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The criminal justice system routinely imposes financial sanctions on probation clients. These fines, fees, and restitution debts often amount to more than what many clients can reasonably afford to pay. Until recently, Massachusetts courts have incarcerated clients solely for their inability to pay these debts in a practice known as “fine time”. In 2018, the state passed a landmark criminal justice reform bill that restricted the types of cases in which fine time can be ordered. Clients that can establish that payment would lead to financial hardship can now petition the court for a financial waiver accompanied by community service. The current study seeks to explore the implications of the recent reform efforts on probation services by analyzing surveys gathered from a sample of 121 Massachusetts probation officers in 2020. Descriptive findings of officers’ attitudes toward fines and fees, responses to nonpayment by clients, and the use of financial waivers are presented. Officers’ perceptions and practices align with the recent reform efforts, suggesting support among probation personnel for policies that limit punitive responses to nonpayment of legal debts by their supervisees. Possible directions for future research and policy development are discussed.

The steel industry represents about 7% of the world’s anthropogenic CO2 emissions due to the high use of fossil fuels. The CO2-lean direct reduction of iron ore with hydrogen is considered to offer a high potential to reduce CO2 emissions, and this direct reduction of Fe2O3 powder is investigated in this research. The H2 reduction reaction kinetics and fluidization characteristics of fine and cohesive Fe2O3 particles were examined in a vibrated fluidized bed reactor. A smooth bubbling fluidization was achieved. An increase in external force due to vibration slightly increased the pressure drop. The minimum fluidization velocity was nearly independent of the operating temperature. The yield of the direct H2-driven reduction was examined and found to exceed 90%, with a maximum of 98% under the vibration of ~47 Hz with an amplitude of 0.6 mm, and operating temperatures close to 500 °C. Towards the future of direct steel ore reduction, cheap and “green” hydrogen sources need to be developed. H2 can be formed through various techniques with the catalytic decomposition of NH3 (and CH4), methanol and ethanol offering an important potential towards production cost, yield and environmental CO2 emission reductions.

The subject of the researchis the procedure for imposing penalties on business entities.The relevanceof the paper lies in the fact that nowadays there is an urgent need to streamline the current legislation in the part of establishing the responsibility of organizations for breach of tax legislation, especially for lesser breaches punishable by minor fines usually appealed against by organizations involved thereby overloading the work of courts.The purpose of the researchwas critical assessment of individual legislative provisions relating to the imposition of minor fines on legal entities doing business in disputable situations, cases of which are often brought on to courts on the initiative of the heads of organizations. Judicial practice on them is not uniform. Regarding identical cases, some district arbitration courts decide in favor of business entities, while others support claims of tax authorities. Nor is the Russian Ministry of Finance always consistent in explanations on these issues in its official letters. In a number of cases, they happened to change their point of view regarding the fine imposing procedure for a quite opposed position. Therefore, there is a need to clarify certain rules of imposing fines on legal entities following the results of a field tax audit as well as for breach of contractual obligations.It is concludedthat the current tax legislation is imperfect in the part of imposition of penal sanctions. It is proposed to introduce a special provision about the penalty charged on the management of legal entities who loose disputable law breach cases in court followed by imposition of a minor fine. The procedure for accounting fines, penalties for breach of contractual obligations in corporate tax calculations is considered and its shortcomings are revealed. A new procedure for the accounting of penalties is proposed.

This paper aims to analyse the stock price reaction of European banks involved in antitrust authority interventions regarding the payment card business. The main objective is to assess whether market discipline is effective and able to complement regulation (Berger et al., 2000) despite the opacity of the business (Morgan, 2002). To this end, we collect all interventions made by both domestic antitrust authorities and by the European Commission to investigate and/or sanction anticompetitive behaviour in the payment card sector over the period 2004-2015. This results in a sample of 24 events, involving 135 listed banks operating in the EU-27 area. We run an event study analysis based on a traditional market model in order to estimate cumulated abnormal returns (CARs), considering both the date when the formal investigation is open and the date when the outcome of the procedure is communicated to the market. Our findings provide weak evidence in favour of the effectiveness of market discipline, with a significant (negative) market reaction only for investigations involving a small number of well-identified banking institutions, while procedures involving large banking associations or payment networks do not generate any relevant reaction.

The fine sediment distribution in the seabed is an important indicator for the ecological functioning of shallow coastal seas. In this paper, we investigate the processes and conditions that determine the fine sediment distribution in the Dutch coastal zone surficial seabed, while also assessing the response of the system to human interventions. An extensive sediment dataset, collected in the Dutch coastal zone from 2006 to 2014, is presented. These data are used to map the distribution of fines in the seabed of the DCZ at unique spatiotemporal scales. For the entire Dutch coastal zone, the distribution of fines generally agrees well with previous studies. The recent extension of the Port of Rotterdam, the Maasvlakte 2 reclamation, was found to locally change the distribution of fines. In the sand mining pit and directly south of the reclamation, fines percentages in the seabed increased by more than 10%. We developed a conceptual framework to analyse the distribution of fines and how it is affected by human interventions. Three components are distinguished within this framework: (1) sources of fines; (2) transport pathways; and (3) accumulation potential. These components are determined both qualitatively and quantitatively, based on high-resolution bathymetric and hydrodynamic model data. The distinction between the three components makes it possible to unravel the contributions of different human interventions to the changes in the fines distribution. In the case of Maasvlakte 2, the local increase of fines percentage in the seabed could thus be attributed to a temporary additional source of fines and enhanced accumulation potential. The high spatiotemporal resolution of the new sediment dataset proved crucial to enable development and testing of the framework to evaluate the impact of (large) engineering works on the spatial distribution of fines.

More than half of private sector employees in the developing world do not receive legally mandated labor benefits. These regulations have typically been enacted by democratically elected governments, and are valued by both formal and informal workers. Increasing public enforcement (e.g. inspections, fines, and workers’ access to the judiciary) can be a powerful tool to reduce violations (e.g. increase the number of employees earning above the minimum wage). Which factors determine enforcement, and whether enforcement produces more social benefits than costs, are, however, unanswered questions. Fil: Ronconi, Lucas. Centro de Investigación y Acción Social; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

Methane hydrates are promising unconventional energy source with natural reserves above 1,000 Trillion m3. Hydrates are found in saturated sandy sediments, where multi-phase flow of gas takes place through sediment's pores, physical phenomenon at pore-scale controls flow properties. Gas permeability is highly affected by fines type due to migration, clogging and bridging reducing gas flow. Fines migration has huge influence on storage and recovery of oil and gas resources from the subsurface. There is a knowledge gap of fines effects on gas production from sandy sediments, especially at pore-scale, in homogenous porous media. Therefore, there is a need to model and quantify fines impact on multi-phase flow using 3D reconstruction to better understand gas recovery systems. The pores in which gas flow through are reconstructed using 3D synchrotron X-ray micro- computed tomography images of sand sediments, at resolution of 3.89 micron per voxel. Sand was mixed with fines and deposited in test columns. Kaolinite and Montmorillonite clay fine particles were added in different columns, each system was scanned at four stages with varied saturations of brine as CO2 gas was injected in real time while scanning. Images were processed for 3D visualization, segmentation and quantification for each system. Effects of swelling and non-swelling clays were characterized to understand multi-phase flow of gas at pore-scale. Findings revealed that fines accumulate at sand-brine and brine-gas interfaces. As fines concentration increased, gas percolation decreased. Further increase in fines concentrations resulted in blocking local gas flow causing pressure variations enough to create fractures that allows gas to escape and percolation to rise. In unconsolidated media, the pore space geometry will change due to sand grains movements. At high concentrations, different fines types produce altered gas flow regimes, Kaolinite which is non-swelling clay resulted in fractures while montmorillonite which is swelling resulted in detached gas ganglia entrapping the gas. Generally, increasing fines reduces gas percolation and further injection of gas reduced permeability. The finds herein are critical in understanding the impact of fines migration during gas flow in sand, they can be applied to characterizing and predicting two phase properties of unconsolidated sediments. The qualitative and quantitative findings achieved in this work in 3D, agree with other observations in recent literature on 2D micromodels. Understanding the fluid physics in homogenous sand systems is an essential step to quantify fines impact on heterogeneous rock systems. The work helps in improving flow characterizing at pore scale, to mitigate to formation damage problem and advance reservoirs upscaling capabilities. Copyright 2019, Society of Petroleum Engineers. This research was made possible by the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) grant #NPRP8-594-2-244 from Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. The SMT images were collected using the X-ray Operations and Research Beamline Station 13-BMD at Argonne Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. The authors thank Dr. Mark Rivers of APS for help in performing the SMT scans. They also acknowledge the support of GeoSoilEnviroCARS (Sector 13), which is supported by the National Science Foundation, USA, Earth Sciences (EAR-1128799), and the US Department of Energy (DOE), Geosciences (DE-FG02-94ER14466). Use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by DOE, USA under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Scopus

Many congestion charging projects charge traffic only within part of a day with predetermined congestion tolls. Demand peaks have been witnessed just around the time when the charge jumps up or down. Such peaks may not be desirable, in particular (a) when the resulting peaks are much higher than available capacities; (b) traffic speeding up to get into the charging zone causes more incidents just before the toll rises up to a higher level; or (c) traffic slowing down or parking on the roadside decreases road traffic throughput just before the toll falls sharply. We term these types of demand peaks ‘boundary effects’ of congestion charging. This paper investigates these effects in a bottleneck scenario and aims to design charging schemes that reduce undesired demand peaks. For this purpose, we observe and analyse the boundary effects utilising a bottleneck model under three types of toll profiles that are indicative of real charging schemes. The first type maintains a constant toll across the charging period, the second type allows the toll to increase from zero to a given maximum level and then decrease back to zero and the third type allows the toll to rise from zero to a given maximum level, remain at this level for a fixed period and then fall down to zero. This investigation shows that all three types of toll profiles can produce greater boundary peak demands than the bottleneck capacity. A significant contribution of this work is that instead of designing an optimal traffic congestion pricing scheme we analyse how existing sub-optimal congestion pricing schemes could be improved and suggest how observed problems may be overcome. Hence, we propose a set of extra requirements to supplement existing principles or requirements for design and implementation of congestion charging, which aim to reduce the adverse consequences of boundary effects. Concluding remarks are made on implications of this investigation for the improvement of existing congestion charging projects and for future research. First published online 13 July 2015

O objetivo deste artigo é testar o papel do regulador no combate a infrações ambientais no Brasil. As principais variáveis explicativas são os valores das multas lavradas no estado (efeito específico) e nos estados vizinhos (efeito spillover), que refletem a reputação do regulador. Este artigo testa ainda o papel complementar dos agentes privados sobre o monitoramento e a aplicação de sanções informais. A fonte de dados compreende, em nível estadual, a quantidade de autos de infração registrados pelo IBAMA e as respectivas multas aplicadas para os anos de 2000 a 2011. Os resultados obtidos pelo método de Efeitos Fixos demonstram que um aumento no valor das multas aplicadas em um estado e em seus vizinhos gera uma redução no número de autos de infração para anos subsequentes à aplicação da multa. The aim of this paper is to test the role of the regulator in combating environmental infractions in Brazil. The main explanatory variables are the values of fines imposed on the state (specific effect) and on surrounding states (spillover effect), which reflect the reputation of the regulator. This paper also examines the complementary role of private agents on monitoring and application of informal sanctions. The data source comprises, at state level, the amount of notices of violation recorded by IBAMA and the related fines for the years 2000 to 2011. The results obtained by the method of Fixed Effects demonstrate that an increase on the values of fines imposed on a state and its neighbors generates a reduction in the number of notices of infraction for the years following the imposition of a fine.

The selection of an appropriate aggregate structure is a key step during mix design since this directly affects mix performance and the amount of asphalt in the mix. During conventional batching procedures, the aggregates are dried and sieved into different sizes only to be recombined later into the appropriate proportions to reproduce the design gradation. This type of procedure can produce gradations with substantially larger percent passing the sieve No.200 relative to the target gradation. This paper explores the effects that fines adhered to larger particles have on the batch gradation, the resulting optimum binder content and dust proportion. An improved batching procedure that corrects for fines adhered to larger particles and trapped moisture is presented in detail and shown to replicate the target design gradation more closely. The optimum asphalt content was determined by means of the Superpave® design method for both, a gradation batched conventionally and a gradation batched with the suggested corrected procedure. The results show that the optimum asphalt content and volumetrics obtained in both cases are substantially different. The procedure developed for the fines correction is recommended for routine batching in order to minimize the inclusion of additional fines that can potentially affect the performance characteristics of the mix. ResumenLa selección de una estructura de agregados apropiada es un proceso clave durante el diseño de mezcla debido a que esta afecta directamente el desempeño de la mezcla y la cantidad de asfalto en la misma. Durante los procesos convencionales de dosificación de agregados en laboratorio, los agregados son secados y separados mediante tamizado en diferentes tamaños, para luego ser recombinados en proporciones apropiadas para reproducir la granulometría de diseño. Este tipo de procedimiento puede producir granulometrías con porcentajes pasando la malla No.200 que son substancialmente mayores con relación a la granulometría objetivo. Este artículo explora los efectos que los finos adheridos a partículas más grandes tienen sobre el bacheo de granulometrías, el porcentaje óptimo de asfalto resultante y la proporción polvo/asfalto. Un método modificado de bacheo que corrige por estos finos adheridos a partículas más grandes y además por la humedad atrapada en los agregados es presentado y además se muestra cómo este proceso permite replicar más de cerca la granulometría objetivo. El porcentaje óptimo de asfalto fue determinado por medio del método de diseño Superpave®, tanto para una granulometría obtenida mediante bacheo convencional como para la misma granulometría obtenida mediante el uso del procedimiento de corrección sugerido. Los resultados muestran que el porcentaje de asfalto óptimo y la volumetría obtenida en ambos casos son substancialmente distintas. El procedimiento desarrollado para corrección de finos es recomendado para los procesos rutinarios de bacheo con el objetivo de minimizar la inclusión de finos adicionales que pueden potencialmente afectar las características de desempeño de la mezcla.

Paper strengthening agents play an important role in the papermaking industry with the increase of secondary fiber applications. The objective of this study was to create a dry-strength agent by esterification. The fines from the pulp were collected and modified with trimesic acid and citric acid, respectively, to obtain the dry-strength agent. The influences of acid type and dosage on the enhancing effect were investigated. Compared with the control sample, the physical properties of paper sheet were improved after adding modified fines. The properties of recycled paper were also improved by the modified fines. When the dosage of citric acid agent was 7%, the effect on paper properties saw the greatest improvement. The tensile index, burst index, and folding endurance were increased by 60.3%, 18.3%, and 146.2%, respectively, compared with the control. The improvement of paper properties was due to the increase of carboxyl content in the modified fines. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the esterification is an effective approach for producing paper dry-strengthening agent.

It is proposed to introduce contact sorption drying as a method to reduce the moisture content in coal fines. The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility of drying fine and ultra-fine coal using porous ceramic as the moisture sorbent. The main focus of this report is to define how the air temperature, particle size variations and mixing ratio would influence the contact between coal and ceramic for effective moisture adsorption. Drying of coal fines assisted by ceramic sorbents proved to be a viable concept as the ceramic was able to not only reduce the moisture content of fine coal, but of ultra-fine coal as well. The larger surface area of smaller ceramics allowed for efficient contact and consequently higher dewatering rates. The addition of more ceramic resulted in better contact with the wet coal and reduced the operating time quite significantly. Improved contact between the coal and ceramic therefore proved to be the main driving force during adsorption drying.

The article presents key developments in Polish antitrust legislation and jurisprudence of 2011. Its legislative part focuses on the renewal of Polish Group Exemption Regulations for vertical agreements, specialization and R&D agreements as well as cooperation agreements in the insurance sector. Noted is also the sole amendment of the Competition Act introduced in 2011 which concerns the financial liability of the Polish competition authority. The article covers also the new Guidelines of the UOKiK President on the criteria and procedures of merger notifications. Presented in its jurisprudential part is a number of 2011 rulings, mainly those rendered by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, divided according to their subject matter with respect to particular types of restrictive practices and other problems related to the decision-making process of the UOKiK President. Michał Mijal

Objectives Fines have been proposed as means for reducing non-attendance in healthcare. The empirical evidence of the effect of fines is however limited. The objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of fining non-attendance at outpatient clinics. Design, participants and setting 1:1 randomised controlled trial of appointments for an outpatient clinic, posted to Danish addresses, between 1 May 2015 and 30 November 2015. Only first appointment for users was included. Healthcare professionals and investigators were masked. Intervention A fine of DKK250 (€34) was issued for non-attendance. Users were informed about the fine in case of non-attendance by the appointment letter, and were able to reschedule or cancel until the appointment. A central administration office administered the fine system. Main outcome measures The main outcome measures were non-attendance of non-cancelled appointments, fine policy administration costs, net of productivity consequences and probability of fining non-attendance being cost-effective over no fining for a range of hypothetical values of reduced non-attendance. Results All of the 6746 appointments included were analysed. Of the 3333 appointments randomised to the fine policy, 130 (5%) of non-cancelled appointments were unattended, and of the 3413 appointments randomised to no-fine policy, 131 (5%) were unattended. The cost per appointment of non-attendance was estimated at DKK 56 (SE 5) in the fine group and DKK47 (SE 4) in the no-fine group, leading to a non-statistically significant difference of DKK10 (95% CI –9 to 22) per appointment attributable to the fine policy. The probability of cost-effectiveness remained around 50%, irrespective of increased values of reduced non-attendance or various alternative assumptions used for sensitivity analyses. Conclusions At a baseline level of around 5%, fining non-attendance does not seem to further reduce non-attendance. Future studies should focus on other means for reduction of non-attendance such as nudging or negative reinforcement. Trial registration number NCT61925912

The ease with which water is released from cellulosic fiber material during the manufacturing of paper can affect both the production rate and the consumption of energy during the manufacturing process. Important theoretical contributions to dewatering phenomena have been based on flow through packed beds of uniformly distributed fibers. Such descriptions are able to explain why resistance to dewatering increases as a function of the hydrodynamic surface area of fibers. More recent studies have demonstrated a critical role of finely divided matter. If the fines are unattached to fibers, then they tend to move freely through the fiber mat and plug channels in the paper web during the dewatering process. Dewatering also is affected by the deformability of cellulosic fibers and by whether the fibers easily slide past each other, thereby forming a dense mat. By emphasizing the role of fine matter, colloidal forces, and conformability of cellulosic materials, one can gain a more realistic understanding of strategies that papermakers use to enhance initial drainage and vacuum-induced dewatering.

The author has made valuable contribution by presenting a unified constitutive model that can capture the role of fines on stress-strain responses. The author also demonstrated that their proposed model can simulate the undrained behaviour of sand with various fines content, FC. The discusser is particularly thankful for the authors' significant references to the work of Rahman and co-workers on modelling the role of fines in his synthesis of published literatures. It is pertinent to emphasise that the equation proposed by Rahman, Lo and co-workers [6–9], with β being a function of particles size ratio and FC, is not purely empirical but also based on

This paper explores empirically the impact of enforcement efforts on environmental compliance, focusing on the role of regulator reputation spillover effects. We find that, on the margin, the impact of a fine for water pollutant violations is about a two-thirds reduction in the statewide violation rate in the year following a fine. This large result obtains through the regulator's enhanced reputation; the deterrence impact on other plants in a state is almost as strong as the impact on the sanctioned plant. Focusing only on the response of the sanctioned plant, as in previous studies, may therefore seriously underestimate the efficacy of fines and other sanctions. This paper also examines the relative effectiveness of monitoring and enforcement instruments. Non-monetary sanctions contribute no detected impact on compliance, and the marginal fine induces substantially greater compliance than the marginal inspection.

Point-record driving licences are widely used nowadays to enforce road legislations, but with diverse implementations from one country to the other, and even within a country. As any non-monetary sanction, depriving offenders from their licences allows the Government to incapacitate dangerous individuals and also to deter normal drivers to infringe road legislation. We investigate the desirable features of point-record licence mechanisms, and in particular, if they should allow drivers to redeem their points and/or include probationary periods. We also consider the possibility of an immediate withdrawal of the driving licence for very serious offences., Les permis de conduire à points sont aujourd'hui très largement utilisés pour faire respecter les politiques de sécurité routière, avec toutefois des mises en oeuvre diverses selon les pays et parfois à l'intérieur d'un même pays. Comme toute sanction non-monétaire, priver les contrevenants de leur permis permet aux autorités publiques de retirer de la route les individus dangereux et aussi de dissuader les conducteurs normaux d'enfreindre le code de la route. Nous analysons les caractéristiques souhaitables des mécanismes de permis à points et, en particulier, nous étudions s'ils devraient inclure des clauses de récupération des points perdus et des périodes probatoires. Nous envisageons également la possibilité d'un retrait immédiat du permis de conduire pour les infractions les plus graves.

Economists generally view environmental enforcement as a tool to secure compliance with regulations. This paper demonstrates that credible enforcement significantly increases statutory overcompliance with regulations as well. We find that many plants with discharges typically below legally permitted levels reduce discharges further when regulators issue fines, even on other plants. Also, likely non-compliant plants often respond to sanctions by reducing discharges well beyond reductions required by law. Thus, increased enforcement generates substantial discharge reductions above and beyond those expected from simply deterring violations.