Innovation in Welfare Policy: Evaluating State Efforts to Encourage Work among Low‐Income Families1

This article examines what states are doing to help Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients move into the workforce and become self‐supporting. We first present documentation regarding many different state TANF policies aimed at encouraging work, including benefit structures, time limits, work requirements, sanctions, and work supports. We then discuss how effective these policies are at helping welfare recipients get jobs and increase their income, by reviewing research on each of these elements. We conclude that the TANF program has been effective in increasing employment and decreasing welfare caseloads and expenses, but that this has not resulted in overall income gains for welfare recipients in the long run. We also conclude that the most promising state programs have a strong employment focus combined with focused training and educational opportunities. In addition, we also find that sanctions appear to be harming those most in need of assistance, and therefore that such policies should be reevaluated and refocused.     

Report: increases in police use of force in the presence of body-worn cameras are driven by officer discretion: a protocol-based subgroup analysis of ten randomized experiments

Objectives

Our multisite randomized controlled trial reported that police body-worn cameras (BWCs) had, on average, no effect on recorded incidents of police use of force. In some sites, rates of use of force decreased and in others increased. We wanted to understand these counter-intuitive findings and report pre-specified subgroup analyses related to officers’ discretion on activating the BWCs.

Methods

Using pre-established criteria for experimental protocol breakdown in terms of treatment integrity, ten experimental sites were subgrouped into “high-compliance” (no officer discretion applied to when and where BWCs should be used; n?=?3), “no-compliance” (treatment integrity failure in both treatment and control conditions; n?=?4), and tests where officers applied discretion during treatment group but followed protocol in control conditions only (n?=?4).

Results

When officers complied with the experimental protocol and did not use discretion, use of force rates were 37 % lower [SMD?=?(?.346); SE?= .137; 95?% CI (?.614) – (?.077)]; when officers did not comply with treatment protocol (i.e., officers chose when to turn cameras on/off), use of force rates were 71 % higher [SMD?= .392; SE?= .130; 95?% CI (.136) – (.647)], compared to control conditions. When full discretion (i.e., overall breakdown of protocol) was applied to both treatment and control conditions, null effects were registered [SMD?= .009; SE=.070; 95?% CI (?.127) – (.146)], compared to control conditions.

Conclusions

BWCs can reduce police use of force when then officers’ discretion to turn cameras on or off is minimized—in terms of both case types as well as individual incidents. BWCs ought to be switched on and the recording announced to suspects at early stages of police–public interactions. Future BWCs tests should pay close attention to adherence to experimental protocols.

     

Motivated Reasoning and Yard-Sign-Stealing Partisans: Mine is a Likable Rogue,Yours is a Degenerate Criminal

We fielded an experiment in the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study testing the theory that motivated reasoning governs reactions to news about misdeeds on the campaign trail. Treated subjects either encountered a fabricated news story involving phone calls with deceptive information about polling times or one involving disappearing yard signs (the offending party was varied at random). Control subjects received no treatment. We then inquired about how the treated subjects felt about dirty tricks in political campaigns and about all subjects’ trust in government. We find that partisans process information about dirty campaign tricks in a motivated way, expressing exceptional concern when the perpetrators are political opponents. However, there is almost no evidence that partisans’ evaluations of dirty political tricks in turn color other political attitudes, such as political trust.     

Moving to Location Affordability? Housing Choice Vouchers and Residential Relocation in the Portland,Oregon, Region

Abstract

Location affordability measures a household’s combined cost of housing and transportation. Low-income households have the most to gain from housing with lower transportation costs. This research analyzes whether Housing Choice Voucher Program households—participants in a program designed to provide low-income households with a greater degree of housing choice—are able to choose housing that lowers their transportation costs in a metropolitan region with a compact, vital urban core. A mixed-methods approach is used to investigate the differences in location affordability and efficiency among 2,026 voucher recipients who moved within the Portland, Oregon, region during 2012–2013. Location mattered to movers, but in some unexpected ways. Urban movers relocated to less location efficient areas, whereas suburban movers’ location efficiency remained stable. In tight housing markets, voucher holders may be edged out of location-efficient neighborhoods and thus incur increased transportation costs.     

Party Effects in State Legislative Committees

Legislative scholars have theorized about the role of committees and whether they are, or are not, tools of the majority party. We look to the states to gain more empirical leverage on this question, using a regression discontinuity approach and novel data from all state committees between 1996 and 2014. We estimate that majority‐party status produces an 8.5 percentage point bonus in committee seats and a substantial ideological shift in the direction of the majority party. Additionally, we leverage a surprisingly frequent, but as if random occurrence in state legislatures—tied chambers—to identify majority‐party effects, finding similar support for partisan committees. We also examine whether the extent of committee partisanship is conditional on party polarization or legislative professionalism, but we find that it is not. Our results demonstrate that parties create nonrepresentative committees across legislatures to pursue their outlying policy preferences.     

The Hispanic Experience of the Child Welfare System

As the Hispanic population grows in the United States and the child welfare system, it is necessary to examine how experiences of Hispanic families differ from those of White/Caucasian families and to assess whether Hispanic families’ needs are properly addressed. This literature review will examine research on the outcomes and experiences of Hispanic families in the child welfare system and how case characteristics interact with the experiences of Hispanic families. This article will then explore theories for Hispanic families’ different experiences and conclude by recommending future directions and solutions for improving the experiences of Hispanic families in the child welfare system.     

Out of Many,One? Strasbourg's Ibrahim Decision on Article 6

This case comment considers the European Court of Human Rights decision of Ibrahim v United Kingdom on 13 September 2016. Relying on Salduz v Turkey, the applicants claimed, largely unsuccessfully, that denial of access to a lawyer during police questioning, and subsequent admission into evidence of statements made in the course of that questioning, violated fair trial rights protected by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The comment suggests that the decision's unusually emphatic statements about Article 6's ‘internal structure’ have consequences for assessing violations in future applications. Further, the decision creates greater room for public interest balancing in Article 6 cases. The decision may thus undermine the Article 6 guarantees.     

Vulnerability,context, and fear of victimization: Exploring race and ethnicity

The importance of individual- and structural-level factors in predicting fear of victimization has been a source of many empirical evaluations. Theoretical predictors that influence these associations such as those outlined in the vulnerability thesis on fear of crime regularly find that age, race, and gender are predictors of fear. We explore whether adolescent populations, not yet having internalized vulnerability, are more influenced by contextual factors. To explore this hypothesis, we employ the National Crime Victimization Survey: School Crime Supplement to examine the role of vulnerability on fear of victimization at school. Logistic regression suggests that contextual school-level factors may mediate the relationship between fear of victimization at school and individual characteristics such as age, race, and gender.