Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Studying the existence and effect of defendant testimony in criminal trials may help explain both conviction patterns and judge-jury agreement rates. The decision to have the defendant testify and the influence of that testimony on case outcomes are studied in a sample of over 300 cases from four large U.S. counties. When the defendant testifies, the jury often learns about prior criminal history. So comparing judge-jury agreement in cases with and without defendant testimony can help explain the bases for judge-jury disagreement. We find that defendant's past criminal history does not help explain patterns of judge-jury disagreement. The data set allows unusually strong controls for the merits of the case because assessments of the strength of the evidence are available from judges, jurors, and attorneys.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This effort is a first step to verify why certain NGS elect to become insurgents and choose to include in their use of violence direct action against the state’s security forces and their infrastructure. Direct action is understood to be the use of violence against military and paramilitary targets and the state security apparatus defined as all those armed forces belonging to the state and the facilities they operate to perform their functions (bases, depots, command and control nodes, police stations, etc.). No distinction is made as to whether the SSA is indigenous or provided by an occupying state or the nature of the occupation (Edelstein 2004). Our first step is to confirm that there is a significant relationship between those groups who resort to terrorism and those who resort to direct action. We find that there is, lending credence to our position that to fully understand the story of 21st century insurgency, one must examine direct action with the same vigor as terrorism. We then look for specific characteristics of NSG that make them more likely to resort to direct action against the SSA. We postulate that this decision is likely influenced significantly by: 1) ideational/identity perceptions of self (specifically here rhetorical commitments and gender attitudes) by NSG members and/or society, 2) ideological considerations, specifically adoption of a national liberation ideology, 3) the physical control of territory by NSG, 4) access to external capabilities, be they from foreign or Diaspora sources and 5) the level of state repression. What we find is that our initial hypotheses are supported with the exception of ideological considerations and foreign support, results that both confirm our initial theorizing as well as raise an array of questions for further analysis.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the following ethnographic study, I identified and interviewed twenty-two leap takers, people who takes risks in their lives, at work and beyond. They act on what matters to them and have been self-reflexive about how these actions have impacted their lives and their world. In the interview process, I discovered that these identified leap takers mostly draw on strengths from within, without the help of the self-help industry.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The literature has highlighted that poor and populous countries with lootable resources have higher probability to experience civil war. Though, these studies have increased our knowledge on dynamics of civil war we still lack of a systematic theory that explain such process. Additionally, the interactions between spatial and temporal features are still understudied. How do time and space shape the likelihood of civil war onset? Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold: presenting a consistent theoretical framework and test hypotheses on the interactions between time, space and civil war. The models suggest preliminary confirms on the hypotheses on spatial and temporal patterns. First, state capacity matters in order to prevent civil war only if there is a peaceful neighbourhood. State capacity with proximity to an ongoing domestic strife loses its preventing effect. Second, countries that have recently experienced a civil war and, additionally, have in the neighbourhood an ongoing civil conflict have a higher probability to experience a civil war.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recently, scholarly interest in the topic of prisoner re-entry has broadened to include youths returning from juvenile facilities. However, few scholars have attended to the cultural context to which young people return and in which they must make sense of their experience of incarceration. Moreover, little attention has been given to the dynamics of the institutional experience and how urban youth must rationalize that experience with the exigencies of the street, both inside facilities and after their return.

I examine the tension between the “decent” orientation around which interventions inside juvenile facilities are typically organized and the “street” orientation that directs so much of urban youths’ thoughts and behavior as they enter these institutions. Using ethnographic data from a prospective longitudinal sample of young black men incarcerated at a facility designed to eliminate their “criminal thinking errors,” I explore how the program’s daily rituals and requirements challenge the “street code;” how urban culture shapes the way this intervention is received; and ultimately to what use it is put once young people return to the street.