How nonrecidivism affects predictive accuracy: evidence from a cross-validation of the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA)

Prediction effect sizes such as ROC area are important for demonstrating a risk assessment's generalizability and utility. How a study defines recidivism might affect predictive accuracy. Nonrecidivism is problematic when predicting specialized violence (e.g., domestic violence). The present study cross-validates the ability of the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) to distinguish subsequent recidivists and nonrecidivists among 391 new cases with less extensive criminal records than previous cross-validation samples, base rate=27%, ROC area=.67. Excluding ambiguous nonrecidivists increases the base rate to 33%, ROC area=.74. Random samples of 50 recidivists and 50 unambiguous nonrecidivists yield ROC areas from .71 to .80. Published norms significantly underestimate official recidivism. Ambiguous nonrecidivism is prevalent and leads to underestimating base rates and predictive accuracy.     

Indirect Causes And Effects In Policy Change: The Brent Spar Case

This article discusses the occupation of an oil-related structure called the Brent Spar in the British sector of the North Sea by Greenpeace protesters in 1995. Shell intended to 'dump' the buoy in the deep North Atlantic. The aftermath of the occupation and associated publicity was a change of policy about the disposal of the Spar by Shell, Europe's largest multinational company. The article considers alternative explanations for policy change – most importantly the influential propositions by Baumgartner and Jones (1993). The general importance of their work means that the opportunity is taken to set out their themes at some length, but the particular case suggests that their notion of change stemming from a redefinition of the problem may only imperfectly fit sudden policy changes of the Brent Spar type. The article argues that their 'venue shopping' concept better illuminates the case – but the significant venue change was geographical – i.e. from Britain to Germany – rather than institutional – i.e. from a policy community to an issue network. The case study superficially accords with an influential body of literature in the 1980s and 1990s that sees outcomes as changing through the mobilization of a wider range of participants in issue networks, but it is argued that there is no automatic link between an expanded roster of participants and outcomes if the decisive decision-making power is retained in the original closed system. The case study suggests there can be an illusion of an issue network when the dominance of a policy monopoly is publicly challenged – but where decision-making power is retained among original participants.     

Politics or Technical Criteria? The Determinants of Infrastructure Investments in Brazil

To what extent do public infrastructure projects respond to political pressures or developmental imperatives? Do these projects reflect a technical strategy aimed at upgrading economic productivity or the political distribution of public goods that rewards certain voters or political actors? This paper analyses the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC), an $817 billion-dollar Brazilian infrastructure programme with a multi-method research design pairing in-country interviews and analysis of an original, municipal-level dataset. I conclude that my case study reflects a mixture of political and technical factors, which mirrors the competing influence of technocratic bureaucrats and politically-driven politicians during the project selection process. Despite explicitly targeting larger municipalities with infrastructure deficiencies, the programme still rewarded core-voting districts supporting the winning PT (Workers Party/Partido dos Trabalhadores) presidential candidates. A secondary result finds older municipalities with greater bureaucratic capacity were better positioned to successfully submit projects for federal funding.     

Pancuronium bromide (Pavulon) isolation and identification in aged autopsy tissues and fluids

The isolation and detection of pancuronium bromide was developed for aged autopsy samples to identify and confirm this compound in questioned tissue samples. A novel protocol was optimized for the isolation of the target drug in highly decomposed tissues. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges containing styrene-divinylbenzene were investigated. This polymer retained quaternary drugs and facilitated sequential elution upon washing with commonly available solvents. The semi-purified SPE samples were prescreened by pyrolysis GC-MS. A candidate specimen was then confirmed by microbore high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray-ionization/mass spectrometry (microHPLC-ESI-MS/MS) with a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer. The developed procedures provided a qualitative or semiquantitative (at best) basis for the investigation of difficult cases involving overdoses of polar drugs.