Civilian Forensic Technician and Sworn Police Officer Job-Related Stress

Forensic Technicians provide crime scene investigation services and are exposed to stressful violent crimes, motor vehicle accidents, biological or chemical hazards, and other appalling imagery. Forensic Technicians would likely experience physical and psychological stress after exposure to trauma, and security vulnerabilities similar to Sworn Police Officers. The perceived availability of mental health resources, job-related physical, psychological stress, and traumatic experiences of both Forensic Technicians and Sworn Police Officers from California law enforcement agencies were investigated using a self-reported survey. Responses were evaluated for any significant differences in the perceived stress, job-related physical stress, and resulting psychological impact affecting the participants. The survey contained a mix of True/False, Circle/Check the Appropriate Box, or Likert Scale (1–5) responses. The results were evaluated statistically and discussed. Results indicated Sworn Police Officers and Forensic Technicians have different on-duty stress levels, but similar off-duty stress levels. Nearly two-thirds of 54 job-related stressors were not significantly different between the two occupations. However, Forensic Technicians reported more adverse effects in 17 physical and psychological job-related activities compared with Sworn Police Officers. Forensic Technicians reported lower awareness levels and availability of agency mental health support services than were reported by Sworn Police Officers. This study reports for the first time an unexpected outcome that perceived and job-related psychological stress is greater for Forensic Technicians than Sworn Police Officers. Possible reasons for this disparity will be discussed as well as stress management tools that should be implemented to reduce health risk factors for both career professionals as well as increase public safety.     

Economic Elites and Support for Housing Affordability Policy: How a Housing-Health Belief Matters

Political Behavior - To investigate economic elites’ housing policy preferences and test the attitudinal, contextual, political, and economic conditions that drive support for affordable...     

Global perspectives on scientists’ roles in legislative policymaking

Policy Sciences - The question of how scientists should engage in policymaking has spurred both pragmatic and philosophical debates for decades. Scant empirical research addressing how experts...     

The reluctant activist: the Italian parliament and the scrutiny of EU affairs between institutional opportunities and political legacies

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the participation of the Italian Parliament in the scrutiny of EU affairs after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon and its implementation through the national Law 234/2012. The empirical analysis highlights that notwithstanding the presence of favourable institutional and political conditions, the involvement of the Italian Parliament in EU affairs moderately increased. The Treaty of Lisbon and Italian legislation improved Parliament’s rights to participate in the ascending phase but without altering significantly the balance of powers between the European Commission and NPs, and between the Italian Parliament and the Government. Moreover, MPs perceive the EWS and the PD as not impactful on decision-making at the EU and the national level.     

Critical election and a new party system: Italy after the 2015 regional election

Although party system change has been widely explored, it is less so for the regional level. The article provides the first systematic attempt to discuss party system change at the regional level in Italy. Through a comprehensive overview of the five 1995–2015 regional elections, indicators of party system change, based on an original database, are explored. It will be showed that in the 2013–15 election cycle while party system fragmentation, volatility and recomposition reached their maximum high – parallel to what happened in 1995 – the level of bipolarism, one of the main features of Italian party system since the mid-1990s, dramatically dropped replaced by a three-pole configuration. These results, and their consistency with the relevant junctures at the national level in 1994 and 2013, may allow to state that a party system change at the regional level occurred and thus to consider 2013–15 elections as critical.     

Political careers in multi-level systems: Regional chief executives in Italy, 1970–2015

This article focuses on Italian regional chief executives and aims to investigate if and how the Italian regionalization process has affected regional chief executives’ career trajectories. Our analysis is based on an original dataset on political careers of regional heads of government in Italy from 1970 to 2015. After presenting our two research expectations, we find that the direct election of regional presidents and the decentralization process have gone hand in hand with the selection of more regional political outsiders and visible politicians as well as with a higher integration between institutional levels in terms of career paths