Physical health and crime among low-income urban women: An application of general strain theory

Purpose

Although studies of General Strain Theory (GST) typically include measures of physical health in multi-item indices of strain, no work has investigated the independent influence of physical health on criminal offending. The current research explores the relationship between physical health and criminal offending among low-income women living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Methods

Using data from the Welfare, Children, and Families (WCF) project, criminal behavior is predicted over two years with measures of physical health, depression, anxiety, competing strain, and relevant background factors.

Results

Poorer physical health at baseline and declines in physical health increase the odds of offending onset among previous non-offenders and reduce the odds of decreased offending among previous offenders. In offending onset models, higher levels of anxiety and depression at baseline and increases in these symptoms partially mediate the effect of poorer baseline health and fully mediate the effect of the loss of physical health. In decreased offending models, increases in anxiety and depression fully mediate the effect of poorer baseline health and partially mediate the effect of the loss of physical health.

Conclusions

The data suggest that poor health and declines in physical health influence both offending onset and offending escalation directly and indirectly through increases in anxiety and depression.     

Accountability in Governance Networks: An Assessment of Public,Private, and Nonprofit Emergency Management Practices Following Hurricane Katrina

What is the most effective framework for analyzing complex accountability challenges within governing networks? Recognizing the multiscale and intersector (public, private, and nonprofit) characteristics of these networks, an accountability model is advanced organized around democratic (elected representatives, citizens, and the legal system), market (owners and consumers), as well as administrative (bureaucratic, professional and collaborative) relationships. This concept draws from 2005 events following Hurricane Katrina. Multiple failures of governing networks to plan for and respond to Katrina include a breakdown in democratic, market, and administrative accountability as well as a pervasive confusion over trade‐offs between accountability types emerging from crises. This essay offers several useful recommendations for emergency management planners as well as for those who teach and research.     

A profile of social security child beneficiaries and their families: sociodemographic and economic characteristics

Using a rich dataset that links the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation calendar-year 2004 file with Social Security benefit records, this article provides a portrait of the sociodemographic and economic characteristics of Social Security child beneficiaries. We find that the incidence ofbenefit receipt in the child population differs substantially across individual and family-level characteristics. Average benefit amounts also vary across subgroups and benefit types. The findings provide a better understanding of the importance of Social Security to families with beneficiary children. Social Security is a major source of family income for many child beneficiaries, particularly among those with low income or family heads with lower education and labor earnings.     

How Public Opinion Constrains the U.S. Supreme Court

Although scholars increasingly acknowledge a contemporaneous relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court decisions, debate continues as to why this relationship exists. Does public opinion directly influence decisions or do justices simply respond to the same social forces that simultaneously shape the public mood? To answer this question, we first develop a strategy to control for the justices' attitudinal change that stems from the social forces that influence public opinion. We then propose a theoretical argument that predicts strategic justices should be mindful of public opinion even in cases when the public is unlikely to be aware of the Court's activities. The results suggest that the influence of public opinion on Supreme Court decisions is real, substantively important, and most pronounced in nonsalient cases.     

I’m Not Voting for Her: Polling Discrepancies and Female Candidates

Although there is a large literature on the predictive accuracy of pre-election polls, there is virtually no systematic research examining the role that a candidate’s gender plays in polling accuracy. This is a surprising omission given the precipitous growth of female candidates in recent years. Looking at Senate and Gubernatorial candidates from 1989 to 2008 (more than 200 elections in over 40 states), we analyze the accuracy of pre-election polls for almost the complete universe of female candidates and a matched sample of white male cases. We demonstrate that pre-election polls consistently underestimate support for female candidates when compared to white male candidates. Furthermore, our results indicate that this phenomenon—which we dub the Richards Effect, after Ann Richards of Texas—is more common in states which exhibit traits associated with culturally conservative views of gender issues.     

Using automated comparisons to quantify handwriting individuality

The proposition that writing profiles are unique is considered a key premise underlying forensic handwriting comparisons. An empirical study cannot validate this proposition because of the impossibility of observing sample documents written by every individual. The goal of this paper is to illustrate what can be stated about the individuality of writing profiles using a database of handwriting samples and an automated comparison procedure. In this paper, we provide a strategy for bounding the probability of observing two writers with indistinguishable writing profiles (regardless of the comparison methodology used) with a random match probability that can be estimated statistically. We illustrate computation of this bound using a convenience sample of documents and an automated comparison procedure based on Pearson's chi-squared statistic applied to frequency distributions of letter shapes extracted from handwriting samples. We also show how this bound can be used when designing an empirical study of individuality.     

Between the Scylla and Charybdis: physicians and the clash of liability standards and cost cutting goals within accountable care organizations

This article seeks to examine the conflict between non-cost-conscious medical malpractice liability standards and health care cost cutting measures within the context of Accountable Care Organizations ("ACOs") under the new health care reform law. This article begins by providing an overview of the high level of health care spending within the United States health care system in order to provide a context for better understanding policymakers' push for cost cutting measures, including ACOs. This article then examines the tension between cost containment efforts and medical liability standards through an examination of the "stuck in the middle" mentality that physicians face when they are forced to meet both liability standards that do not take into account cost concerns and cost cutting standards imposed by or through managed care organizations, pay-for-performance programs and consumer-driven healthcare. This article then introduces the concept of the ACO and describes elements of the ACOs envisioned under the new health care reform legislation. This article concludes by examining and analyzing whether and how ACOs will exacerbate the cost containment/liability standard tension, and how that tension may impact the effectiveness of ACOs.     

The Evidence-Based Policing Matrix

The next phase of evidence-based policing requires both scholars and practitioners to move from lists of specific studies about “what works” to using that information strategically. This requires developing generalizations or principles on the nature of effective police strategies and translating the field of police evaluation research into digestible forms that can be used to alter police tactics, strategies, accountability systems, and training. In this article, we present a tool intended for such use: the Evidence-Based Policing Matrix. The Matrix is a consistently updated, research-to-practice translation tool that categorizes and visually bins all experimental and quasi-experimental research on police and crime reduction into intersections between three common dimensions of crime prevention—the nature of the target, the extent to which the strategy is proactive or reactive, and the specificity or generality of the strategy. Our mapping and visualization of 97 police evaluation studies conducted through December 31, 2009, indicate that proactive, place-based, and specific policing approaches appear much more promising in reducing crime than individual-based, reactive, and general ones. We conclude by discussing how the Matrix can be used to guide future research and facilitate the adoption of evidence-based policing.     

The Residual Career Patterns of Police Misconduct

Purpose

To explore the extent to which patterns of police misconduct, particularly residual career length (RCL) and residual number of offenses (RNO), change over time in theoretically expected ways, and to determine whether such career features can adequately predict future misconduct when compared to traditional Early Intervention (EI) system criteria.

Methods

This study employs retrospective, longitudinal data gathered for a large cohort of police officers followed for a significant portion of their career and uses personnel complaints as the primary indicator of police misconduct.

Results

Distributions of RCL and RNO are presented according to 4 criteria: year of experience, complaint number, time since the last complaint, and onset of first complaint. There was a decline in RCL and RNO with experience and onset of first complaint. While RCL declined by complaint number, RNO remained steady. This is also true of time since last complaint. Risk scores derived from RCL and RNO were moderately predictive of future misconduct, but fared better than those derived from standard EI system criteria.

Conclusion

EI systems do not adequately predict future misconduct, but there appears to be value in taking a broader view of complaint patterns of officers as a way of increasing predicative validity.