Training in the Strategic Use of Evidence technique: Improving deception detection accuracy of American law enforcement officers

The Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) approach is a framework for planning and executing suspect interviews with the aim of facilitating judgments of truth and deception. US law enforcement officers (N = 59) either received training in the SUE approach or did not. Each officer interviewed a mock suspect (N = 59) who had either committed a simulated security breach or had completed a benign task. The officers who received SUE training interviewed in line with the training: They questioned the suspect systematically, withheld the evidence and critical case information until after questioning, and relied on statement-evidence inconsistency to detect deceit. Consequently, SUE-trained interviewers achieved a higher deception detection accuracy rate (65%) compared to untrained interviewers (43%).     

Does media freedom improve government effectiveness? A comparative cross-country analysis

Government effectiveness could be explained by the level of well-informed electorate members, who use the press to learn more about politicians and public servants. Thus, a free press may improve citizens’ accessibility to this information, which in turn will make it more difficult for politicians and public servants to cover up or get away with corrupt behaviour, so the quality of the government could be affected by the media freedom. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to determine the effect of the freedom of the press on government effectiveness, considering additionally environmental, institutional, and political characteristics as factors that could determine the level of government effectiveness. To achieve this aim, we examined 202 central governments and compared them across countries using the World Bank data set of Governance Indicators for 2002–2008. The results show that the media, the organizational environment, and political characteristics may be determinants of the level of government effectiveness, taking countries’ economic development into account.     

Reviving Social Rights in Latin America: The Potential Role of International Human Rights Documents

Social rights are essential to our ability to fully participate in society. In Latin America, these rights are increasingly marginalized as neoliberal policies take hold. At the same time, the related concepts of civil society and social capital are often incorporated into strategies aimed at alleviating the problems of the Latin American poor. It is expected that by strengthening people's civic capacity, their sense of mutual responsibility and ability to self-provide certain services will be enhanced. In the context of the current policy environment, however, such strategies are unlikely to be entirely successful. Lack of economic resources may preclude the Latin American poor from effective civic participation. More importantly, the promotion of civil society and social capital on the part of aid agencies and governments may represent an implicit threat to social rights, in as much as the organizations advocated are not likely to actively struggle for expansion of rights. Nevertheless, human rights documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child provide a base upon which rights-based movements can be constructed.     

Procedural Justice,Outcome Favorability and Emotion

This study investigated the effects of procedural justice on discrete emotional responses. Based upon the cognitive appraisal model of emotion, it was argued that the experience of procedural justice (or injustice) allows individuals to derive meaning from favorable and unfavorable allocation decisions. Thus, procedural justice works with outcome favorability to produce a variety of emotional states. These ideas were tested in a laboratory experiment. As predicted, two happiness-related emotions (happiness and joy) and a sadness-related emotion (disappointment) showed only a main effect for outcome favorability. Two anger-related emotions (anger and frustration) were highest when an unfavorable outcome occurred because of an unfair procedure. Higher levels of guilt and anxiety were reported when an unfair procedure resulted in a favorable outcome. Contrary to predictions, a third happiness-related emotion (pride) showed only a main effect for outcome favorability.     

Lundquist,Gary (1999). Technology and the Agents of Change

The Journal of Technology Transfer -     

The Europeanization of social movements in the Czech Republic: The EU and local women’s groups

The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact the EU has had on Czech women’s groups since the 1990s. Drawing on both Europeanization and social movement theories, the first section defines the theoretical framework of the paper. The second section is focused on the impact of changes in the funding of women’s groups which, since the end of the 1990s, have relied more than before on European funding. The third section analyzes the shift in the political context and the domestic political opportunity structure in the Czech Republic that has occurred in connection with the accession process. The fourth section analyzes transnational cooperation for which new opportunities have appeared with the EU’s eastward expansion. The paper concludes by summarizing its main findings.