Scenarios”

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Using a national survey and a discrete choice experiment format, we estimate demand for environmental polices to improve health. We use a richly detailed community-level approach that describes illnesses avoided, premature deaths avoided, policy duration, and the affected population size. We allow preferences for policy attributes to vary systematically with the scenario design, with the source of risk and type of health threat, and with respondent characteristics. Using a willingness to pay (WTP) framework similar to that used for studies of individual risk, we find that omission of illness information leads to an upward bias in estimates of the value of avoided premature deaths and that individuals view avoided deaths and avoided illnesses as substitutes. We also find evidence of strongly diminishing marginal utility in policy scope. Differences in marginal WTP from different sources of risk or types of illness appear very small relative to differences associated with respondent characteristics and/or perceptions. Self-interest strongly dominates altruistic considerations.

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJ6-4TN0KS5-2…

The Executive Branch

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Joel D. Aberbach and Mark A. Peterson, eds. The Executive Branch (part of the Institutions of American Democracy Series). New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

The High Cost of Free Parking

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American drivers park for free on nearly ninety-nine percent of their car trips, and cities require developers to provide ample off-street parking for every new building. The resulting cost? Today we see sprawling cities that are better suited to cars than people and a nationwide fleet of motor vehicles that consume one-eighth of the world’s total oil production. Donald Shoup contends in The High Cost of Free Parking that parking is sorely misunderstood and mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians. He proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking so that Americans can stop paying for free parking’s hidden costs.