Jeff Liu Affirmative Strategy

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Affirmative strategy attempts to rectify the inherent imbalances between the aff and the neg. You will leave this lecture understanding the key principles of a good affirmative strategy. You will know when to concede the standards debate, and when to collapse. You will have a nuanced understanding of 1AR theory, the strategy behind breaking new affirmative cases, how to allocate your time, how to exploit tricks in structure, and much more. Finally, you will leave with an understanding of the necessary pre-tournament preparation to give you a chance at winning aff in outrounds. I. Why Does the Neg Win More? Affirmative strategy attempts to rectify these imbalances. A. Time skew in the NR versus 2AR. The 6:3 NR to 2AR time advantage makes it nearly impossible for affs to win evenly matched debates. B. Increase in speed. Consider the implications of increased speed for both sides. The aff can now make more arguments in the AC. The neg, on the other hand, can both make more arguments and also layer the debate more (e.g. NC, theory, framework spread, case turns, etc.). There are diminishing returns from adding more arguments into the AC because the entire AC functions on one layer of the debate, and you can only extend so few offensive arguments into later speeches. Meanwhile, the neg can generate additional layers that the aff must deal with; there are no diminishing returns from greater speed for the neg. C. Poor affirmative casing; a good last speech starts with a good first speech. Too many cases merely consist of a framework and a list of cards. Debaters do not avail themselves to the advantages of affirmingnamely, the ability to speak first and last and set grounds for debate. II. Principles of Affirming A. Minimize your burden. 1. Casing: Write a positional affirmative where the topic literature biases the aff, and frame standards analysis in ways that logically exclude common negative impacts. You need to have many outs, but you also need to find the proper balance between offense and defense. The idea here is that you shouldnt give the neg more opportunities to beat you down, but you should also have enough offense to get you out of the round. (Example 1Due Process AC). 2. Rebuttals: Against an evenly matched debater, the job of the 1AR is to get just enough done to win in the 2AR. You need to a) generate enough offense to be able to collapse in the 2AR and b) generate sufficient defense to leverage against your opponents sources of offense. B. Know when to concede the standards debate. When deciding when to kick, consider the following questions: 1. Is the standards debate a lost cause? Has the negative has made too many good answers to my framework for me to overcome? 2. Even if I could win the standards debate, could I also win the AC contention? Is the negative spread too devastating? 3. Could I make four minutes of good (preferably carded) link turns to the NC standard?

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2 NSD 12 4. How much prep time does the negative have remaining? Kicking the standard in the 1AR has many advantages: 1. Time Tradeoff. All the ink on the AC goes away and you gain a huge positive time tradeoff; 7:6 advantage between the 1AR and 2AR versus the NR. 2. Simplification. The debate comes down to one layer on which you get the last word in the 2AR. 3. Strategic Advantage. A good 1AR explosion can be devastating, especially if the negative does not have sufficient prep time remaining for the 2NR. However, it does also have a couple of disadvantages: 1. Severance Bad: You open yourself up to theory. a. Fix: Prep frontlineseveryone should have these, even though this arguments popularity has declined in the last couple of years. 2. Perceptual Disadvantage: Your story may seem inconsistent to the judge. a. Fix: Extend arguments from the AC and impact them to the NC standard. In general, if youve thoroughly considered the four questions listed above, the advantages of kicking the standard heavily outweigh the disadvantages. C. Know when to collapse. 1. What does it mean to collapse? It does not mean simply repeating yourself, or just re-reading the card in the extension. Collapsing means extending one or two major pieces of offense and sitting down on those positions by answering all the ink next to the argument and by making extrapolations, preempts, and weighing. Bottom line: dont confuse collapsing with ranting. 2. Produce something that you are able to collapse to. Dont rely too heavily on non-carded turns in the 1AR; you can make a couple to suck 2NR time, but a good 2NR collapse with carded frontlines will wreck blippy 1AR turns. Judges are also not receptive to blips becoming more developed in the 2AR. 3. Rarely collapse in the 1AR. The only situation to collapse in the 1AR is if you run a new theory shell or concede the negative standard. However, going all in on theory in the 1AR is almost always a mistake because you put all of your eggs into one basket and do not give yourself sufficient 2AR options. Never collapse to a counter-interpretation with an RVI. A good negative debater will make 10+ answers to the RVI and youre fucked. The 2NR time advantage is amplified if you do not have multiple outs. 4. Always collapse in the 2AR. The 2AR must collapse to no more than one or two major pieces of offense because of the time constraints. Unlike 1AR extensions, weighing is mandatory for any good 2AR extension. D. Know your defense. 1. Defense should not take time to develop. You usually will not have time in the 1AR to read carded defense, especially on framework. Most 1AR cards should be offensive. Be able to quickly nail down defense by drilling constantly. 2. Defense is a better idea than shitty analytic turns because defense sets up the 2AR collapse by putting you a step ahead on the weighing debate. A key

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piece of weighing may win you a close debate; a two sentence analytic turn probably wont. E. Winning Offense 1. Frontline 1AC Offense. Force your opponent to go deep on your offense by having a strong second line of frontlines. Debaters become worse and worse as they have to defend additional layers of argumentation. 2. New 1AR Offense. The advantage of introducing new offense in the 1AR is that you get to speak last. Prepare new 1AR advantages and four minutes of link turns against the most common negative positions. 1AR advantages can also get you out of trouble if you dont have prep. (Example 2A2 Recidivism 1AR Expansion). 3. Theory. Theory is the best weapon of the affirmative debater; its the easiest way to win most rounds cleanly. If you collapse all in on theory in the 2AR, you should definitely win. Some tips: a. Load short theory preempts (15-30 seconds) into the AC where theyre most likely to be dropped or undercovered. This is especially true if you are debating a team (like University) whose negative strategy is almost always a pre-standards spread. At best, the issue goes undercovered and you almost win automatically. At worst, AC theory sucks a large portion of 1NC time where they have to spend time justifying their strategy. b. 1AR theory should be preemptive of common objections. Always weigh abuse in the 1AR against any NC theory, e.g. does 1AR theory outweigh topicality? c. Have offense to both fairness and education so you can collapse in the 2AR and take a stance on which outweighs. d. Judges are TERRIBLE at flowing theory because 99% of judges flow everything in relation to cards. Your judge probably wont know when you actually go new in the 2AR; slip in new defensive arguments as weighing. F. New ACs: Breaking a new AC is crucial to combat the prep-out and overwhelming negative time skew. Common mistakes: 1. Running the same cards and applying them differentlye.g. changing tags or impacts. Most prep-outs focus on answering the warrants in your evidence, not the impact (how you apply them). If the overall strategy is the same, their prepout will still link just as hard. 2. Running a case with a different advocacy but the same strategye.g. changing a plan text. What is devastating about the prep-out is not that the negative debater has answers to your case, but that he knows your strategy; a smart negative debater will just adapt the answers theyve prepped to your new advocacy. 3. Writing a million affs. You wont be familiar with any of them and it destroys your efficiency in rebuttals. Instead, drill with three affs at most and know them well. III. Strategy A. Time Allocation

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1. Always offense before defense. Win your offense, close down their avenues.

Only extend what you need to win.1AR extensions need to be shorter with argument re-explanation, but more thorough in terms of implications and interaction with other arguments. 2. Be organized. Its very tempting to just jump around the flow a lot, but its better to go with your killer issue and then go straight down the flow. Otherwise, you will inevitably miss arguments. Also, judges become very frustrated with jumpiness and a perceived lack of organization. B. Argument strategy 1. Group arguments. Group arguments by causality, by impact (read impact turns against cases with long link chains that are skimpy on impact analysis), and based on missing assumptions. Point out how arguments rely on each other. 2. Kick arguments by extending their defense to take out their offense. 3. Win arguments in cross-ex. Set up your arguments by pointing out flaws in cards. Clarify argument function so you can prioritize which arguments to answer in the 1AR. Also, try to resolve the standards debate as early as possibleCX is a perfect time to do so. 4. Tricks. a. Hide multiple warrants under one subpoint of an argument. b. Make your best arguments last. c. Put analytics under cards. d. In the AC, provide links between your offense and other possible frameworks. e. In the AC, read a short red herring argument at the top of your contention. This argument should be difficult to turn but also will encourage the neg to dump a lot of defense. Exon the Jan/Feb Sanctions topic from two years ago, a good red herring was the argument that sanctions will kill innocents. Bottom line: exploit tricks in structure and put your best arguments where theyre most likely to be dropped. C. Summary of necessary pre-tournament preparation 1. Frontlines. Have frontlines to key parts of the AC. Have different deont/util blocks for aff and neg; your aff blocks should be shorter than your neg ones. Have lots of carded turns, but also have a few of them written out in analytic form so you can switch them out if youre time-crunched. Have back-up strategies on every level: link turns, defense, impact turns, internal link turns, argument expansions, etc. 2. Pre-written theoryquick sub-30 second theory shells. 3. 1AR Expansions. Four minutes of answers to common negative positions. It is good to include weighing and evidence comparison in the 1AR; the earlier you weigh, the better. When reading 1AR expansions, it is also crucial to explain how arguments interact in the 2AR. 4. 1AR Advantages. An additional advantage to a plan or AC; or, on negatively phrased topics, disadvantages to common NCs and CPs. (Example 3 Democide Add-on).

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5. Flowingthe most underrated part of an efficient 1AR. A neat flow usually

means a well-organized speech; you will be less likely to drop arguments. Have a consistent way youre flowing offensebox, underline, circle, etc. 6. Drills. a. Hell 1ARs and rebuttal re-dos are timeless classics. b. Drill extensions; pre-write extensions for practice. Consider ways your offense interacts with common NCs. Drill argument extrapolation by coming up with as many ways as possible to use one single piece of offense to take out other arguments on the flow. Focus on how you can extend arguments for different purposes. IV. Failed Attempts to Give the Aff an Advantage A. Blippy non-carded 1AR turn spread. 1. Gets owned by the 2NR collapse. 2. Judges wont vote for these arguments. B. Abusive ACtricks are a valid option against certain opponents, but more often than not, they fall to theory. C. Affirmative framework choicesays the aff gets to choose the standard. You would be better off just becoming a really good standards debater because this argument is terrible: 1. Cards adapted from policy debate with no clear parallel to LD. 2. The negative would never win under this interpretation; huge strategy skew because the aff gets to pick the neg strategy for him. Aff can just frontline answers to all the common offensive arguments under his framework. 3. Uneducational because there would be no clash on the framework debate. The aff makes an argument, and then says its unfair for the neg to answer it? Seriously? 4. The warrant for this argument is usually that AFC is key to rectify neg time skew. But why is it even the right solution? Why is AFC better than letting the aff choose a reasonable interpretation of the resolution, or even just letting the aff get permissibility ground? V. Conclusion A. Capitalize on the advantages of affirming. 1. You get to speak firstset up a strategic interpretation of the resolution and write an affirmative case with a topic lit bias towards the aff. 2. You get to speak lastintroduce lots of new 1AR offense so you get the last word. B. At the end of the day, affirming will be always be hard. Make it easier on yourself by drilling non-stop. Better word economy, speed, and pre-tournament preparation are crucial to you having a chance winning aff in outrounds.

Examples Example 1Due Process AC Example 2A2 Recidivism 1AR Expansion

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1. Turn: the adult criminal justice system empirically deters crime. Yahya1 cites Levitt:
Professor

Levitt also investigated another aspect of juvenile crime. He looked at the impact of the relative harshness of adult punishment to juvenile found that as juveniles transitioned into adulthood, no matter what the age of majority, In states where adults

punishment on crimes committed by juveniles who have reached the age of majority. Given that for some states the age of majority is 18 while for others it is 17, this statistical investigation provides us with a look at whether juveniles are rational and able to conduct cost-benefit analysis regardless of whether they are 17 or 18 years of age. In fact, he

crimes committed by the new adults were negatively influenced by the relative harshness of adult punishment.

were punished far more severely than juveniles, when a juvenile reached the age of majority violent and property crimes dropped. In states where a juvenile reaches the age of majority at 17, the new adults committed less violent and property crimes than their 17 year old counterparts in those states where the age of majority was 18. These results belie the claim that juveniles below the age of eighteen are undeterrable and hence less culpable. It also points to
the futility of establishing an arbitrary age of eighteen as the age when a person may be sentenced to death.

Juveniles react just as

rationally to the incentives of punishment as adults do. Juveniles do not lack rationality. What is lacking is punishment as
severe as that meted out to adults. fact, he

Levitt concluded that the decline in the severity of juvenile punishment explains the relative increase in juvenile crime. In

estimated that 60% of the increase in juvenile crime could be attributed to

the drop in juvenile punishment. These results show that, by prohibiting the use of the death penalty against juveniles, Roper
will be a further hindrance to states in their efforts to combat juvenile crime.

Levitt 98 quantifies the drop in violent crime:

This paper presents some of the first rigorous empirical estimates of the effect of the criminal justice system on juvenile crime. The evidence suggests that juvenile crime is responsive to harsher sanctions. The estimated decrease in crime associated with incarcerating an additional juvenile is at least as large as the corresponding reduction in crime for adults. In addition, there are sharp changes in crime rates associated with the transition from the juvenile to the adult court.

In the

year following attainment of the age of majority, states that punish adults
particularly

harshly relative to juveniles see violent crime rates fall by almost 25 percent

and property crime 10-15 percent relative to states in which adult punishments are relatively lenient.

2. Turn: Higher incarceration rates empirically deter. Yahya3:

The economist Steven

Levitt conducted the most direct study of juvenile crime. In his ground-breaking for the period 1978-1993. In

study, Professor Levitt examined the relationship between punishment and crime committed by juveniles

his study, he found that juveniles are deterred by punishment. He also found that similar punishments had similar effects on deterring juveniles and adults. During his study, he observed that juvenile crime rates, especially

violent [juvenile] crime rates, had been rising

faster than adult crime rates. He also noted that juvenile punishment had fallen in
1

Yahya, Moin A. [Assistant Professor of Law, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. J.D., George Mason University School of Law, 2003. Ph.D. (Economics), University of Toronto, 2000]. Deterring Roper's Juveniles: Using a Law and Economics Approach to Show that the Logic of Roper Implies that Juveniles Require the Death Penalty More Than Adults. Dickinson School of Law, Penn State Law Review. Summer 2006. 2 Levitt, Steven D. Juvenile Crime and Punishment. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 106, No. 6 (Dec., 1998), pp. 1156-1185. 3 Ibid.

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7 NSD 12 severity by half during this time period, while the severity of adult punishment had risen by over 60%. Using data from across the United States, Levitt was able to study the relationship between the variation in
punishment across states and the rate of juvenile crime in those states. Levitt looked at the impact of the incarceration rate on the number of crimes committed by juveniles.

He found that there was a statistically significant negative relationship between the two variables. He estimated that for each

extra delinquent incarcerated, there was a reduction of between 0.49 and 0.66 violent crimes. For property crimes, the reduction was between three and four crimes. The adult custody rate was also negatively associated with
the juvenile violent crime rate (although it was positively associated with property crimes). This suggests that since adults were being punished quite harshly for violent crime, a juvenile realized a lower return from engaging in violent crimes, perhaps since juveniles who commit violent crimes tend to continue committing such crimes in their adult life. If adults are being harshly punished, this lowers the return from committing such crimes today. Property crimes, on the other hand, do not seem to have this continuity effect; and hence if adults are being incarcerated longer for property crimes, there are more property crime opportunities for juveniles.

Levitt identifies the causal warrant:

Evidence that a substantial fraction of the crime reduction results from deterrence (and not simply incapacitation) comes from analysis of changes in crime rates around the age of majority.

States in which juvenile punishments are lenient relative to adult

punishments see much greater declines (or smaller increases) in crime as a cohort passes to the adult court. For example, in states in which the juvenile courts are most lenient vis-a`-vis the adult courts, violent crimes committed by a
cohort fall by 3.8 percent on average when the age of majority is reached. to the adult criminal justice system

In contrast, violent crimes rise 23.1 percent with passage

in those states in which the juvenile courts are relatively

harsh compared to the adult court. Similar but less extreme patterns are observed for property crimes. The immediacy with which criminal behavior responds to this transition suggests that deterrence is the operative force.
3. Turn: Individual-based studies also confirm Levitts results. Yahya5 5:

Other studies seem to confirm Levitt's results. For example, one study looked at a sample of 16,478 high school children surveyed in 1995. This study had the advantage of looking at individual behavior as opposed to aggregate crime rates, as in Levitt's article. The dataset contained individual data on youth aged thirteen to seventeen from a wide cross section of society. The juveniles were asked a set of questions as to whether they
had committed certain crimes and how frequently they had done so.

The authors of the study then matched this data with

data on crime rates and arrest rates for violent crimes and property crimes, for both adults and youth, in the county of residence of the juveniles. The crime categories included selling
marijuana, assault, robbery, and burglary. The authors found that the arrest rates negatively impacted the probability of juveniles selling drugs. Specifically,

Levitt, Steven D. Juvenile Crime and Punishment. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 106, No. 6 (Dec., 1998), pp. 1156-1185. 5 Yahya, Moin A. [Assistant Professor of Law, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. J.D., George Mason University School of Law, 2003. Ph.D. (Economics), University of Toronto, 2000]. Deterring Roper's Juveniles: Using a Law and Economics Approach to Show that the Logic of Roper Implies that Juveniles Require the Death Penalty More Than Adults. Dickinson School of Law, Penn State Law Review. Summer 2006.

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8 NSD 12 they found that one additional arrest for a violent crime reduced by 3.6% the probability that male juveniles would sell drugs. In addition, for each violent crime arrest, [and] the probability that male juveniles would commit an [of] assault was reduced by 6.6 % for each arrest. However, robbery and
burglary rates by males were not responsive to violent crime arrest rates. On the other hand, the number of thefts and drug sales among female juveniles fell in response to violent crime arrests. Given that the death penalty is a tool aimed primarily at the most violent of crimes, namely murder, the fact that male juveniles committing assaults or selling drugs were responsive to violent crime arrest rates suggests that a fortiori they would be very responsive to the presence of the death penalty as a punishment.

4. Turn: The adult system significantly decreases the likelihood of recidivism. Hjalmarsson6

9:
Table 5 presents

the results of estimating the equation for the sample for which treatment (incarceration) is perfectly assigned by the grid. Each indicates that incarcerated youths have a daily hazard

specication includes a second-order polynomial of the actual adjudication history score and current offense class (row) dummies. All coefcients are exponentiated such that they have the interpretation of a hazard ratio; that is, values less than one imply a deterrent effect. Column 1 presents the results with no additional controls. The coefcient on D above cutoff

rate of recidivating that is approximately 37 percent lower than that of nonincarcerated youths. In other words, there is strong evidence of a specic deterrence effect. Recall that individuals become at risk of recidivating as of the disposition date plus the minimum sentence length. This raises
the concern that individuals in the treatment and control groups become at risk of recidivating at different dates. If aging is related to a juveniles propensity to recidivate, then the estimated treatment effect may in part be due to aging. Let us assume that individuals are less likely to recidivate as they get older. How would this inuence the interpretation of the estimated deterrence effect? Depending on ones assumptions about where an individual falls on his or her crime trajectory after incarceration, aging could in theory lead to either an under- or overstatement of the deterrence effect. If the clock stops while a youth is incarcerated, then the incarcerated youth is essentially set back 15 weeks compared with an individual in the control group. The control group would be at a less active stage of their criminal careers, and the deterrence effect would be understated. However, if the clock does not stop, then incarcerated youths will become at risk of recidivating at a time in their age-crime trajectory when they have a lower propensity to recidivate than the control group. Deterrence would then be overestimated. Given that theory does not clearly sign the impact of aging, I assess its importance empirically. As seen in column 2 of Table 5,

controlling for

demographic characteristics, including age, gender, and ethnicity, has minimal impact. This estimated deterrence effect is also not affected when controlling for age more exibly with age dummies or an age polynomial. Column 3
indicates that the estimated deterrence effect is completely robust to expanding the set of controls to include past and current offense types as well as county dummies. This provides further evidence that unobservables do not vary discontinuously at the cutoffs in such a way that would bias the treatment effect. An additional concern is that the youth is deterred by the prospect of being in a higher column of the grid upon recidivating rather than by the current incarceration sentence. For instance, two individuals who commit the same offense today and who are on either side of a cutoff today will also be in different columns tomorrow. I therefore expand the equation to include dummy variables that indicate a youths rounded adjudication score in the next period. According to the grid, the expected probability and severity of incarceration increase as the rounded score increases. The results of this specication are presented in column 4 of Table 5. Despite the fact that individuals with higher future scores (that is, they are in higher columns of the grid if they recidivate) are signicantly less likely to recidivate, there is little impact on the estimated treatment effect. Thus, the results presented in Table 5 indicate that incarcerated individuals have a daily hazard rate of recidivating that is approximately 37 percent lower. This implies that

incarcerated individuals are 11 percent less likely to

recidivate after 1 year and approximately 13 percent less likely to recidivate after 1.5 years. These estimates are roughly consistent with the 8-percentage-point difference in recidivism behavior observed in the raw data in
Table 1. Although Table 5 provides strong evidence that placement in juvenile residential facilities decreases the post-release criminal activity of the incarcerated youth, it is important to keep in mind that theory is ambiguous regarding the direction of well as Beckers (1968) economic model of crime

this relationship. The existence of effective treatment programs as

impl[ies]y a deterrence effect, while labeling theory (Lemert 1967; Schwartz and

Hjalmarsson, Randi [University of Maryland]. Juvenile Jails: A Path to the Straight and Narrow or to Hardened Criminality? Journal of Law & Economics, Copyright University of Chicago, November 2009. http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/rhjalmarsson/juvenilejails_JLE.pdf

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Skolnick 1962), peer effects (Taylor 1996; Bayer, Hjalmarsson, and Pozen 2009), and poor prison conditions (Chen and Shapiro 2007; Katz, Levitt, and Shustorovich 2003) may result in an exacerbation of criminal behavior. The evidence of deterrence presented in Table 5 thus indicates former mechanisms

that, on average, the

dominate[s] the latter. This does not imply that those mechanisms that exacerbate

criminality are nonexistentsimply that their effect is small relative to those that can yield deterrence. It may even be the case that these exacerbating forces dominate for certain subpopulations. It is also important to keep in mind that this
analysis is based on a single state that has been a leader in juvenile justice reform. It is certainly feasible that incarceration has an exacerbating effect in states other than Washington, which have, for instance, worse prison conditions or educational programs.

5. Turn: recidivism rates for juvenile institutions are sky-high. Wilson7:

The American juvenile justice system desperately needs reform. Some 2.4 million juveniles
are charged with offenses annually. An appalling

55 percent of juveniles released from incarceration

nationwide are rearrested within one year. In urban centers, that percentagereferred to as the
rate of

recidivismreaches up to 76 percent. High recidivism is associated with increases in crime, victimization, homelessness, Our governments current approach to lowering

family destabilization, and public health risks. Government-sponsored correctional programs cost sixty billion dollars annually. Most tragically, high recidivism indicates a failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for offenders. Reducing recidivism specifically among juveniles should be of primary importance to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. recidivism emphasizes the creation and funding of

rehabilitative programs. While these initiatives have made marginal gains, efforts

have been insufficient. Substantial progress will only come by eliminating recidivism-fostering features of the juvenile justice system itself.
6. The juvenile justice system does not deter. Levitt8:

The current punitiveness of the juvenile justice systemwhich should not have a direct effect on the
behavior of adults

yields larger estimated impacts in most columns, although in no case are these coefficients statistically

significant at the .05 level. These results suggest that the punitiveness of juvenile sanctions does not have a first-order impact on later criminal involvement. This finding is consistent with
longer-term deterrent effects and criminal human capital/stigma effects roughly offsetting one another, or both simply being small in magnitude.'

Deterrence Outweighs Recidivism 1. General deterrence and recidivism are not the same. Deterrence means preventing crimes in the first place, while recidivism entails prevention of future crime after the fact. Deterrence
7

Wilson, Jane [Stanford's Strauss Scholar, developing educational programs for inmates in cities across the US.] Reducing Juvenile Recidivism in the United States, Roosevelt Review, 2007. http://www.scribd.com/doc/19695235/Juvenile-Recidivism 8 Levitt, Steven D. Juvenile Crime and Punishment. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 106, No. 6 (Dec., 1998), pp. 1156-1185.

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outweighs recidivism since one cannot recidivate if he does not commit crime in the first placeaffirming prevents numerous future second crimes by deterring potential criminals from offending in the first place.
2. Deterrence outweighs recidivism because deterrence is inherent to human behavior and

increased penalties; rational agents will always be deterred by the prospect of punishment. Increased recidivism is notprison conditions and education programs that exist within particular states influence recidivism rates, not anything inherent to the adult system. Hjalmarsson9 gives the example of Washington:
It may even be the case that these exacerbating forces dominate for certain subpopulations. It is also important to keep in mind that

this analysis is

based on a single state that has been a leader in juvenile justice reform. It is certainly feasible that incarceration has an exacerbating effect in [other] states
other than Washington

, which have, for instance, worse prison conditions or educational Prefer Levitt:

programs.
1. Longest time frame; its a 15 year study from 1978-1993, making it the most reliable indicator of causality. 2. Broadest data set. Levitt is the only author in the topic literature who collects data from all 50 states. Other authors who collect data from specific states reach different conclusions because the scope of their studies is narrower. Nationwide studies are the only studies which prove the resolution on-balance because the results of state-specific studies are not applicable outside of that particular state. Thats the Hjalmarsson evidence read above. Even if Levitt is an outlier in the literature, his conclusions must be valid if the methodology of his study is valid. 3. Panel data. Levitt uses a specific type of regression analysis that controls for individual heterogeneity better than any alternative. Panel data allows the researcher to survey observations in a cross-sectional two or more times, whereas normal studies only look at an observation once.

Example 3: Democide Add-On Nukes allow for atrocities. Quester and Utgoff10:
9

Hjalmarsson, Randi [University of Maryland]. Juvenile Jails: A Path to the Straight and Narrow or to Hardened Criminality? Journal of Law & Economics, Copyright University of Chicago, November 2009. http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/rhjalmarsson/juvenilejails_JLE.pdf 10 George H. Quester and Victor A. Utgoff, Toward an International Nuclear Security Policy, Washington Quarterly, Autumn 1994.

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11 NSD 12 nuclear weapons have always been important, not just for the devastation they inflict, but also for the

Second,

political intimidation imposed by the possibility of nuclear devastation. The spread of nuclear weapons to any sizable number of countries will tend to give each a way of intimidating the rest of the world, and thus of vetoing the outside world's objections to any of its more
obnoxious

activities: "ethnic cleansing," brutal dictatorships, warlord-caused famines,

or conquests of neighboring states not so strongly armed. Americans, and most other people, will want to avoid a situation in which
any state can defy the will of the rest of the world, just by being able to threaten the destruction of any of the world's cities. Whatever hopes are now entertained for a disciplined world order and a reliable system of collective security thus depend on the halting of nuclear proliferation. Finally, the United States will not find it easy to sit on the sidelines in a regional war involving nuclear-armed states. In desperate circumstances such states will try to threaten the interests of bystanders, in order to force an international intervention. And other states within and outside such a region will apply great pressures for U.S. and/or UN involvement.

Rogue regimes have killed hundreds of millions this century. Rummel11:

This is a report of the statistical results from a project on comparative genocide and mass-murder

in this century. Most probably near 170,000,000

people have been murdered in cold-blood by governments, well over three-quarters by absolutist regimes. The most such killing was done by the Soviet Union (near 62,000,000 people), the communist government of China is second (near
35,000,000), followed by Nazi Germany (almost 21,000,000), and Nationalist China (some 10,000,000). Lesser megamurderers include WWII Japan, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, WWI Turkey, communist Vietnam, post-WWII Poland, Pakistan, and communist Yugoslavia. The most intense democide was carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, where they killed over 30 percent of their subjects in less than four years.

The best predictor of this killing is regime power.

The more arbitrary power a regime has, the less democratic it is, the more likely it will kill its subjects or foreigners. The conclusion is that power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.

11

Rummel, RJ. Power Kills: Genocide and Mass Murder. "Power, Genocide and Mass Murder," Journal of Peace Research 31 (no.1, 1994): 1-10. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/POWER.ART.HTM#.