Evidence for the Adoption of a Learning Theory Approach to Criminal Deterrence: A Preliminary Study
It is a long-held belief that inflicting punishment on criminals will reduce fiiture rates of crime in society. In line with this belief, the current administration in the United States has introduced punishment policies with the aim to “get tough” on violent and drug-related crime. In contrast to this belief in the effectiveness of punishment on crime, many researchers have found that punished offenders evidence similar or higher rates of recidivism than non-punished offenders (DiChiara & Galliher, 1984; Gibbs, 1975; Tittle & Logan, 1973; Zimring and Hawkins, 1973). Previous research studies concerning this topic have been designed solely to test the theory of specific deterrence. It is our contention that methodological and theoretical problems with these previous studies may have impeded their ability to assess the deterrent effect of punishment. We suggest that learning theory provides an alternative theoretical basis for the study of criminal deterrence. The availability of a large-scale, population-based longitudinal data set provides us with the ability to test principles of learning theory as they relate to criminal deterrence, and also to overcome the methodological pitfalls in this area of research.
Treatment and Management of Psychopaths
About 20 years ago, Hare and Schalling (1978) edited a book on the results of the first NATO Advanced Study Institute on psychopathy. This volume contained a chapter on “Approaches to Treatment” from Suedfeld and Landon (1978) that began as follows: “Even a quick review of the literature suggests that a chapter on effective treatment should be the shortest in any book concerned with psychopathy. In fact, it has been suggested that one sentence would suffice:’ No demonstrably effective treatment has been found. ” (p. 347). In a review from the 1990s, Blackburn (1993, p. 202) drew two main conclusions: “First, while classical psychopaths have been shown to respond poorly to some traditional therapeutic interventions, it has yet to be established that “nothing works” with this group. Second, some offenders with personality disorders do appear to change with psychological treatment. ”
Improving Hollow Fiber Dialyzer Efficiency with a Recirculating Dialysate System II: Comparison Against Two-Chamber Dialysis Systems
The theoretical basis of the nonregenerated recirculating dialysate system (RDS) was derived in Part I of this work [M. Prado, L. M. Roa, A. Palma, and J. A. Milán, Ann. Biomed. Eng. (2005)]. This system pursues the maximization of the clearance of hollow fiber dialyzers whose performance is controlled by diffusion, as occurred in standard hemodialysis. In this second part we perform a comparison by digital simulation of the RDS against three well-known two-chamber dialysis systems. As a major outcome, the efficiency of the RDS increased by a factor of five–eight with respect to the efficiency of a single dialyzer operating with a number of transfer units equal to 0.1, that is when the diffusive mass-transfer of the dialyzer is exhausted. Present low-flux dialyzers do not take advantage of the full potential of this technique, but the functional domain where high-flux and high-area dialyzers operate could be more suitable to exploit this technique. We conclude that RDS can be a competitive efficient technique for optimizing the dialysis efficiency.