Political Control versus Bureaucratic Values: Reframing the Debate

The literature on political control of bureaucracy reveals that bureaucracies are highly responsive to political forces. This paper argues that the political control literature misses evidence from other academic literature that bears directly on this phenomenon. Specifically, researchers need to consider the values of the bureaucracy in any effort to assess the degree of political control. An empirical test is presented using a data set from public education. Results show bureaucratic values to be far more influential in explaining bureaucratic outputs and outcomes than political factors. These findings suggest that a reinterpretation of previous empirical research is urgently in order.     

Headspace profiling of cocaine samples for intelligence purposes

A method for determination of residual solvents in illicit hydrochloride cocaine samples using static headspace-gas chromatography (HS-GC) associated with a storage computerized procedure is described for the profiling and comparison of seizures. The system involves a gas chromatographic separation of 18 occluded solvents followed by fully automatic data analysis and transfer to a PHP/MySQL database. First, a fractional factorial design was used to evaluate the main effects of some critical method parameters (salt choice, vial agitation intensity, oven temperature, pressurization and loop equilibration) on the results with a minimum of experiments. The method was then validated for tactical intelligence purposes (batch comparison) via several studies: selection of solvents and mathematical comparison tool, reproducibility and "cutting" influence studies. The decision threshold to determine the similarity of two samples was set and false positives and negatives evaluated. Finally, application of the method to distinguish geographical origins is discussed.     

Prevalence of psychoactive substances in truck drivers in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region (France)

A previous study conducted in 1995 showed that psychoactive drug use by workers was higher in safety/security workstations than in the rest of the labour force. In order to verify this finding, we conducted a new study in 2003-2004 in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, restricted to truck drivers. The aim of this study was to allow harmonizing the professional practice of the occupational physicians, proposing drug prevention and drug testing policies, validating the analytical methods and the guidelines in case of positive testing results. One thousand truck drivers were studied. Urines were tested for amphetamines, cannabinoids, cocaine, opiates, benzodiazepines, buprenorphine and methadone by immunoassay. Urine ethanol determinations were performed by an ADH method. Positive urines for drugs of abuse, methadone or buprenorphine were then tested by gas chromatography or liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Out of the 1000 drivers, cannabinoids were detected in 85 cases, opiates in 41 cases, amphetamines in 3 cases and cocaine in only one case. Buprenorphine was detected in 18 cases, methadone in 5 cases and benzodiazepines in 4 cases. Urine ethanol was positive in 50 cases. We found only one case with 6-monoacetylmorphine. Other positive opiates were metabolites of antitussives. The relatively low number of benzodiazepine positive urines could be explained by the lack of sensitivity of the test we used. All these results confirm those of the previous study for cannabinoids and ethanol in safety/security workstations. Positive results for methadone and buprenorphine are eight times higher than in the general population. In conclusion, the authors think that it will be of a great interest to test urine of truck drivers for other classes of psychoactive drugs, using a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method.     

Individual in Context: The Role of Impulse Control on the Association between the Home,School, and Neighborhood Developmental Contexts and Adolescent Delinquency

Social ecological theories and decades of supporting research suggest that contexts exert a powerful influence on adolescent delinquency. Individual traits, such as impulse control, also pose a developmental disadvantage to adolescents through increasing risk of delinquency. However, such individual differences may also predispose some youth to struggle more in adverse environments, but also to excel in enriched environments. Despite the prominence of impulse control in both developmental and criminological literatures, researchers are only beginning to consider impulse control as an individual characteristic that may affect developmental outcomes in response to environmental input. Using a racially diverse (Latino 46?%; Black 37?%; White 15?%; other race 2?%) sample of 1,216 first-time, male, juvenile offenders from the longitudinal Crossroads Study, this study examined key interactions between baseline impulse control and the home, school, and neighborhood contexts in relation to delinquency within the following 6 months. The results indicated that even after accounting for prior delinquency, youth in more negative home, school, and neighborhood contexts engaged in the same amount of delinquency in the following 6 months regardless of their level of impulse control. However, the effects of positive home, school, and neighborhood contexts on delinquency were stronger for youth with moderate or high impulse control and minimally affected youth with low impulse control. The findings suggest two risk factors for delinquency: low impulse control as a dispositional vulnerability that operates independently of developmental context, and a second that results from a contextual vulnerability.     

Aspirations,Expectations and Delinquency: The Moderating Effect of Impulse Control

Although prior research finds a robust link between delinquent behavior and expectations, or an adolescent’s perceived likelihood of obtaining one’s future goals, fewer studies have evaluated aspirations, or the perceived importance of achieving one’s goals. In addition, few studies consider how individual traits such as impulsivity affect the degree to which expectations and aspirations motivate or deter delinquent behavior. We contribute to this body of research by evaluating the independent effects of expectations and aspirations, and the aspiration-expectation gap (i.e., strain) on delinquent behavior during the year following an adolescent’s first arrest using a large (N?=?1117), racially/ethnically diverse sample of male adolescents (46.55% Latino, 35.81% Black, 14.95% White, and 2.69% Other race). In addition, we considered how impulse control interacts with expectations, aspirations, and strain to motivate behavior. Our results indicated that both aspirations, expectations and strain uniquely influence criminal behavior. Importantly, aspirations interacted with impulse control, such that aspirations affected delinquency only among youth with higher impulse control. Our findings suggest that aspirations may only influence behavior if youth also have the psychosocial capabilities to consider their future aspirations when behaving in the present.