Substantive Symbols: The Attitudinal Dimension of Black Political Incorporation in Local Government

Traditional studies of minority incorporation focus on the redistribution of public resources that purportedly follows black gains in representation. The present study departs from this approach by focusing on the attitudinal effects of black leadership. Two research questions guide this study: To what extent do blacks' assessments of neighborhood services and conditions stem from black representation in local executive and legislative offices? Are these attitudinal effects rooted in policy and service delivery outcomes? Employing survey data from 3,000 blacks embedded in 52 cities and 53 school districts, this study reveals that blacks report higher levels of satisfaction with their neighborhood conditions, police services, and public schools when represented by blacks in city hall and on school boards and that these evaluations are most positive when improvements in local services are conspicuous. Overall, these findings extend conventional conceptualizations of substantive benefits and challenge more pessimistic accounts regarding the effects of black representation in local politics.     

Web 2.0, wikis, and the IP Community

Legal context: The emergence of new web-based programs being used in the fieldsof patent applications and IP legal information has opened upa range of new opportunities for IP-related legal processesand knowledge sharing. Key points: This article explains the background to Web 2.0 applicationsand explores the potential for the use of wikis in various areasof IP. It notes the limitations, as well as the possibilities,of wikis and explains how they work in practice. It outlinesthree recent examples of wikis in the IP world, explaining howthey work and the significance of their overall objectives. Practical significance: The adoption of this technology by official bodies suggestswider future use and the appearance of unofficial sites showsthat current developments have already reached a stage wheremany IP practitioners can begin to interact and share knowledgein a way that has not been considered previously. It is conceivablethat developments in this area will be rapid and it is in theinterests of users to familiarize themselves with the use ofthis new ‘social software’.     

Investigating Investigators: Examining the Impact of Eyewitness Identification Evidence on Student-Investigators

This research examined the impact of eyewitness identification decisions on student-investigators. Undergraduates played the role of police investigators and interviewed student-witnesses who had been shown either a good or poor view of the perpetrator in a videotaped crime. Based on information obtained from the witness, student-investigators then chose a suspect from a database containing information about potential suspects and rated the probability that their suspect was the culprit. Investigators then administered a photo lineup to witnesses, and re-rated the probability that their suspect was guilty. Student-investigators were highly influenced by eyewitness identification decisions, typically overestimating the information gained from the identification decision (except under conditions that led witnesses to be very accurate), and were generally unable to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate witnesses.

Child Development and Migrant Transnationalism: The Health of Children Who Stay Behind in Ghana and Nigeria

This paper examines the relation between parental migration and children’s health in Ghana (N = 2760) and Nigeria (N = 2168) and considers four dimensions of parental migration: the type of separation, parental migration and the caregiver, stability of care arrangements, and the availability of remittances. By employing an ordered scale of children’s self-rated health, we found that children with international migrant parents who are divorced/separated are less likely than children in non-migrant families to have good health. The magnitude of the effects are higher in Nigeria, attesting for a greater vulnerability of Nigerian children in divorced migrant families. Among children with parents living abroad who are stably married, specific dimensions of children’s transnational life are associated with negative health, while others are not. This study highlights the sensitivity of results to the context of parent-child separation and to the transnational dimension being measured.     

Methamphetamine and alcohol detection in vehicle-driver fatalities in South Australia: A 10-year survey (2008–2018)

Motor vehicle driver fatalities (≥18 years) from the files at Forensic Science South Australia were reviewed from January 2008 to December 2018 for cases in which either positive blood sample for methamphetamine (MA) or an illegal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) >0.05g/100 ml were found. Three hundred driver deaths were found with MA detected in 28 cases (age range 21–62 years; ave. 37.8 years; M:F 23:5). Hundred and fifteen cases with a BAC > 0.05 g/100 ml were identified (age range 18–67 years; ave 35.7 years; M:F 95:20). No change was found in numbers of MA cases, although alcohol cases showed a significant decline (p < 0.001). Drunk driving-related fatal crashes tended to occur in the evening (5 p.m. to 11 p.m.), while MA-related fatal crashes had a longer peak extending from late evening until late morning (11 p.m. to 8 a.m.). This study has demonstrated that while roadside breath testing, legislative changes, and increased monitoring have resulted in reduced levels of drunk driving, similar safety countermeasures have had negligible effects on MA use in drivers. Continued monitoring of MA use by drivers will, therefore, be necessary to assess the possible effects, or not, of new countermeasures.     

How do Visitors Affect Crime?

This paper, which uses data on National Park visitors between 1979 and 1998 and every county in the United States, is the most exhaustive examination to date of how visitors affect crime. After controlling for many other factors that influence crime, the county-level regressions consistently indicate that national park visitors have no effect on either property or violent crime. These results are true for a variety of different measures of park visitors, for different empirical specifications, and for different regression formats. We therefore conclude that some visitor types have no impact on crime. This conclusion sheds light on the empirical issue of whether only some types of recreational visitors increase crime or whether visitors, regardless of their type, necessarily increase crime.