Joshua B. Hill

When the President Speaks… An Analysis of Presidential Influence Over Public Opinion Concerning the War on Drugs

The theory of presidential influence over public opinion is used to predict the impact of presidential rhetoric on the public’s concern regarding drug use as “the most important problem (MIP) facing the nation.” It is hypothesized that the more attention presidents give to the policy area of drugs in their state of the union (SOTU) addresses, the more concerned the public becomes with drug use. Using a time-series regression analysis of data collected from a content analysis of presidents’SOTU speeches regressed on the Gallup Poll’s MIP series from 1946 to 2010, the findings suggest that presidential mentions of drugs in the SOTU addresses influence public concern for illicit drugs in America.

Not All Crime Policies Are Created Equal: Presidential Speeches and Symbolic Rhetoric by Crime Policy Types

Previous research suggests that American presidents resort to the use of symbolic rhetoric because of public opinion, party affiliation, election year politics, and divided government. This research, however, treated crime policy as a general topic, disregarding the nuances that emerge from different types of crime policies. The research at hand posits not all crime policies are the same or handled the same politically, and thus divides them into seven crime policy categories: law enforcement, courts, corrections, juveniles, guns, death penalty, and drugs. Drawing upon the theory of symbolic rhetoric and categorizing presidential speeches from 1948 through 2010 into these seven categories, this study employs logistic regression to explain the influencing variables upon the likelihood presidents will employ symbolic rhetoric for each of these crime policy types. Findings suggest that although the use of symbolic rhetoric is different for each crime policy issue, there are two key factors that matter overall: divided government and party affiliation.

The Purloined Letters Presidential Use (and Abuse) of Signing Statements in Criminal Justice Policy

Presidential signing statements—a written statement presidents attach to a bill when signing it into law—has recently come to light as a powerful, and possibly unconstitutional, tool for enhancing power of the unitary executive. Recent research has assessed how these signing statements have been used and why, offering insight into the politics of the American presidency in enacting public policy. This study examines how presidents use the signing statements as they approve legislation related to criminal justice, assessing them by type, president, and party affiliation. Results suggest support for the unitary executive theory and that presidents often take a unilateral action approach in their use of signing statements—including those that potentially violate the U.S. Constitution.

Classification of Terrorist Group Events in the Philippines: Location, Location, Location

ABSTRACT In the ongoing effort to assign culpability for terrorists’ violent attacks, the situation in the Philippines is typical. There are large numbers of widely‐scattered attacks following varied tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP). Many, but not all, are claimed or definitively attributed publically by authoritative sources to specific groups; many are not. The Institute for the Study of Violent Groups (ISVG) database is a huge compendium of public sources on attacks around the globe, and is relatively complete since 2003. Using the data in the ISVG database, we submit the roughly two thousand violent attacks (armed assaults, bombings, hijackings, and hostage‐takings) reported between 1/1/2003 and 6/3/2009 to a modern update of one of the earliest, but still reputable, classification technique – Nearest Neighbor. The technique turns out to be remarkably accurate, and serves well to underscore the critical, even definitive, role of location for culpability attribution in the Philippines.

Modeling terrorism culpability: An event-based approach

Recently, researchers have become interested in the issue of assessing culpability for terrorist attacks when no one group claims or multiple groups claim responsibility. Several new methods have been put forward for predicting culpability, traditionally assessed by intelligence analysts, using both machine learning and statistical classification models. These models have had varying degrees of success, with new ensemble classification models performing generally better than traditional statistical techniques. This paper applies a relatively new methodology, Random Forests, to the problem of predicting culpability and compares it to some of the more frequently used statistical classification techniques, including multinomial logistic regression and naïve Bayesian classification. Though generally outperforming other techniques, Random Forests struggles with unbalanced data, performing worse than either of the other models tested in the class with the least information. However, this evaluation of Random Forests for the assessment of terrorism culpability is positive. Implications of the model and comparison to other models are discussed and ways forward are suggested.

Book Review: Assassination, Anarchy, and Terrorism: A Sociological AnalysisFalkG.Assassination, Anarchy, and Terrorism: A Sociological AnalysisLanham, MD: University Press of America, 2012. xii, 210 pp.

essay ‘‘Drug Courts as Communicative Punishment’’ explains, Duff’s theory is adaptable to numerous types of punishments because its focus is on how punishment is communicated to the offender while using retributive and proportionality principals. Another attempt to theoretically inform current sentencing practices is written by Richard S. Frase in his essay ‘‘Can Above-desert Penalties Be Justified by Competing Deontological Theories.’’ In that essay, Frase conceives a Rawlsian approach to criminal punishment which develops proportionality arguments by comparing the rights of the offender in society with the rights of the crime victim. Jan W. De Keijser’s presents the Dutch dual model of sentencing in his essay, ‘‘Never Mind the Pain, It’s a Measure! Justifying Measures as Part of the Dutch Bifurcated System of Sanctions.’’ Both Tonry and Von Hirsch discuss the suitability of this model for the United States, which includes sentencing based on classic notions of desert as well as sentencing that considers the protection of society. Another theorist, Douglas Husak, discusses the compatibility of retributivist philosophy with restorative justice in ‘‘Retributivism, Proportionality, and the Challenge of the Drug Court Movement.’’ In all, enough sentencing theorists answered Tonry’s call to present an optimistic future for the desert model and its ability to inform current sentencing practices. The book is worth reading because it takes the reader from conceptualizing criminal sentencing in terms of overly simplistic notions of traditional retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation to the more sophisticated theoretical precepts of the contemporary ‘‘desert model.’’