Research Summary
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing “war on terrorism,” the U.S. government has engaged in a series of controversial counterterrorism policies. Perhaps none is more so than the use of targeted killings aimed at eliminating the senior leadership of the global jihadist movement. Nevertheless, prior research has yet to establish that this type of tactic is effective, even among high‐profile targets. Employing a robust methodology, I find that these types of killings primarily yielded negligible effects.
Policy Implications
Given the immense controversy surrounding the policy of targeted killings, it has become that much more vital to assess whether such measures are effective. This study's findings, that most of these high‐profile killings either had no influence or were associated with a backlash effect, have important implications for future counterterrorism efforts. All in all, the U.S. government's investment in the policy of targeted killings seems to be counterproductive if its main intention is a decrease in terrorism perpetrated by the global jihadist movement.
Prior research that assesses the relationship between cannabis policy and prevalence rates has yielded mixed results, perhaps due to the varying rigor of these investigations. Addressing some of these issues in rigor and informed by a rational choice theory (RCT), we hypothesize that those policies on the more punitive end of McDonald and colleagues’ classification will be most effective. Examining legislation in 27 countries utilizing the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2) through hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) models with both individual- and country-level controls, we find little support for these hypotheses. Instead, results from our analysis largely indicate that the variation in country prevalence rates from 2005 to 2007 was not significantly related to cannabis control policy. We comment on possible policy implications for these preliminary results.
Informed by the literature on prior problem-oriented policing evaluations, this study evaluated a response within a suburban public housing unit. Specifically, we examined the Crime Response Team (CRT), a multifaceted intervention, in relation to disaggregated calls for service and reported crime. We utilized a quasi-experimental design combining interrupted time-series analysis (ARIMAX) and series hazard models in order to assess the intervention's effect. A possible diffusion site and two pseudointervention sites were also included for comparison purposes. This investigation yielded largely negligible effects, which we primarily attributed to a mismatch between administrative-led initiatives and program execution.
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