Description: At the November meeting of the IASB’s SAC, I raised strong support for the concept of a priority project to accelerate the development of a new conceptual framework for the IASB with emphasis on the role of reliability, the definition of liability, the meaning of probable, the effects of contingencies i.e. contingent probabilities, the unit of account and accounting for contractual rights and obligations. Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a longer address to the International Accounting Standards Board on guiding principles.

Description: In this paper, Honorable Mention Essay for the Society of Actuaries' Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section 2010 Papers Competition, the author examines the rapidly increasing costs of maintaining the U.S. prison system and the fiscal pressures the federal and state governments are faced with, and proposes a plan for an early prisoner release program “with a rigorous, merit-based approach that can be expected to demonstrate favorable outcomes for the general public and the released prisoner.” This plan involves “an optimized process for evaluating the perils associated with freeing candidates eligible for early release - an individualized assessment and quantification of those risks…” The article goes on to describe the costs, benefits, risks, and critical success factors. The report includes two appendices.