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Legislative action was historically the means by which U.S. states abolished capital punishment, but such action ceased for decades following the Supreme Court's 1976 Gregg decision that reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty. Despite the fact that several legislatures have considered abolition bills in the modern era, only three states successfully enacted such legislation. It is my purpose in this study to analyze why states are currently struggling to pass abolition legislation and to determine which factors contribute to success. I conduct a comparative, qualitative case study of New Jersey, the first state to legislatively abolish since 1976, and Maryland, a similar state whose abolition effort recently failed. I analyze the content of legislators’ debates about the abolition bills in committee and on the legislature floor, as well as news coverage of the abolition efforts in each state's largest newspapers. I reach two primary conclusions. First, an abolition bill is more likely to be passed by Democrats than Republicans, but unified Democratic control of the government is not a sufficient condition for abolition. Second, arguments about the risk of wrongful executions and the deleterious collateral consequences of the death penalty process on the family members of murder victims are powerful sources of political support for abolition, especially where doubts about the deterrent effect of the death penalty are widespread. This study reaffirms the central importance of the innocence frame in the modern death penalty debate, and it presents the first scholarly analysis of the collateral consequences frame. These findings may help activists in the abolition movement more effectively frame their arguments to appeal to legislators.

Is the death penalty dying? This autobiographical essay offers observations on the application of capital punishment in three very different legal jurisdictions at three different time periods when – partially by happenstance and partially by design – she was a homicide researcher, a participant and an observer of profound changes in the jurisdiction's application of the death penalty.

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose piecemeal. In the absence of banks and treasuries that exchanged paper monies at face value for specie monies on demand, colonial governments experimented with other ways to anchor their paper monies to real values in the economy. These mechanisms included tax-redemption, land-backed loans, sinking funds, interest-bearing notes, and legal tender laws. I assess and explain the structure and performance of these mechanisms. This was monetary experimentation on a grand scale.

State‐subsidized, firm‐based training is an increasingly popular strategy used by state governments in the USA to encourage the economic growth of firms by upgrading the skills of employees. In 1999, 47 of the 50 states provided cash‐assistance totalling $600 million to employers to assist them in upgrading the skills of current or new employees. A comprehensive two‐year evaluation of one of the larger programs in the USA, the State of New Jersey's Workforce Development Partnership Program, concludes that such programs can help businesses remain competitive, contribute to the state's tax base and offer expanded employment opportunities for firm employees. As governments and private companies throughout the world search for the most effective ways to encourage economic growth, state‐subsidized, firm‐based training programs can form an important element of successful strategies for human and economic development.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest public service corporations as a new means of helping to finance comprehensive public colleges and universities based on a well‐documented assumption that the current shared responsibility for financing public colleges is broken.

The paper focuses on financing comprehensive public colleges and universities, and explicitly does not focus on research, community, or proprietary institutions. The paper draws heavily from national data and literature on college finance and productivity, and uses New Jersey's state colleges and universities as primary examples.

The paper asserts that a new funding rationale for public colleges is imperative or these institutions will fail the principal mission of broad access for middle‐income students. Citing examples from New Jersey and other states, and drawing on work of other policy analysts, the paper proposes creation of new public service corporations not only as a means of generating new revenue to replace diminished state investment, but also as a means of enhancing transparency, accountability and public trust. The paper discusses explicit purposes and measurable benefits of the public service corporation.

The paper is written by two higher education policy practitioners with a combined 40 years executive experience in higher education law and policy at the state and national levels. They have been a leading voice for policy innovation in New Jersey. The paper has significant value for college presidents, trustees, governors, legislators, and policy analysts.

Because teacher training is an important component of high-quality early care and education (ECE), states are employing various efforts to increase the credentials of teachers in private ECE centers. In New Jersey, teachers who serve disadvantaged students in the state’s community-based Abbott preschools are under a court mandate to obtain a Bachelor’s degree and Preschool – Grade 3 certification by September 2004 or lose their jobs. This chapter describes a phenomenological study of five teachers’ experiences in attempting to meet that mandate, and offers implications for policymakers to consider when evaluating the overall success of this reform effort.

This paper aims to build a mathematical model to determine the price of an acre of developable land, whether it is part of a large open tract (farm) or a smaller residential parcel that can legally be subdivided. The primary purpose of the model is to explore the effect of various minimum lot‐size regulations on the price of these two types of vacant land. The study also attempts to explain apparently conflicting findings that have recently appeared in empirical studies of “down‐zoning” in the states of Maryland and New Jersey.

The mathematical model of land value is based on principles of asset valuation under uncertainty at various locations within a metropolitan area. The price of an acre of land is modeled as the present value of a stream of indirect utility to homeowners, and economic rents to farmers, developers or landlords, depending on an endogenous date of development. The cases of New Jersey and Maryland are compared using parameterized simulations, with minimum lot size allowed to vary.

The simulations reconcile earlier empirical studies on Maryland and New Jersey. The observed absence of any price effect of down‐zoning in rural Maryland appears to be caused by the fact that development is not imminent there. In New Jersey, development is imminent virtually everywhere, and a high proportion of today's vacant land value is due to its development potential. This means that down‐zoning will typically lead to dramatic declines in vacant land value in New Jersey.

The study relies on state averages, so its results should not be applied to particular parcels in Maryland or New Jersey. The study incorporates uncertainty in expected developer profits, but not in future political decisions.

By clarifying the context in which zoning changes will or will not lead to decline in a landowner's asset value, the study can inform legal and political debates over re‐zonings in the USA. Included in these debates is the claim that some re‐zonings violate the “takings” clause of the USA constitution.

The majority of papers on this subject are empirical, using a hedonic or an appraisal methodology. This paper provides a coherent theoretical model of per‐acre land prices under different levels of zoning restriction. It can be used for simulation or prediction with relatively few input parameters.

The purpose of this paper is to present strategies for cultivating internal support, community partnerships and practitioner engagement for Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (HVIPs). In response to growing concerns about community violence and calls to engage the community in its solutions, HVIPs have increased in popularity as innovative and transdisciplinary approaches to violence intervention. HVIPs are one strategy under the broad purview of public health approaches to crime and violence – focusing on reaching recent victims of violence in emergency departments and leveraging this “teachable moment” to offer wrap-around services geared toward preventing future violence or revictimization.

This paper uses an autoethnographic and case study approach of Project HEAL (Help, Empower and Lead), a newly established HVIP at Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

While there is no “standard” approach, the importance of strong community partnerships and practitioner engagement prior to and during the HVIP implementation process is second to none.

This case study of Project HEAL’s initial implementation will provide information that can assist other HVIPs in creating and sustaining necessary internal support, community partnerships and practitioner engagement, and potentially help navigate forthcoming statewide and federal efforts.

Development of meaningful community partnerships and achievement of a high level of engagement from practitioners are key to the successful implementation of HVIPs, the processes of which are not always documented in literature.

While there has been increasing interest in the impact of courtmandated education finance reform on school district efficiency, research on the subject is scant. Taking advantage of New Jersey Supreme Court cases that have altered the way in which state school aid is distributed, this paper examines the effect of changes in the education finance system on school district efficiency. Building on existing literature on public sector efficiency, a longitudinal data analysis based on two-stage DEA models reveals that courtmandated increases in state aid to a limited number of poor school districts decreased the districts' efficiency. Though these results should be interpreted with some caution, in particular, the limitation of DEA as an efficiency measure, they imply that, as with any policy, policy makers and courts should be aware of how policy changes affect local government behavior and that it is necessary to evaluate policy outcome taking into account both resources and performance.

We utilize a sample of New Jersey schools to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and school performance. The results indicate a significant relationship between several dimensions of EO and performance after controlling for a number of relevant variables. Charter schools were found to have higher EO than traditional schools. The implications of these findings for education and entrepreneurship research are discussed.