Using Performance Measures for Federal Budgeting: Proposals and Prospects

The political system, the popular press, and the public have recently been concerned about measuring government performance. This concern for measuring performance should imply a concern for measuring it correctly. With this in mind, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently conducted an analysis of the use of performance measures in the budget process. The study attempts to review the issues raised by performance budgeting in the context of past and current efforts to link performance measures and budgeting. This article focuses on two portions of that study: The status of the current federal performance measurement efforts and specific observations designed to inject a note of caution into the current debate about performance measurement and budgeting.     

The role of moral disengagement in the execution process

The present study tested the proposition that disengagement of moral self-sanctions enables prison personnel to carry out the death penalty. Three subgroups of personnel in penitentiaries located in three Southern states were assessed in terms of eight mechanisms of moral disengagement. The personnel included the execution teams that carry out the executions; the support teams that provide solace and emotional support to the families of the victims and the condemned inmate; and prison guards who have no involvement in the execution process. The executioners exhibited the highest level of moral, social, and economic justifications, disavowal of personal responsibility, and dehumanization. The support teams that provide the more humane services disavowed moral disengagement, as did the noninvolved guards but to a lesser degree than the support teams.     

The case of the missing victims: Gunshot woundings in the National Crime Survey

National Crime Survey (NCS) data yield an estimate that 171,000 Americans were nonfatally shot in criminal assaults, robberies, and rapes for the period 1973–1979. Comparing this estimate with the number of firearms homicides during this period suggests either that the death rate in gunshot cases is very high (over 1/3) or that the NCS estimate is low. Based on police-generated data appropriate to estimating the true death rate from gunshot wounds, it appears that the NCS estimate is low by a factor of about 3.0 compared with the number of criminal gunshot woundings known to the police. It is common knowledge that survey-based estimates of assault rates tend to be relatively unreliable, a fact that has been attributed to problems with respondents being willing and able to recall threats, fist fights, and other minor assaults. The current result indicates that the estimation problem is not limited to minor assaults. There is reason to think that the underestimate of gunshot woundings is the result of problems with the NCS sample as well as problems with respondent cooperation.     

Classification of premium and regular gasoline by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry,principal component analysis and artificial neural networks

Detection and correct classification of gasoline is important for both arson and fuel spill investigation. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to classify premium and regular gasolines from gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) spectral data obtained from gasoline sold in Canada over one calendar year. Depending upon the dataset used for training and tests, around 80-93% of the samples were correctly classified as either premium or regular gasoline using the Mahalanobis distances calculated from the principal components scores. Only 48-62% of the samples were correctly classified when the premium and regular gasoline samples were divided further into their winter/summer sub-groups. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were trained to recognise premium and regular gasolines from the same GC-MS data. The best-performing ANN correctly identified all samples as either a premium or regular grade. Approximately 97% of the premium and regular samples were correctly classified according to their winter or summer sub-group.