Inmate attitudes toward the conjugal visitation program in Mississippi prisons: An exploratory study

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast attitudes of Mississippi inmates who participate in a conjugal visitation program with inmates who do not participate in such a program. Logistic regression analyses reveal no differences between participant and nonparticipant attitudes toward the conjugal visitation program. However, differences exist among gender and racial lines and several of the attitudinal issues regarding the program. Policy implications are also addressed.     

The Decline of Federalism and the Rise of Morality-Policy Conflict in the United States

Morality policies-such as those pertaining to abortion, capitalpunishment, gambling, gay rights, pornography, and sex education—generateconflict over core values. These policies tend to be technicallysimple, potentially salient to the general public, and involvehigher than normal levels of citizen participation. They are,therefore, highly susceptible to being thrust into the activephase of policymaking when an incongruity develops between publicopinion and public policy. The reservation of authority to thestates on these issues embodied in the Tenth Amendment to theU.S. Constitution allows for closer policy-opinion congruence,therefore stabilizing morality policy politics. However, recentfederal actions on a range of morality policies have thrustthese issues onto the active political agenda of the states.     

Winners, Losers, and Efficiency: Achieving Multiple Goals in Japan's Financial System Reforms

When giving policy advice, economists often proceed as if efficiency is the only valid social goal. Although efficiency is important, we argue that single-minded pursuit of it is counterproductive. It unnecessarily erects political hurdles to the enactment of efficiency-enhancing reforms because policy proposals that ignore valid, nonefficiency concerns are more likely to meet political and bureaucratic resistance. Moreover, such resistance may be avoided. A number of design principals can be employed to craft proposals that address political goals without abandoning efficiency. We describe three classes of principles: creative design of market mechanisms, maintenance of marginal incentives, and compensation for losers.We then illustrate their practical application in the context of Japanese financial-sector deregulation. This policy area usefully illustrates the importance of considering multiple goals in policy design. While efficiency is a frequently expressed goal, Japan's continued policy paralysis indicates that the bureaucratic and political goals of major stakeholders make the straightforward deregulation of financial markets difficult to achieve. We do not purport to resolve the entrenched barriers to economic reform in Japan, but to the extent that we identify and address valid nonefficiency goals, the conclusions of the analysis are relevant.     

A PARTNERSHIP FOR REGIONAL COLLABORATION

Urban policy is out of alignment with domestic problems arising from the global economy, sprawling metropolitan regions, and distressed neighborhoods. A new urban policy, grandly conceived and dramatically announced and implemented, is needed. Our article maps out a new urban policy framework, with new roles and responsibilities for agencies and institutions, using innovative tools and improved management, with alternative adaptation strategies. Such a policy must be agile and diverse—characteristics not common in federal policy generally.     

Predicting Serial Killers' Home Base Using a Decision Support System

The effectiveness of a geographical decision support tool (Dragnet) forlocating the base of serial offenders was compared across 570 modelscomprised of a range of negative exponential functions, buffer zonecomponents, and normalization parameters. The models were applied to thebody disposal locations within each series for 70 U.S. serial killers. Twonormalization parameters were compared for all functions. The test ofeffectiveness was a specifically defined measure of search cost. Whenapplied to the Dragnet predictions it was found that the specially developednormalization parameter (QRange) produced the optimal search costs. Theoptimal search cost was also found to be for a function that did not includeany buffer zone. The optimal, average search cost across the whole samplewas 11% of the defined search area. Fifty-one percent of the offendersresided in the first 5% of the search area, with 87% in the first 25%. Allresided in the total defined search area. These results support thepotential for operational tools using such procedures as well ascontributing to our understanding of criminal's geographicalbehavior. The applicability to other forms of serial crime is considered.     

The Philosophy of the Gift and the Psychology of Advocacy: Critical Reflections on Forensic Mental Health Intervention

This article examines mental health advocacy,exploring the philosophy of the gift and thepsychology of forensic intervention. Byselectively, though strategically, reviewing the workof Hobbes, Emerson, and Nietzsche,we argue that egoism, charity, and pity displace altruistic, selfless gift-giving. To furtherlegitimize our analysis, we consider Derrida's semiotic deconstructionism and Lacan's psychoanalytic semiotics. Derrida points outhow gift-giving is an aporetic reality; that is,it represents an (im)possibility. Lacandemonstrates how the mirror stage of development givesrise to the self-other ego, in which the subjectis always and already divided. We subsequentlyexplain, therefore, how the gift of mental healthadvocacy must necessarily proceed, in part, from self-interests (i.e., egoism), making the virtuousact of mental health advocacy an (im)possibility.     

After Enactment: The Lives and Deaths of Federal Programs

While many scholars have focused on the production of legislation, we explore life after enactment. Contrary to the prevailing view that federal programs are indissoluble, we show that programmatic restructurings and terminations are commonplace. In addition, we observe significant changes in programmatic appropriations. We suggest that a sitting congress is most likely to transform, kill, or cut programs inherited from an enacting congress when its partisan composition differs substantially. To test this claim, we examine the postenactment histories of every federal domestic program established between 1971 and 2003, using a new dataset that distinguishes program death from restructuring. Consistent with our predictions, we find that changes in the partisan composition of congresses have a strong influence on program durability and size. We thus dispel the notion that federal programs are everlasting while providing a plausible coalition-based account for their evolution.     

Retiring in debt? An update on the 2007 near-retiree cohort

This research note uses 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data to update the authors' work reported in a prior article, which used earlier data to assess debt levels among households approaching retirement in 1995 and 2004. The authors assess whether there have been changes in the debt holdings of near-retirees in 2007, a point in time reflecting the start of the recent financial and economic crisis. Results show that debt levels of near-retirees were modestly higher in 2007 than in 2004, overall and across several subgroups. The results reinforce a general finding of the original article that current near-retirees, primarily baby boomers, are approaching retirement with more debt compared with their counterparts in the mid-1990s. Because the 2007 SCF data captures only the beginning of the current recession, the authors expect future trends to differ from the results presented here.