Proximity to service providers and service utilization among welfare recipients: the interaction of place and race.

Currently, welfare programs coordinate a range of services to support work among welfare recipients and help them overcome barriers to employment. This paper considers the relationship between spatial proximity to and utilization of support services among welfare recipients. Accessibility of mental health and substance abuse service providers among welfare recipients is examined in the three-county Detroit metropolitan area and the relationship between mental health service accessibility and mental health service utilization among welfare recipients considered. Not only does access to service providers vary significantly across the metropolitan area by race and place, but these analyses reveal that greater spatial proximity to service providers increases the probability that welfare recipients will receive services. When controlling for access to providers and individual-level characteristics, we also find that African American welfare recipients are about half as likely to use mental health services as white recipients.     

The Curious Attraction of Wagner's Law

Wagner's ‘law of increasing state activity’ has recently been subjected to intensive use of recondite econometric testing procedures. An examination of the relevant articles reveals ignorance both of Wagner's definition of ‘state activity’ and of his insistence that he was not engaged in prediction. Consequently, the omission of public enterprises contained in Wagner's definition leads to a model misspecification and the object of testing his hypothesiss remains obscure.     

Obscenity and the law

This paper examines whether a random sample of adults can apply local contemporary community standards regarding the acceptability of explicit sexual material. Inasmuch as the legal test employed in the U.S. for determining obscenity requires a jury to apply such standards, the research examines the practicality of such an approach. The analysis indicates that the best predictor of what an individual will perceive the community standards to be is the individual's own standards concerning sexual material. The implications of these findings are examined from both a legal and social science perspective. In addition, the consequences of not providing jurors information concerning local standards are discussed.A previous version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association in Chicago, May 29–June 1, 1986. The authors wish to thank Debbie Edwards, Jane Warne, and the anonymous reviewers fromLaw and Human Behavior for their helpful comments and suggestions concerning the paper.     

Neuropsychological performance of sexual assaulters and pedophiles

Persons who had been arrested for sexual assault were administered the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery and the results compared to a group of normal controls. The sexual assaulters performed significantly worse on 7 of the 14 scales of the battery. The data were then broken down into three groups: (1) those who had forcibly assaulted postpubescent victims, (2) those subjects who had sexually molested a prepubescent child, and (3) normal controls. A discriminant analysis correctly classified 68% of the subjects on the basis of their neuropsychological performance alone.     

Teaching Negotiation Using Web-Based Streaming Video

This brief essay describes the author's experiences using web-based, streaming video technology in the Spring 2002 Legal Negotiation workshop at the University of Colorado's School of Law. He first describes the practical and pedagogical problems with traditional videotaping approaches that led him to consider streaming video. He then explains the project, how it was implemented, and its pedagogical costs and benefits. He also presents the results of a short survey of students indicating how useful the students found this feedback format. Appendix One describes the technical aspects of the project, including startup costs and the software and hardware used.     

The analysis of clingfilms by infrared spectroscopy and thermal desorption capillary gas chromatography.

An automated thermal desorption gas chromatography technique has been adapted to analyse traces of volatile compounds in proprietary food-wrapping films. Fourteen brands of polyvinylchloride film, seven brands of polyethylene film and one polyvinylidene chloride film were discriminated. Prior infrared analysis was used to identify the polymer type. The chromatograms showed minor changes in volatiles along the length of a roll of film and major changes in films exposed to daylight or in contact with cannabis resin.