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This book reviews the scientific evidence relevant to assessing the recidivism risk of sex offenders, as well as the issues related to sex offenders, in considerable detail. It is not an attempt for creating sympathy for sex offenders. Substantial numbers of psychologists claim they can accurately identify the recidivism risk of sex offenders. Despite the very limited, peer-reviewed data related to these claims, many psychologists insist the scientific evidence supports their efforts in this regard. Too often, the issues detailed in these chapters have been overlooked and/or misinterpreted. As

Some groups participate in politics more than others. Why? And does it matter for policy outcomes? In this richly detailed and fluidly written book, Andrea Campbell argues that democratic participation and public policy powerfully reinforce each other. Through a case study of senior citizens in the United States and their political activity around Social Security, she shows how highly participatory groups get their policy preferences fulfilled, and how public policy itself helps create political inequality. Using a wealth of unique survey and historical data, Campbell shows how the de

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The watchword of the policy feedbacks approach to political analysis – that politics shapes policy – suggests that the way in which taxes are designed may influence how the public feels about various levies: their support for those taxes, their perceptions of fairness, and their willingness to pay them. Hypotheses about the design features of different taxes Americans pay, including tax regressivity or progressivity, the manner in which they are exacted, their actual and perceived costs, and the visibility and desirability of resulting benefits, are examined with closed- and open-ended survey data. Taxes with more attractive design features are generally more positively perceived by the public. Open-ended responses help explain the fairness perceptions and popularity of several taxes, including a widespread belief that estate taxes constitute "double taxation" and the considerable embrace of the notion that "everyone pays" state sales tax (as opposed to the federal income tax, where some rich and poor people "get away" without paying). These results help explain why some taxes invite more ire than others.

Intimate ethnography presents a number of challenges: How could I write about my own family in a way that was true to their experience but also an "objective" report? How could I convey telling details without robbing my family of their privacy? How could I rein in my emotions to report their story, and did I pick and choose facts to protect them or to make them more sympathetic? How could I generalize from their experience to that of millions of social assistance recipients? In this Reflections essay, I consider these challenges in light of what other social scientists have said about the issues of close work with individual, sometimes vulnerable, research subjects.

AbstractA family tragedy enables a social policy scholar to examine how American social assistance works from the recipient perspective. The experience results in a reexamination of conventional wisdom around US social policy. In contrast to the revisionist account, meager social assistance programs are still pretty meager. Despite the bifurcation between deserving and undeserving beneficiaries, some deserving populations are swept into catch-all means-tested programs and fare badly. Finally, the experience forces a new look at research approaches to social policy. More qualitative and ethnographic work is needed, as well as examinations of the interactions among multiple programs and their complicated and often contradictory rules.