A systems analysis of youth in acute and subacute therapeutic residential care

The Arkansas Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has reduced the use of therapeutic residential care (e.g., group homes, residential treatment centers) for youth placed in child welfare. Youth in acute or subacute congregate care for 30 or more days without Medicaid now are of particular interest. This is a longer-term psychiatric program, typically 3 to 6 months. The project team conducted a systems analysis to determine the specific characteristics and levels of need for 42 youth so that DCFS can more effectively serve these youth in the least restrictive form of treatment possible.     

Police Performance As Symbolic Politics? Public Recognition and the Value of Awards

Abstract

What constitutes “good” performance in a law enforcement agency, who decides, and how does public recognition of that performance change how an agency performs? This study uses a quasi-experimental design and propensity-score matching model to assess the impact of a law enforcement agency’s status as a finalist for the annual Cisco/International Chiefs of Police Association (IACP) Community Policing Award on performance in future years, as measured by crime clearance rates. It is found that after comparing the treated group (finalist agencies) with the untreated group (non-finalist nearest-neighbor agencies), there is no meaningful difference in crime clearance rates. This unexpected finding establishes that the public recognition of finalist status by the Department of Justice, which promotes finalist agencies as exemplars of best practices in community policing, does not impact the subsequent performance of those agencies. Additionally, the results of the model suggest that the impact of symbolic politics and social construction on the award finalist selection process and the choice by DOJ to promote the practices of those agencies should be explored. Questions are also raised as to the utility of crime clearance rates as a performance measure, and future avenues for research in each area are proposed.     

Das Umweltgesetzbuch 2009

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Contests—a comparison of timing and information structures

We study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents. We consider four institutional settings: Contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information. We find that an effort-maximizing designer of the contest prefers the sequential to the simultaneous setting from an ex ante perspective. Moreover, the sequential contest Pareto dominates the simultaneous one when the contestants?? types are sufficiently negatively correlated. Regarding the information structure, the designer ex ante prefers private information while the contestants prefer public information.     

Victims of Irish Republican Paramilitary Violence—The Case of “The Disappeared”

Throughout the history of Northern Ireland's (NI) “Troubles,” over 3,800 individuals were killed, with between 40,000 to 100,000 individuals injured, leaving many families and communities struggling with the aftermath. In recent times a particular category of victims and survivors has been politically active and thus featured prominently in the media: “The Disappeared.” This label has come to represent the victims of paramilitary groups whose remains were secretly disposed of. Through a long public and political battle the families of the Disappeared have achieved a measure of political success resulting in the establishment of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR). Achieving political voice is not the only or perhaps the most significant difficulty encountered by these families. Their experiences in fact epitomise the complexity of the conflict and divisions in NI society and reflect the dominant issues of loyalty, identity, and importantly—silence. Throughout The Troubles, this silence and related notions of loyalty permeated all levels of society: at a community level which included the response of the church; at a statutory level including the response from social services and police; and, at a political level including local political processes but also departments within the British and Irish governments. This article examines the experiences of the families of the Disappeared through a multilevel analysis of their public campaign seeking the return of the remains of their family members. Using data collected from the families, members of the ICLVR, and support workers, the experience of the families of the Disappeared are analysed through accessing the social dynamics of silence (and loyalty), in-group affiliations, notions of sacrifice, and the attribution of blame; political successes both national and international will also serve to frame the analysis.