Local E‐Government in the United States: Transformation or Incremental Change?

In this article, the authors address the recent trajectory of local e‐government in the United States and compare it with the predictions of early e‐government writings, using empirical data from two nationwide surveys of e‐government among American local governments. The authors find that local e‐government has not produced the results that those writings predicted. Instead, its development has largely been incremental, and local e‐government is mainly about delivering information and services online, followed by a few transactions and limited interactivity. Local e‐government is also mainly one way, from government to citizens, and there is little or no evidence that it is transformative in any way. This disparity between early predictions and actual results is partly attributable to the incremental nature of American public administration. Other reasons include a lack of attention by early writers to the history of information technology in government and the influence of technological determinism on those writings.     

Falling into Line? The Hostile Environment and the Legend of the ‘Judges’ Revolt’

In 2012 the Government made a number of controversial changes to the Immigration Rules, which it claimed would ‘comprehensively reform the approach taken towards ECHR Article 8 in immigration cases’. This paper examines the judicial response, arguing that the courts ‘fell into line’, adapting human rights law to the government's aims through unprincipled and opportunistic techniques, whilst inflicting hardship and injustice on working-class British citizens in particular. Four key moves are identified. First, the courts created an ‘incapable’ test which immunised the rules from in principle challenges. Second, Lord Bingham's Article 8 test, in which the reasonableness of any family member relocation was a central consideration, was replaced with a far less family-friendly test. Third, the courts adopted an ultra-lax rationality test at common law, even when the ‘fundamental rights’ of British citizens were engaged. Finally, the courts identified immigration policy as the ‘constitutional responsibility’ of the executive.     

Beyond assumptive deterrence: understanding the socio-environmental dynamics in crimes by Christian clerics and its implications for crime control

Crime, Law and Social Change - Emerging reports are increasingly implicating Christian clerics in array of unlawful and criminal behaviours, thus questioning the deterrence efficacy of Christianity...     

Reducing out-of-community placement and recidivism: diversion of delinquent youth with mental health and substance use problems from the justice system

For a number of reasons, researchers and policy makers are now focusing on diversion of youth from the juvenile justice system. This study examines New York State's diversion efforts focused on youth with mental health and substance abuse problems who are at risk of out-of-community placement (N = 2,309). Twelve counties participated in the Mental Health Juvenile Justice (MH/JJ) Diversion Project. Overall, the initiative was successful in reducing out-of-community placement and recidivism for diverted youth. In regression analysis site, services received, and problem-profile variables were important predictors of out-of-community placement. Prior record, prior placement, and significant mental health problems were statistically significant predictors of recidivism. This suggests some contrasts in explaining the results of two important goals of the MH/JJ project. Study results and implications for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Using Booking Data to Model Drug User Arrest Rates: A Preliminary to Estimating the Prevalence of Chronic Drug Use

Public policy is often concerned with the size and characteristics of special populations that are difficult to reach in household surveys. Chronic drug users, who often live outside conventional households, provide the illustration motivating this paper. An alternative to household surveys is to question chronic drug users where they congregate—jails, treatment programs, and shelters, for example. Using such opportunistic data for prevalence estimation raises difficult problems for statistical inference: Study subjects who arrive at the collection points cannot be deemed a random sample of the general population. However, if we could estimate the rates at which chronic drug users arrive at the collection points, then we could use those estimates to weight the sample to represent the population. This paper presents a modified Poisson mixture model used to estimate the stochastic process that accounts for how chronic drug users get arrested. It uses that model to estimate arrest rates for 38 counties using up to sixteen quarters of data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring survey.

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