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This chapter investigates the role of macro corporate governance (legal and extra legal institutions) in determining the extent of ultimate excess control (i.e., the ownership-controls rights divergence of the ultimate owner) using a large sample of Asian and European companies. We find that the level of excess control is lower in countries with (1) good investor protection and better enforcement of information disclosure and (2) fairer competition laws, higher newspaper diffusion, and more regulated insider trading. Controlling for institutions subsumes the effect of firm-level determinants, as only leverage appears to be negatively and significantly related to excess control.

Police factor in extra‐legal as well as legal context in their decision to arrest a suspect. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of extra‐legal factors at both situational and neighborhood levels.

Using hierarchical generalized linear modeling, over 9,000 domestic violence cases across 421 census tracts in Houston, Texas were examined. Situational information was derived from police reports, and neighborhood factors were measured by population characteristics drawn from the US Census Bureau. The model also controls for spatial autocorrelation of arrest rates between census tracts in the estimation of officer's arrest decision.

At the neighborhood level, concentrated disadvantage and immigration concentration had positive effect on the odds of arrest. At the situational level, the time of day, day of the week, premise type, and gender and racial relations between suspect and complainant, along with offense type and weapons use, had significant impact.

The scant literature has not yet provided an affirmative set of extra‐legal factors affecting police arrest decision. The paper's findings may contribute to the literature and suggest the need for guidelines concerning officer discretion exercised in the line of duty.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of extra-legal and legal predictors on dual arrest outcome for men and women arrested for domestic violence.

This study analyzed 4,163 heterosexual domestic violence incidents over a five-year period (2002-2006). Using bivariate analyses and gender-stratified logistic regression this study: identified the variables associated with dual arrest; identified the extra-legal and legal predictors’ of dual arrest; and determined whether there were significant differences between police dispositions of women and men.

Bivariate analyses indicated that women were more likely to be dually arrested than men. For women, logistic regression analyses indicated who contacted the police increased their likelihood of dual arrest. For men, logistic regression analysis indicated being a victim in a prior domestic violence, who used alcohol and/or drugs, who contacted the police, and seriousness of incident impacted their likelihood of being dually arrested.

Results demonstrate that law enforcement officers may not be recognizing male victims of domestic violence as legitimate victims.

This research is situated within the larger body of literature around women and men arrested for domestic violence and contributes to the limited literature regarding the effect of men’s prior domestic violence victimization on dual arrest outcome.

The current study examines the effects of race, agency and environment on traffic stops in rural and non-rural spaces.

Using traffic stop data collected in a Midwest US County from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, the current study uses logistic regression to examine racial disparities in traffic stops.

The results indicate that police decision-making in traffic stops may be influenced by other factors besides a driver’s race or ethnicity. In other words, the police officer’s decision making in a traffic stop varies between small and large agencies as well as rural and non-rural places.

This study provides one of the few examinations of racial disparities in traffic stops in rural places.

In the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s, the abolition of capital punishment was virtually unthinkable. However, a new form of abolitionism – which I call Rule of Law abolitionism – has raised the hopes of death penalty opponents. In this chapter, I elucidate the logic of the Rule of Law abolitionist argument, distinguishing it from its more familiar doctrinal and moral variants. I then assess its strengths and weaknesses. On the basis of this critique, I indicate the route Rule of Law abolitionism must travel to bring about the demise of the death penalty.

The purpose is to theorize and empirically estimate the impact of the gendered nature of the offender-victim dyad and crime type on time to arrest.

Predictions regarding the impact of gendered offender-victim dyads and crime type on time to arrest are constructed by extending role congruity theory and tested using data from the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System across five crime types using dyadic-based event history methods.

The authors find strong empirical support that role expectations derived from the gender composition of offender-victim dyads and the masculinity of the crime type affect time to clearance.

This research is the first to theorize and empirically test the relative impact of role congruency and the relational nature of the offender-victim dyad in the adjudication process. Furthermore, the research shows that the construction of “normal crime” can be enhanced by applying a gendered and relational approach, based on social psychological theory, which is predictive of crime clearance.

Future research is required to validate the results for crimes where law enforcement has less discretion and are feminine typed.

The results imply that by accounting for the expectations generated by gender roles when applied to offender-victim dyads a casual mechanism is established that better organizes previously inconsistent results with respect to the impact of gender on time to clearance. Thus, the authors' utilization of role congruity theory of gender provides a more consistent explanation for inequalities in time to clearance that may be fruitful for evaluating other steps in the adjudication process.

This study aims to examine whether country of residence, sex trafficking attitudes, complainant gender, juror gender and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) influenced juror decision-making within a sex trafficking case.

Jury-eligible participants from the USA and the UK participated in an online juror experiment in which an independent group design was used to manipulate the complainant’s gender. Participants completed the juror decision scale, the sex trafficking attitudes scale and the RWA scale.

Sex trafficking attitudes predicted the believability of both the defendant and complainant. Greater negative beliefs about victims predicted greater defendant believability and lower complainant believability. US jurors reported greater believability of both the complainant and defendant, and RWA was associated with greater defendant believability. However, none of the other factors, including complainant and juror gender, predicted participants’ verdicts. The findings suggest juror verdicts in sex trafficking cases may be less influenced by extra-legal factors, although further research is needed, especially with a more ambiguous case.

This is one of the few cross-cultural comparison studies in the area of jury decision-making, specifically regarding sex trafficking cases. The findings indicated that US participants held more problematic attitudes about sex trafficking than their UK counterparts, although all participants held problematic attitudes about sex trafficking. However, those attitudes did not affect verdict formation about either a male or female complainant. Participants who were more knowledgeable about sex trafficking reported greater complainant believability, suggesting that educational interventions may provide greater support for victims in court.

Employers using criminal background checks to make hiring determinations must carefully balance the need to protect themselves and their clients against legal mandates designed to protect the rights of individuals with criminal records. Yet, surprisingly little research examines this balancing act. The purpose of this paper is to examine how one large agency, the New York Department of Health (DOH), navigates a myriad of mandates to convey and create legitimacy in compliance with complex legal mandates and contrasting interests.

Prior research on civil right legislation suggests that while companies may create regulations that appear to comply with such mandates, their actual practice does not always comply with their own rules (Dobbin et al., 1988). Therefore, this study addresses two key questions: do the DOH policies appear to comply with the relevant New York State law and does the DOH effectively implement the policies in a way that upholds New York State law. Specifically, this study estimates probit models on a sample of over 7,000 potential employees with criminal records to determine compliance with the criteria established by law and policy.

Findings show that the variables indicated by law/regulations such as offense severity and time since conviction work in the intended direction. Using only these criteria the models are able to correctly predict clearance decisions approximately of the time and that extra-legal factors such as race and gender do not further influence final determinations.

These findings have practical implications for employers as they show that it is possible for employers to design formal rules that navigate this complex landscape while still opening up employment opportunities for individuals with criminal records.

This is important as many employers either utilize criminal background checks without regulation or are fearful of embarking on efforts to meet regulations such as those promulgated by the EEOC. This research is the first of its kind to actually document and explore the ability of a large employer to conduct socially responsible criminal history background checks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between ownership structure, earnings management (EM) preceding mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and the acquiring firm's subsequent long‐term market performance.

The authors measure the magnitude of discretionary current accruals using two methodologies, that of Teoh et al. and that of Kothari et al. The latter methodology is used to control for the presence of extreme performance prior to the event. The calendar‐time Fama‐French three‐factor model was used to evaluate long‐term stock performance and to minimize potential problems related to the cross‐sectional dependence of the returns.

It was found that firms using stock as a financing medium exhibit significant positive discretionary accruals during the year preceding the M&A and during the year of the acquisition. It was also documented that voting right concentration and control‐enhancing mechanisms are not associated with any significant level of earnings management. Finally, a negative association was found between EM and abnormal stock returns over a three‐year period following the acquisition.

These results suggest that the concentrated ownership alignment effect dominates the entrenchment motives and acts as a deterrent mechanism to prevent controlling shareholders from managing earnings in stock‐financed M&A.

The authors’ results highlight the importance of maintaining good legal and extra‐legal protection of minority shareholders. Regulators can play an important role in preventing dominant shareholders from engaging in opportunistic EM in stock‐financed M&A.

The paper extends prior literature by taking a closer look at dominant shareholders’ motivations to manage earnings in stock‐financed M&A. Large shareholders have strong incentives to manage earnings upward prior to stock‐financed transactions to limit the dilution of their controlling position.