Domestic violence and dependency courts: the Greenbook demonstration experience

This field study reports on a cross-site evaluation of dependency courts in communities receiving federal funding to implement the Greenbook initiative, a multisite demonstration for community improvement of coordinated responses to families victimized by domestic violence and child maltreatment. This article focuses on the dependency court, where child maltreatment cases are heard, specifically court participation in collaborative activities and court practice improvements. Findings indicate that perceptions of judicial leadership varied considerably by site. Cross-training appeared to increase over time, particularly with court staff. Collaborative efforts emerged across the Greenbook initiative with regard to the courts, and some innovative practices appeared within Greenbook sites, such as separate case plans for perpetrators and victims of violence in families, reducing the likelihood of controversial failure to protect charges. Results also highlight challenges inherent in changing court practices. Research and practice implications are discussed, focusing on relevance to other communities attempting to work collaboratively with the court system.     

Learning through foreign market participation: the relative benefits of exporting,importing, and foreign direct investment

A growing literature explores the degree to which firms learn from exporting. Although this literature finds that firms that export subsequently enjoy enhanced innovative performance, there has been little research that compares the effect of exporting to that of alternative internationalization activities. In this paper, we extend the literature to explore theoretically the differential effects of a firm’s exporting, foreign direct investment, and importing activity on its innovative outcomes. We test the resulting hypotheses using a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2008. We find that (1) learning associated with exporting is more pronounced than that associated with a firm’s FDI activities, (2) exporting and FDI operate as substitutes in their effect on a firm’s learning, and (3) although importing is positively associated with learning as manifested in new product introductions, it is not associated with learning as manifested in patenting activity.     

A study of female robbers in a Southern Correctional Institution

A stratified random sample of thirty-three female robbers incarcerated at the Florida Correctional Institute at Lowell was selected and interviewed. The findings indicated that the majority of the sample was black, under thirty, of average intelligence, and single. The female robber was typically found to operate with an accomplice, use a firearm, and be motivated by a desire for financial gain. A preliminary typology that included two major categories, situational robbers and career robbers, was developed.     

Terror and triage: prioritizing access to mass smallpox vaccination

In response to the threat of a smallpox attack on the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC") recommended the establishment of smallpox clinics designed to distribute a vaccine to the entire U.S. population in a ten day period. However, a number of potential obstacles raise questions about the feasibility of this plan. What is needed is a plan that applies principles of triage to smallpox vaccine distribution following a bioterrorism attack. Only in this way can those most vulnerable--the previously unvaccinated--be protected from a significantly increased risk due to delays that might arise in executing the CDC plan.     

No more kidding around: restructuring non-medical childhood immunization exemptions to ensure public health protection

Professor Silverman's article examines the complex challenges faced by U.S. policymakers attempting to balance the public health protections of mandatory childhood immunization programs with the legal, religious, philosophical, and practical concerns raised by permitting non-medical exemptions under the programs. The article begins with a discussion of the history of childhood immunization programs, and continues by describing the inconsistency of enforcement of state immunization laws and exemptions. The author analyzes recent cases from New York, Wyoming, and Arkansas, and discusses how these decisions both pose threats to these programs' public health protections, while also offering insight into potential problems for other state vaccination programs. Professor Silverman concludes by advocating that states adopt an "informed refusal" approach to vaccination exemption as a way of improving immunity protections, while respecting the autonomy rights of those who wish to opt out of the program.     

Scaling Residential Retrofits in New York City: Financing,Standardization, and Streamlining

Energy efficiency is a multiple-win opportunity for reducing global warming pollution, providing energy and cost savings, improving local environmental quality, and increasing the resilience of our built environment. In 2030, 85 percent of New York City's building portfolio will be comprised of buildings that exist today. Scaling up building retrofits and creating the policy environment to grow the building retrofits industry in New York City is critical to achieving the city's economic, local and global environmental, public health, and resilience goals. This article proposes scaling up the city's innovative residential energy efficiency efforts through a home efficiency Web portal, accelerating and stitching innovative programs together as they grow, leveraging post-Sandy recovery funding for building performance improvements, and moving stepwise towards certain mandates for energy performance among the city's smaller private buildings.     

Preliminary results from voices of the Mada'in: a tribal history and study of one of Baghdad's six rural districts

From July to October 2008, Human Terrain Team Iraq 6 (HTT IZ6) undertook an oral tribal study and social history project in Mada'in Qada, Iraq. During that four-month period IZ6 formally interviewed over forty tribal leaders. At the same time team members participated in humanitarian assistance operations with internally displaced persons (IDPs), as well as regular citizens of the region. In both the formal, elite-level interviews and the participant observations, four major themes became apparent: (1) The tribal law, written or oral, is often generally perceived as codes, covenants, and/or constitutions. (2) The tribal legal system and the tribal courts are an adversarial and remedial/restorative justice mediation system. (3) The Government of Iraq (GOI) is perceived as being under foreign influence. Members of the GOI are commonly referred to as Iranian agents, Iranians, Zoroastrians and/or fire worshippers (Mithraites) by both Sunnis and Shi'a alike. And (4) the dispute between Sunni and Shi'a is predominantly about resources, not religion. The purpose of this article is to describe the task order for the project, describe the oral history project itself, discuss the research challenges that arose in a semi-permissive environment, present the preliminary findings and tie them into the reality of the ongoing Counterinsurgency Operations in Iraq.     

THE WINDS OF CHANGE IN ADOPTIONS LAWS:Should Adoptees Have Access to Adoption Records?

The author focuses on the issues involving the unsealing of adoption records—allowing adoptees to discover who their birth parents are. He first examines the history of adoption and the development of adoption laws in the United States and then discusses currently enacted adoption statutes. Next, the author considers the benefits and disadvantages of unsealing adoption records to the birth parents, the adoptee, and the adoptive parents. He suggest a model law and offers an analysis of its advantages and problems. Through this proposal, the author hopes to assuage many of the problems existing in adoption laws now.     

Financing the health care of the aged.

The Medicare and Medicaid programs, which were enacted through the 1965 amendments to the Social Security Act, placed the federal government in the central role of assuring access of the aged and the poor to needed medical care. In this article the trends in the sources of financing medical care services for the aged are examined. The distinction in terms of insurance coverage between acute care services and long-term care services is highlighted. The effect of the programs in terms of reducing the aged's direct financial cost of medical care, increasing their access to medical services, and improving their health status is explored. The unanticipated increase in the cost of these programs has led to a change in emphasis in public policy, from assuring access to mainstream medical care to containing the cost of providing care. The direction of new federal policies is analyzed, and it is concluded that no longer will it follow the private sector's specifications of the conditions and arrangements under which health services are provided to program beneficiaries.