PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES IN GAINING RESEARCH ACCESS IN POLICE ORGANIZATIONS

“Access” is conceived of as involving passage through two gates: one manned by the top-level authority figures of the organization, and the other by the proposed subjects of one's study. Within this framework, informal contacts, contingent acceptance at successive organizational levels, and self-selection are identified and discussed as the factors most central to an understanding of our successful access into three police organizations and our failures to gain access to two police organizations.     

ALIENATION IN PRISON ORGANIZATIONS:

The deprivation modelsuggests that prisonization and inmate opposition the prison organization are a function of the deprivations imposed by organization. Compliance theory maintains that alienationof the organiza tionf participants covaries with the coerciveness of the organization. Data obtained from inmates and officers in six adult correctional institutions are examined to test the hypothesis that inmate alienation is a result of the coer civeness of the institution and a cause of inmate opposition to the institu tion. The findings lend support to the hypothesized model and, further more, suggest the need to distinguish between absolute and relative deprivation.     

THE REASSURANCE FACTOR IN POLICE PATROL

In addition to its more obvious functions, police patrol also has the function of citizen reassurance-providing feelings of safety that a citizen experiences when he knows that a police officer or patrol car is nearby. Since this function is highly related to both visibility and awareness, it is svggested that in locations of both cognitive centrality and high density, fixed posts be established that would both serve the reassurance function and provide another communication link between the police and the public. Recent studies by Milgram. Sommer, Hall, and Lynch have all contributed to our understanding of what Milgram calls “the congnitive map of the city,” and this concept can be utilized in the pursuit of safety.     

EVALUATION OF POLICE SERVICES IN MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES

Citizen evaluations of police services in four medium-sized cities are investigated in this article. Socioeconomic characteristics as well as police attitudes and political attitudes were found not to be good predictors of citizen evaluation. Complaint efficacy was found to be the best predictor of citizen satisfaction with police services.     

PATENT HOLDUP AND OLIGOPSONISTIC COLLUSION IN STANDARD-SETTING ORGANIZATIONS

Current controversies over patent policy place standard-settingorganizations (SSOs) on a collision course with antitrust law.Recent theoretical research conjectures that, in an SSO, patentowners can "hold up" patent users in the sense of demandinghigh royalties for a patented input after the SSO has adoptedthe patented technology as an industry standard and manufacturerswithin the SSO have incurred sunk costs to design end productsthat incorporate that standard. Consistent with this conjecture,actual SSOs have recently sought no-action letters from theAntitrust Division for a variety of amendments to SSO rulesthat would require or request, at the time a standard is underconsideration, the ex ante disclosure by the patent owner ofthe maximum royalty that the patent owner would charge underthe regime of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory licensing.This price information—which is characterized as the "cost"of the patented input—would, under at least one recentSSO rule modification, be a permissible topic for potentialusers of the patent to discuss when deciding whether to selectit in lieu of some alternative standard. This exchange of informationamong horizontal competitors would occur ostensibly becausethe cost of the patented technology had been characterized assimply one more technical attribute of the standard to be set,albeit an important technical attribute. The Antitrust Divisionand the Federal Trade Commission have jointly stated that suchdiscussion, by prospective buyers who are competitors in thedownstream market, of the price of a patented invention thatmight become part of an industry standard should be subjectto antitrust scrutiny under the rule of reason rather than therule of per se illegality. The rationale that the antitrustagencies offer for applying the rule of reason to such conductis that such horizontal collaboration might avert patent holdup.The Antitrust Modernization Commission (AMC) similarly endorsedthe view that rule-of-reason analysis is appropriate for exante discussion of royalty terms by competing buyers of patentedtechnology. This rule-of-reason approach, however, is problematicbecause it conflicts with both the body of economic researchon bidder collusion and with the antitrust jurisprudence oninformation exchange and facilitation of collusion. Put differently,because of their concern over the possibility of patent holdup,the U.S. antitrust agencies and the AMC in effect have indicatedthat they may be willing in at least some circumstances to forgoenforcement actions against practices that facilitate oligopsonisticcollusion by encouraging the ex ante exchange of informationamong competitors concerning the price to be paid for a patentedinput as an implicit condition of those competitors' endorsementof that particular patented technology for adoption in the industrystandard. However, neither the proponents of these SSO policiesnor the antitrust agencies and the AMC have offered any theoreticalor empirical foundation for their implicit assumption that theexpected social cost of patent holdup exceeds the expected socialcost of oligopsonistic collusion. This conclusion does not changeeven if one conjectures that such collusion will benefit consumersby enabling licensees to pass through royalty reductions intheir pricing of the downstream product incorporating the patentedtechnology. Proper economic evaluation of the plausibility ofthe pass-through conjecture will require information about thecalculation of royalty payments; the demand and supply elasticitiesfacing the licensees; and the structure of any industries furtherdownstream between the manufacturer and the final consumer.Consequently, the magnitude of this effect will likely be amatter of empirical dispute in every case. Moreover, such ajustification for tolerating horizontal price fixing finds nosupport in antitrust jurisprudence. Given the analytical andfactual uncertainty over whether patent holdup is a seriousproblem, it is foreseeable that antitrust questions of firstimpression will arise and affect a wide range of high-technologyindustries that rely on SSOs. However, there is no indicationthat scholars and policy makers have seriously considered whetheroligopsonistic collusion in SSOs is a larger problem than patentholdup.     

ST. LOUIS POLICE RECRUITS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Police consultants throughout the twentieth century have advocated improvement in recruitment as a key component of their campaign for police “professionalization.” Not until after World War II, however, did most major urban police forces substantially alter entrance standards. Unfortunately, scholars have not undertaken the research necessary to document the diachronic dimension of police recruitment, particularly in light of these changes in requirements. Quantitative analysis of the social backgrounds of officers in the St. Louis Police Department, which is widely considered to be one of the nation's most professional forces, provides the first accurate answer to the question of who policed the city. This examination reveals marked shifts in the education, ethnic identification (including race), military experience, age, and length of residence of recruits, but that modifications of entrance standards were clearly responsible only for changes regarding the latter two factors. More important is the finding that such developments did not disturb the great continuity in the social background of St. Louis police recruits. Thus officers in 1970, like their predecessors at the turn of the century, were predominantly married men from blue collar backgrounds, with checkered occupational histories and a high proportion of prior unemployment and incidence of previous arrests.     

THE VICTIM-OFFENDER RELATIONSHIP AND CALLING THE POLICE IN ASSAULTS*

The revised National Crime Victimization Survey is used to examine the effects of the victim's relationship to the offender on whether assaults are reported to the police by either the victim or by third parties. The results indicate that the offender-victim relationship affects third-party but not victim reporting. The former effect occurs in part because third parties are unlikely to witness assaults involving people in ongoing relationships, particularly couples, and in part because third parties are reluctant to report minor assaults (i.e., those assaults that involve a threat but no actual attack and no weapon). We discuss possible explanations for why no effect of relationship on victim reporting was found.     

LEGISLATING FOR PARENTAL ACCESS TO CHILDREN IN CARE

Parental access to children absent in state care is an emotive issue. This article looks at the role of legisiation in recent attempts in Great Britain to improve the situation.