THE DOG THAT DIDN'T BARK: HOW PUBLIC MANAGERS HANDLE ENVIRONMENTAL SHOCKS

Do negative budgetary shocks reduce performance in public organizations? If so, by how much and in terms of which criteria? Are public managers able to make internal management choices to limit or eliminate the effects of such shocks? These questions are investigated in a set of hundreds of organizations over an 8‐year period. For the most part, budgetary shocks of 10 per cent or more have only limited or no negative impacts on performance in the short term. The most salient policy objective and production for more disadvantaged clientele are especially insulated from shocks. Decisions about internal resource allocation and personnel management can be shown to protect core production while sacrificing more peripheral activities and capital investment. Questions that remain to be investigated include whether short‐term protection comes at the expense of some longer‐term losses, and—ironically—whether effective management under such circumstances weakens over time the political case for adequate budgets.     

A COMPARISON OF TWO PROSECUTION POLICIES IN CASES OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: MANDATORY CASE FILING VERSUS FOLLOWING THE VICTIM'S LEAD*

Research Summary This study capitalized on differences in domestic violence prosecution policies between two boroughs of New York City. In Brooklyn, arrest cases generally are filed, but in the Bronx, cases typically are not filed when the victim does not want to proceed. We sampled 272 intimate partner cases declined by the Bronx prosecutor and 211 similar cases filed by the Brooklyn prosecutor. The Brooklyn policy is more costly, and most cases ultimately were dismissed. After 6 months, rearrest rates did not differ significantly between the two boroughs, although victims offered qualified support for the universal filing policy. Policy Implications Prosecutors face conflicting pressures when victims do not support prosecution. Victim empowerment and resource conservation favor declining such cases, but sending a message of zero tolerance favors filing. Our results support an intermediate policy of filing most cases but dropping them sooner to give victims a voice while avoiding heavy investments in cases headed for dismissal.     

A PROSPECTIVE TEST OF A CRIMINAL CAREER MODEL*

In an earlier article in this journal, Barnett, Blumstein, and Farrington (1987) formulated a model that described the criminal careers of the multiple offenders in a cohort of London males that had been studied from their 10th to 25th birthdays. That model involved two subpopulations of offenders (denoted as “frequents” and “occasionals”), each characterized by a constant annual conviction rate (μ) and a constant probability (p) of terminating the career following a conviction. This article describes the results of a prospective and predictive test of the model using new data collected on the same offenders from their 25th to 30th birthdays. The original model accurately predicted the number of recidivists, the degree of recidivism risk, the total number of recidivist convictions, and the time intervals between recidivist convictions. However, the predictions for the frequents suffered some distortions introduced by a few “intermittent” offenders who seemed to have terminated their careers, but who re-initiated offending during the test period after a long gap.