The Impact of Officer and Agency Characteristics on the Likelihood of Arrest in Domestic Violence Situations among Rural Law Enforcement Officers

Domestic violence cuts across all demographic groups. The factors related to why police officers arrest in some domestic violence situations but not others have been often studied. Little research, however, has been conducted on the arrest views of rural police officers. One hundred seventy line officers in six rural Midwestern counties were surveyed to determine the impact of officer personal characteristics and agency type on arrest decisions in various hypothetical domestic violence scenarios. First, the same situational factors appeared to be important in shaping the arrest decision in domestic violence calls of rural officers as have previously been found with urban officers. Second, the characteristics of officers and the type of agency had some impact on the likelihood of arrest, particularly if there was evidence of a physical assault. Third, the presence of evidence of a physical assault helped shape the arrest decisions of rural officers. Fourth, situational factors were more important than officer characteristics and the type of agency. Nancy Hogan and Shannon Barton contributed equally to the paper. The authors thank Janet Lambert for editing and proofreading the paper. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.     

Women and Men in Jail: Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Domestic Violence

This study explores the pre-arrest domestic violence victimization and attitudes towards domestic violence reported by women and men confined in a Midwestern metropolitan jail. Results indicated that women in the jail sample had more fear for the safety of battered women than men in the jail sample. Women in jail were more likely than men in jail to view the legal system as a deterrent to domestic violence. Logistic regression models were constructed to explore associations between jail detainees’ pre-arrest experiences of domestic violence and their gender, age, education, race, parental status and other violent victimizations. The variables associated with pre-arrest domestic violence victimization were being a woman, a parent, a victim rape and a victim of threats with a deadly weapon.     

Highway Robbery: Testing the Impact of Interstate Highways on Robbery

Research has shown that the occurrence of crime is based on multiple factors including a variety of geographical characteristics. Previous researchers have suggested that the environmental feature of the interstate system has an influence on crime. For this study, we test for a relationship between interstate presence and robbery at the county-level in Georgia. Additionally, we test whether or not urban/rural differences affect this relationship. Findings are consistent with previous research showing that the number of interstate exits in a county significantly increases crime; in this case the robbery rate.     

Implementing pay reform in the public sector: Different approaches to flexible pay in sweden and the united states

A set of implementation criteria drawn from the United States experience provide a framework for examining pay reform in the Swedish public sector. The study finds that the Swedish approach is quite distinct and this may be attributable to unique features in the Swedish labor market. The reform toward flexible or individualized pay in government agencies appears to be based on an assumption of greater cost efficiency in human resource management and a broad unwillingness to employ objective measures of individual or organizational productivity. Consequently the study calls into question the utility of an analytical framework based on the Anglo-American experience for examining the Swedish case.     

Setting political priorities: What role for the press?

This article reviews briefly the relationship between the press and politics in the United States, using one influential press lord, Roy W. Howard, as a case study. It also reviews the results of social science research on media effects, with an emphasis on studies of agenda‐setting, and raises questions about who sets the media agenda in light of the 1988 U.S. presidential election. Finally, it draws some conclusions about the influence of the news media in setting political priorities and, thus, influencing the political process in the United States.     

Developing a rhetorical analysis of racist humour: examining anti-black jokes on the Internet

Racist humour is frequently the subject of media and public debate in relation to issues of offence and acceptability. Despite this, little has been done to analyse it or its relationship to other forms of racism. I argue that an analysis of racist humour needs to account for the rhetorical structures of humour – to consider humour as a rhetorical device similar to metaphor or metonym – that has a persuasive potential. Using jokes from four US websites, the rhetorical aspects of humour are unpacked through the use of rhetorical discourse analysis and semiotic theories of humour. I then identify an important effect of racist humour. Zygmunt Bauman's ideas on the problem of ambivalence for dichotomous discourse and category formation are employed to argue that racist humour expresses racist dichotomies and has the potential, among others, to “hide” the ambivalence to which such dichotomies are prone. The article then considers the meaning and ambivalence of less severe racist joking.     

A journalism quarterly potpourri

Abstract

How do the news media help construct election mandates? By interpreting an election victory broadly, the news media can facilitate the implementation of a newly elected government's program. Conversely, the media can constrain a newly elected government by interpreting the election as influenced by factors other than ideology, primarily retrospective evaluations of the outgoing government's performance. Studies of how the media interpret election results have offered only speculation on why the media choose certain narratives while discarding plausible alternatives. Through a systematic examination of six Canadian elections, this article identifies key variables that explain the media's choices. I found that the media tended to confer a mandate when the victorious party focused on its policy intentions during the campaign and when the party was conservative; they tended to confer a “personal mandate” when newly elected leaders were facing their first election. In general, the news media quickly settled on one narrative, did not support this decision using quantitative data such as exit polls, and tended to depoliticize the public sphere by framing most results as devoid of ideological content.