scholarly journals Proportionality’s Lower Bound

Author(s):  
James Manwaring

AbstractMany philosophers have raised difficulties for any attempt to proportion punishment severity to crime seriousness. One reason for this may be that offering a full theory of proportionality is simply too ambitious. I suggest a more modest project: setting a lower bound on proportionate punishment. That is, I suggest a metric to measure when punishment is not disproportionately severe. I claim that punishment is not disproportionately severe if it imposes costs on a criminal wrongdoer which are no greater than the costs which they intentionally caused to others. I flesh out the implications of this Lower bound by discussing how to measure the costs of crime. Methodologically, I claim that different costs should be compared by considering preferences. Substantively, I claim that many proportionality judgements undercount the costs of crime by focusing only on the marginal and not the average cost. I suggest that we may hold defendants causally responsible for their contribution to the costs of that type of crime.

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Apostolos Burnetas ◽  
Odysseas Kanavetas ◽  
Michael N. Katehakis

We consider the multi-armed bandit problem under a cost constraint. Successive samples from each population are i.i.d. with unknown distribution and each sample incurs a known population-dependent cost. The objective is to design an adaptive sampling policy to maximize the expected sum ofnsamples such that the average cost does not exceed a given bound sample-path wise. We establish an asymptotic lower bound for the regret of feasible uniformly fast convergent policies, and construct a class of policies, which achieve the bound. We also provide their explicit form under Normal distributions with unknown means and known variances.


2014 ◽  
Vol 222 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Romney ◽  
Nathaniel Israel ◽  
Danijela Zlatevski

The present study examines the effect of agency-level implementation variation on the cost-effectiveness of an evidence-based parent training program (Positive Parenting Program: “Triple P”). Staff from six community-based agencies participated in a five-day training to prepare them to deliver a 12-week Triple P parent training group to caregivers. Prior to the training, administrators and staff from four of the agencies completed a site readiness process intended to prepare them for the implementation demands of successfully delivering the group, while the other two agencies did not complete the process. Following the delivery of each agency’s first Triple P group, the graduation rate and average cost per class graduate were calculated. The average cost-per-graduate was over seven times higher for the two agencies that had not completed the readiness process than for the four completing agencies ($7,811 vs. $1,052). The contrast in costs was due to high participant attrition in the Triple P groups delivered by the two agencies that did not complete the readiness process. The odds of Triple P participants graduating were 12.2 times greater for those in groups run by sites that had completed the readiness process. This differential attrition was not accounted for by between-group differences in participant characteristics at pretest. While the natural design of this study limits the ability to empirically test all alternative explanations, these findings indicate a striking cost savings for sites completing the readiness process and support the thoughtful application of readiness procedures in the early stages of an implementation initiative.


Author(s):  
Olga Vyacheslavovna Zhukova ◽  
Ekaterina Sergeevna Nekaeva ◽  
Elena Sergeevna Khoroshavina ◽  
Ekaterina Alexeevna Kozlova ◽  
Yulia Alexandrovna Dudukina ◽  
...  

Objective: to conduct pharmacoepidemiological analysis and analysis of the costs of pharmacotherapy, taking into account the actual consumption of drugs in the real inpatient clinical practice at the federal center in Russia. Materials and methods. Data from the medical records of 14 patients with burn injury, who were hospitalized in 2018, was analyzed. Patients’ age was from 23 to 67 years (44,93 ± 14,66). Duration of hospitalization was from 17 to 62 days (35,93 ± 14,17). We calculated rate of prescription foe each drug and its share in general structure of all utilized drug courses (n = 460). We performed frequency analysis of prescription structure, DDD (defined daily doses) analysis, DU90% (Drug Utilization 90%) analysis, ABC-analysis and analysis of average cost of pharmacotherapy. Results. Most frequently used drugs, prescribed in 75-100% of all hospital cases, included 15 names, e.g. 2 antimicrobial drugs (vancomycin and amikacin), 19 were used commonly, including 4 antimicrobial drugs (co-trimoxazole, cefoperazone/sulbactam, tigecyclin and cefepime). Other drugs were used in less than 25% of cases. 33 drugs made 90% of all consumed NDDD, including 5 antimicrobial drugs (vancomycin, amikacin, co-trimoxazole, cefoperazone/sulbactam and tigecyclin). These drugs comprised 70,24% in the prescription structure. The cost of one DDD in DU90% segments (512,33 rubles) is 1,4 higher than in DU10% segment (649,34 rubles). Average cost of drugs included in DU90% group was 4735,89 rubles vs 4966,80 rubles for drugs from DU10% group. This finding shows positive tendency of burn injuries pharmacological treatment. Conclusion. We obtained the data, which can be used for comparison of real clinical practice costs with a current payment rates for medical care.


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