American Punitiveness and Mass Incarceration: Psychological Perspectives on Retributive and Consequentialist Responses to Crime
A recent National Academy of Sciences Report explored the drivers of the fourfold increase in incarceration rates in the United States and provided a firm recommendation for significant reduction in incarceration rates. Policy makers representing the entire political spectrum are now publicly airing their views on the need for reform. Although public sentiment is generally favorably disposed toward reform in the abstract, when confronted with specific examples of crime, they tend to favor more punitive, retributive responses to crime. Retributive justifications for punishment that are deeply ingrained in our culture and our legal system as well as our biological and psychological make-up are a major impediment to constructive reform efforts. However, recent advances in research across neurobiological, psychological, and social levels of analysis suggest that following our retributive impulses to guide legal decision making and criminal justice policy is not only costly and ineffective in reducing crime, but unjust and increasingly difficult to justify morally. This article will draw on a body of research anchored in social ecological models of human behavior to argue for more forward-looking, consequentialist responses to crime that aim at the individual prevention of criminal behavior in the least restrictive and most cost effective manner at both the front- and back-ends of our criminal justice system.
Race-Based Suspect Selection and Colorblind Equal Protection Doctrine and Discourse
Racial profiling by law enforcement officers has been the subject of sustained criticism by scholars, activists, politicians and other commentators. The emerging consensus is that racial profiling is illegitimate because it constitutes the intentional use of race by state actors in a manner that disparately impacts innocent members of certain racial minority groups. A related and pervasive use of race by law enforcement officers has been the subject of virtually no scholarly criticism or political debate: reliance on race as a component of a physical description of a suspect. While racial profiling is widely condemned, law enforcement reliance on race-based suspect descriptions is accepted as so obviously legitimate as to scarcely require justification. This Article challenges the orthodox view of race-based suspect descriptions by demonstrating that law enforcement use of race-based suspect descriptions is as much of a racial classification as is racial profiling. Both practices are intentional uses of race by state actors in a manner that disparately impacts innocent members of certain racial minority groups. The broader purposes of this Article are to critique the colorblindness principle of equal protection doctrine and to highlight the depth of racial inequality and the inability of equal protection doctrine, however formulated, to overcome that inequality. Treating race-based suspect description reliance as a racial classification would undermine the primacy and force of the colorblindness principle, whatever the outcome of the strict scrutiny analysis. Conversely, the maintenance of colorblindness, as a constitutional and moral mandate, requires suppression of the race-based nature of the state practices that courts permit. Recognition that equal protection doctrine, as it actually operates, does not implement a norm of strict colorblindness would render race more defensible. Further, analysis of suspect description reliance suggests the limits of equal protection doctrine in eradicating state reinforced racial inequality in a society structured along lines of race.
A Review on Simulated Micro-Gravity Experiment Systems of Space Robot
The characteristics of the simulated micro-gravity experiment system (SMGES) are introduced and the key problems are summarized.Six main realization methods for SMGES are introduced,including the experiment systems based on free falling objects,parabolic flight,air-bearing table,neutral buoyancy,suspension system and hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulator.The application scopes,advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed and compared.Then we propose two realization concepts based on dynamic emulation and kinematic equivalence,and set up an experiment system to test and evaluate the key algorithms for path planning and control of space robot.