Multijurisdictional drug task forces: An analysis of impacts

In the past decade, municipal police organizations have devoted significant resources toward drug enforcement. One popular strategy in addressing the American drug problem is the formulation of multijurisdictional drug task forces. Despite their popularity, the impact of these cooperative ventures on law enforcement agencies has not been adequately evaluated. The research reported here examined the effect of membership in a drug enforcement task force on levels of drug enforcement outputs and perceptions of effectiveness by comparing law enforcement agencies participating in drug task forces to agencies which do not participate. Results suggest that task force membership impacts perceptions, but does not appear to influence objective measures of drug enforcement outputs.     

We all want it, but we don't know what it is: toward a standard of affordability for health insurance premiums

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), or ACA, requires that U.S. citizens either purchase health insurance or pay a fine. To offset the financial burden for lower-income households, it also provides subsidies to ensure that health insurance premiums are affordable. However, relatively little work has been done on how such affordability standards should be set. The existing literature on affordability is not grounded in social norms and has methodological and theoretical flaws. To address these issues, we developed a series of hypothetical vignettes in which individual and household sociodemographic characteristics were varied. We then convened a panel of eighteen experts with extensive experience in affordability standards to evaluate the extent to which each vignette character could afford to pay for one of two health insurance plans. The panel varied with respect to political ideology and discipline. We find that there was considerable disagreement about how affordability is defined. There was also disagreement about what might be included in an affordability standard, with substantive debate surrounding whether savings, debt, education, or single parenthood is relevant. There was also substantial variation in experts' assessed affordability scores. Nevertheless, median expert affordability assessments were not far from those of ACA.     

Local cohesion and radical right support: The case of the Swiss People’s Party

Radical right parties have become effective electoral competitors in many parts of Western Europe yet failed to achieve success in others. Much recent scholarship seeks to understand variation in radical right support. Here, we argue that local social cohesion boosts these parties’ vote shares. We use Swiss census data at the municipal level to measure local cohesion, drawing on indicators of residents’ commuting patterns, linguistic similarities and home ownership. Regression analysis shows that social cohesion is a positive predictor of local level support for the Swiss People’s Party, but not for any other major party. Hierarchical logit models combining aggregate cohesion measures with survey data demonstrate this contextual effect on individuals’ vote choices.     

Characteristics of false allegation adult crimes

The purpose of this study was to identify common factors in false allegation adult crimes, by examining the dynamics involved in 30 confirmed false allegation cases. The authors conducted a comprehensive review of these adjudicated cases and then completed a collection instrument to capture offender demographics, offense characteristics, and motive. The results indicated that most false allegation crimes were committed by women (73.3%) and Caucasians (93.3%). Data indicated that more interpersonally violent allegations were primarily motivated by attention/sympathy needs (50.0%), whereas more impersonal offenses involved other motivations such as providing an alibi (16.7%) or profit (13.3%). Offenders tended to be younger, high school graduates with no higher education (43.3%). A total of 23.3% of offenders had a prior criminal history. Male offenders appeared as likely as women to be motivated by attention/sympathy; however, men tended to select more violent, nonsexual offenses (e.g., attempted murder) than women.