Teaching police ethics: An experiential model

Attempts have been made in recent years to decrease police misconduct and improve police performance in areas of ethical decision-making. One attempt has been to provide ethics instruction to police officers at training academies and in-service training sessions. Experiential case studies have been used to help students apply theoretical concepts to practical situations. An evaluation of the experiential teaching model for police ethics was made in a quasiexperimental research design with two groups of police officers. The results supported the experiential approach for teaching police ethics. Police officers were found to better differentiate between ethical and unethical conduct in both an idealistic and realistic manner.     

American forensic psychiatrists who work in state institutions

The authors surveyed a sample of American forensic psychiatrists who work in state institutions. As a group, their respondents tended to be middle-aged, white men, who had little formal training in forensic psychiatry, felt somewhat alienated from their peers, yet who were Board certified in general psychiatry. They tended to be involved primarily in the direct treatment of patients, and most often expressed concerns about the care-and prominent lack of aftercare--received by forensic patients. They also perceived a sense of patient futility in the institutional forensic setting. The authors conclude by recommending that AAPL take a more active role in appealing to and representing such forensic psychiatrists.     

Profligacy Or Prudence? Changes in Employment and Compensation of State and Local Government Workers

As the 1990s began, state and local governments across the country found themselves in a situation of fiscal stress. That stress has been attributed to several sources. Recently, it has been suggested that governments themselves brought on the fiscal squeeze by their own profligacy —a profligacy rooted in excessive increases in employment and compensation of government workers during the 1980s. After summarizing some arguments presented for and against describing state and local practices of the 1980s as profligate, this article compares its evidence on the growth of employment and compensation and notes some different interpretations. The article concludes that a strong statement of the profligacy position has not been proved.