Reviews

Recently, various authors have examined the relationship between growth in government size and total economic growth. In each case, the authors permitted only a monotonic relationship. This paper examines the issue of a non-linear relationship between growth in government and overall growth in the economy.Government contributes to total economic output in various ways. The provision of Pigovian public goods enhances the productivity of the private sector inputs increasing total output. However, the public decision-making process can result in an inefficient quantity of public goods. The likelihood of this outcome increases with the size of government. Further negative effects are created by the revenue raising and spending mechanisms of government, and the increasing diversion of resources into unproductive rent-seeking activities. The magnitude of these effects is likely to increase with the relative size of government.     

Effects of positional restraint on oxygen saturation and heart rate following exercise

This report assesses the effects on peripheral oxygen saturation and heart rate that positional restraint induces when a person is prone, handcuffed, and "hog-tied." Peripheral oxygen saturation and heart rate were monitored at rest, during exercise, and during recovery from exercise for 10 adult subjects. The effects of positional restraint produced a mean recovery time that was significantly prolonged. Consequently, the physiological effects produced by positional restraint should be recognized in deaths where such measures are used.     

From coercion to deception: the changing nature of police interrogation in America

Our police, with no legal sanction whatever, employ duress, threat, bullying, a vast amount of moderate physical abuse and a certain degree of outright torture; and their inquisitions customarily begin with the demand: If you know what's good for you, you'll confess. (Ernest Jerome Hopkins, 1931)¹ Today, Ness Said, interrogation is not a matter of forcing suspects to confess but of conning them. Really, what we do is just to bullshit them (William Hart, 1981)² There is an interesting irony at work here: restrict police use of coercion, and the use of deception increases. (Gary Marx, 1988)³ In both popular discourse and academic scholarship one continually encounters references to the tradition-bound police who are resistant to change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of the American police over the past 100 years is the history of drastic, if not radical, change. (Samuel Walker, 1977)⁴ A longer version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in November, 1991.