Attribution Theory and Deterrence Research: A New Approach to Old Problems
About 1980 criminologists in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) took a new approach to deterrence theory and research. Although the topic of “general prevention”had been discussed within the community of the practitioners of penal law, it had been dormant within the scientific community.
LIBERALISM AND FEAR AS EXPLANATIONS OF PUNITIVENESS
This paper explores the relationship between liberalism, victimization experience (both direct and vicarious), fear of victimization, and attitudes towards purposes of incarceration. The study makes use of a national public opinion poll conducted for ABC News in 1982. The major findings are that both fear and liberalism contribute to punitiveness but, more importantly, individual demographic characteristics are ambiguously related to punitiveness. It appears that demographic characteristics are related to punitiveness through a complex of other attitudinal associations—in this instance, fear and liberalism. Neither direct nor vicarious victimization had a direct effect on punishment attitudes. To the extent that victimization experience affects punitiveness, the effects are indirect through fear.
The Invariance of the Vacuum is the Invariance of the World
The following theorem is demonstrated: If the vacuum is invariant under the group generated by the space integral of the time component of a local vector current, then the Hamiltonian is invariant also. A similar theorem holds for the group generated by the space integral of a space component of a local axial-vector current.