Differences in assessments of relative prestige and utility of criminal justice and criminology journals

Several articles have been written about the relative prestige of journals in criminology and criminal justice. Almost uniformly, however, those rankings have focused on sociology and criminology journals and have generally reflected a sociological orientation. If criminal justice is indeed a separate discipline, such approaches are tantamount to asking psychologists to rate sociological journals within a list of psychology journals. Our approach is first to separate respondents by their degree of identification with criminal justice and their educational orientation. Second, we compile a list of responses to questions about prestige and utility to practitioners across the range of criminal justice and criminology journals. Analyses of these data indicate that there are differences in the way scholars rate journals, based on their identity with criminal justice and their educational orientation. These differences, however, are found in specific journals and in types of journals (i.e., police, corrections, criminal justice) rather than in aggregate perceptions of all criminal justice and criminology journals.     

The prospects for prepaid long-term care: the Arizona Medicaid experiment

Arizona is adding long-term care to its prepaid, capitated alternative to Medicaid. This article discusses the potential for this major cost-control experiment. Experience suggests that those able to quality for long-term care will fare better than the poor did in the previous system. However, limiting eligibility will be the primary means of controlling costs; significant price competition is not likely to develop. The bidding process will serve more to transfer risk to contract providers than to improve program efficiency. Potential cost savings will be more than offset by an increased identification of need.