Combining Structural Forms in the Search for Policy Tools: Incident Command Systems in U.S. Crisis Management

As governments search for policy tools to deliver public services, two choices—hierarchy or network—are portrayed as stark alternatives. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has adopted a practitioner‐based innovation known as the Incident Command System (ICS) that assumes that crises require a network of responders, but that these networks should be managed by a hierarchy. While the ICS illustrates the potential for mixing hierarchies and networks, it was mandated by policymakers willing to make broad assumptions about the applicability of the ICS on limited evidence. An overdependence on practitioner claims displaced careful analysis of the underlying logics vital to understanding the operation of the policy tool. A case study of the ICS in managing an exotic animal disease outbreak points to the importance of crisis characteristics and management factors as contingencies affecting the operation of the ICS.     

Is the Care System Failing Children?

Public care is widely perceived to be failing children, and this belief is at the heart of government proposals set out in the Care Matters white paper. This article argues that on the contrary, research tends to find that children's welfare improves while they are in care. The reasons for the negative perception of care are considered and it is argued that care should be seen as a positive option for children in families experiencing severe difficulties and as a form of family support rather than an alternative option. This would move the United Kingdom toward a more European model for the place of care for children in difficult family situations, rather than an American model which focuses on minimizing the use of public care.     

Road to Ruin? A Spatial Analysis of State Highway Spending

Do states engage in infrastructure expenditure competition to attract new economic activity? Economic theory is inconclusive on the matter. States might respond to increased infrastructure spending in competitor states by increasing their own infrastructure spending. Conversely, states may decrease spending in the presence of positive spillovers from competitor states' infrastructure investment. Using spatial econometric techniques and focusing specifically on highway spending, we demonstrate that states expend less on highways when spending in neighboring states increases. We explore this possibility further by modeling state personal income growth as a function of own‐state and neighbor‐state highway spending. Our findings suggest positive spillovers influence interstate relationships for highway spending rather than race‐to‐the‐top competition for economic activity.     

PRISONERS' FAMILIES A Study of Some Social and Psychological Effects of Incarceration on the Families of Negro Prisoners

This study examines the effects of imprisonment on the families of inmates. Likert scaling procedures were used to meaaire three components of change occurring in 93 families subsequent to the incarceration of the family head. These are: change in sociol acceptance, change in economic status, and change in the degree of sexual and emotional frustration of the wife. Findings indicate that finances and sexual-emotional frustrations underwent significant change and became problematic for a majority of families. Contrary to expectations, changes in social acceptance of the families were neither significant nor problematic except for a small minority.     

THE NEW MYTH OF CLASS AND CRIME

On the basis of a reanalysis of the empirical evidence. Tittle et al. (1978) concluded that the presumed inverse relationship between class and crime is a myth. We discuss six problems in their evaluation: paucity of evidence; lack of specification of theoretical relationships; faulty specification and measures of class; inadequate operational definitions of “crime”; faulty analysis of evidence; and failure to examine all evidence. We conclude that the empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that low class position is a source of serious crimes against persons and property.     

DRIVING WHILE BLACK: BIAS PROCESSES AND RACIAL DISPARITY IN POLICE STOPS*

We estimate the degree of racial disparity in police vehicular stops separately for local and state police in North Carolina in the year 2000. We introduce four mechanisms that might produce racial disparities in police stops—racial profiling, race sensitive police deployment, cognitive bias and stereotyping, and prejudice. We then model the relative odds of police vehicle stops as a function of race, driving behavior, and other demographic statuses separately by police organization type, with controls for omitted variable bias at both the driver and spatial level. We find only weak evidence of racial disparity in stops by officers of the state highway patrol but stronger evidence in those made by local police officers.