A consumer's perspective on domestic violence interventions

The current study takes a consumer perspective to examine the impact of legal and mental health systems on couples who are experiencing problems with domestic violence. Unfortunately, their thoughts and wishes are rarely considered when planning for change in their lives. The study asks couples what they think happens to cause abusive episodes, what happens to them when someone finds out about the abuse, and what their thoughts are about the interventions they receive. The specific interventions in this study were a pro-arrest policy and solution-focused brief therapy.     

Juvenile post-adjudication dispositions

Six socio-demographic and graphic and diagnostic and evaluation center (D&E) variables which influence juvenile post-adjudication disposition into one of two treatment modalities, group home or institution, are examined. Data employed in this study were gathered from completed case history records for 133 randomly sampled male juveniles processed over a six-month period by a department of youth services (DYS) facility in a southern state. Discriminant function analysis was used to determine statistical distinction between the two disposition groups. The discriminant analysis yielded five variables of statistical significance (p<-.001, canonical r =−40) which included a D&E behavior measure, age, number of past offenses, full scale IQ score, and seriousness of admitting offense. Eighty-one percent of all cases were correctly classified using the selected socio-demographic and D&E variables. Race was not found to be significant in the decision-making process at this level.     

Complying with Transposition Commitments in Poland: Collective Dilemmas,Core Executive and Legislative Outcomes

This article examines the transposition of EU legislation in Poland before accession. It finds that the extent to which the Polish government complied with transposition commitments in a timely manner was related to the institutionalisation of rules that the domestic core executive could use to extend selective incentives and monitoring to ministers and departments. The effect of the core executive variable is contextualised by the impact of EU incentives, party configurations and ministerial resources. The article concludes by considering the wider significance of the core executive variable in research on compliance in the EU member states.     

Complementarity of additionalities resulting from European Union funds: Perspective of the users of research infrastructures

The goal of this paper is to investigate the complementarity of three types of additionalities: input (growth of R&D investments), behavioral (changes in the internal processes of the entity), and output (leveraging social or private returns), occurring as the result of the 7th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020 European Union funds part INFRA. The empirical contribution is based on results of self-created questionnaires conducted in 2016 with the use of CATI/CAWI on the unique sample of N = 401 users of European Union research infrastructures from 32 countries. We create a Behavioral Additionality Index (BAI), which is a measurement tool that combines eight types (scale, scope, cognitive capacity, challenge, network, follow-up, management, and acceleration) of behavioral additionalities. Based on the results of a logistic regression, we find that there is a positive relationship between input and behavioral additionality, as well as between behavioral additionality and output additionality. This last link, however, is not shown to be strengthened by input additionality. No significant differences in the level of the BAI were found between EU countries based on their level of innovativeness as measured by the Summary Innovation Index (SII), although we can observe that less developed EU countries, as well as on non-EU countries, have higher BAI scores compared to developed ones. The overall results lead to the conclusion that the evaluation of public financial support has to be conducted not only for input, behavioral, and output additionalities separately, but must also take into account their complementarity—with its major focus on the behavioral aspects of this effect.     

Spatial analysis of crime and region in the united states

The regionality of crime has been presented, debated, and questioned for over a centruy of this Nation’s history, usually involving a segmental approach to crime rates or treating the various crime rates separate from one another. This paper, using states as a real unit of analysis, develops two general crime dimensions using discriminant function analysis. These two dimensions, based upon complete estimation, demonstrate the discriminating power of crime profiles in assessing regionality. Also, region as an independent variable is shown to possess strong explanatory power regarding crime patterns. Although crime viewed at the state and regional level is highly generalized, it does draw attention to spatial and temporal consistencies in the general crime pattern. This level of analysis and this paper allows a greater understanding about the country and integrates available information on crime variations within our society. Finally, implications of this study for the current criminal justice system in the united States are discussed.     

Ramifications of operating a Business & Industry Development Center as an auxiliary enterprise

GMI, formerly the General Motors Institute, estabilished a Business and Industry Development (BID) Center in 1983 for the purpose of promoting economic development in Michigan's Flint/Genessee County. BID has had its ups and downs, and is now a going operation. Its experience shows that academic resources can be used to promote regional development. BID has provided an alternative for innovative faculty who are not comfortable with the traditional academic research culture. It is part of a system of business and technical resources, an incubation environment, and available venture capital. For the BID system to work efficiently, however, legislation is needed that would exclude academic institutions from tax liability on income from utilization of their resources and staffs in assisting spinoff and startup companies in developing within their contituencies and communities.     

Legislative Organisation and its Determinants in European Parliamentary Democracies

Questions regarding the origin and evolution of legislative institutions are at the heart of comparative legislative studies. Much research in this area focuses on the US Congress; in contrast, comparative studies of European democracies have been more limited. Addressing this imbalance, this special issue showcases newly emerging research on legislative organisation in Europe. In doing so, it brings together contributions that explore the rationales behind the emergence of, and variation in, national European voting practices, investiture rules, minority rights, committee power, agenda control, debating rules and individual MPs’ rights.     

Vehicle stops by police for driving while Black: Common problems and some tentative solutions

A common set of problems currently surround analysis of vehicle stops by police for what has come to be called “driving while Black.” These common problems range from an exclusive focus on contemporary police practices to possible differences in the driving behavior of African Americans and Whites. The present research used observer-reported data from “Midwest City” at the start of the 1970s to propose and illustrate tentative solutions to the common problems that currently surround analysis of race and vehicle stops by police. The article concludes with discussion of the tentative solutions and the implications that follow from them.     

Government,Parliament and Law-making in Poland

This paper examines the process of law-making in Poland during the 1997–2001 and 2001–2005 legislative terms. The analysis focuses on the initiation, amendment and finalisation stages of the legislative process within both the government and parliament and considers the boundary, content, temporal and information rules that shape this process. Within government, the preparation of, and decision-making on bills to be submitted to parliament are characterised by a dominance of ministerial law-making strategies, with a very limited coordinating capacity for the core executive (that is, the cabinet, the prime minister and the institutions that serve them). Within parliament, the government possesses weak agenda control and few formal means of defending its legislation against rival bills and amendments. There is some evidence to suggest that this decentralised legislative setting is one of the key drivers behind legislative growth and instability.