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The current study examines how key internal U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) policy changes have been translated into front-line prosecutorial practices. Extending courts-as-communities scholarship and research on policy implementation practices, we use U.S. Sentencing Commission data from 2004 to 2019 to model outcomes for several measures of prose- cutorial discretion in federal drug trafficking cases, including the use of mandatory minimum charges and prosecutor-endorsed departures, to test the impact of the policy changes on case processing outcomes. We contrast prosecutorial measures with measures that are more impervious to discretionary manipulation, such as criminal history, and those that represent judicial and blended discretion, including judicial departures and final sentence lengths. We find a significant effect of the policy reforms on how prosecutorial tools are used across DOJ policy periods, and we find variation across districts as a function of contextual conditions, consistent with the court communities literature. We also find that a powerful driver of changes in pros- ecutorial practices during our most recent period is the confirmation of individual Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys at the district level, suggesting an important theoretical place for midlevel actors in policy translation and implementation.
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Materials and participants: A dialogical relationship
Materials play an important role in learning. Humans actors use materials in particular ways depending on the context and materials also can shape how human actors use materials. This study explores the dialogical relationship between the participants and materials in suminagashi, a Japanese paper marbling activity. We found that materials that are traditionally thought of as art materials, such as paintbrushes, are used to support practices often considered science practices, such as experimentation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1713155
- PAR ID:
- 10248844
- Editor(s):
- deVries, E.; Hod, Y.; Ahn, J.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2021: Reflecting the Past and Embracing the Future
- Volume:
- 1
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1041-1043
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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