The effect of bicycle helmet legislation on bicycling fatalities

A number of states passed legislation in the 1990s requiring youths to wear helmets when riding bicycles. The effect of this legislation on bicycling fatalities is examined by subjecting data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System to a panel analysis, using a control‐group methodology. A helmet law reduces fatalities by about 15 percent in the long run, less in the short run. There is no evidence of spillover effects (to adults) or substitution effects (youths choosing other methods of transportation) associated with implementation of a helmet law. Through 2000, existing helmet laws have saved 130 lives. If all states had adopted helmet laws in 1975, more than 1500 lives would have been saved. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

What Money Can’t Buy: The Security Externalities of Chinese Economic Statecraft in Post-War Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

China’s growing trade, investment, and aid links are commonly believed to constitute a potent instrument of statecraft, generating important security externalities. Yet there is insufficient research tracing the precise mechanisms linking economic relationships between a “sender” and “target” state to actual influence in the security domain. We offer three contributions. First, we map out the theoretical mechanisms of influence in a sender–target relationship. Second, we empirically investigate these mechanisms through a case study of China’s economic influence in Sri Lanka since 2009. Third, we use our findings to generate new insights on the mechanisms of influence in the economic statecraft literature and the dynamics of great-power competition in South Asia. Beijing’s ability to convert its considerable economic resources into strategic influence in Sri Lanka is currently hampered by the poor planning and implementation of infrastructure projects, domestic politics, and Sri Lanka’s relationship with India, a regional competitor and rising power.     

Microblogging,Constituency Service and Impression Management: UK MPs and the Use of Twitter

Twitter, a microblogging site which allows users to deliver statements, thoughts and links in 140 characters to followers as well as a wider Internet audience, is the latest online communications technology adopted by MPs. Assessing the use by early adopters, this article considers which MPs are most likely to use Twitter (for example, tweeting), and how. Content analysis of MPs' Twitter feeds was conducted, and personal and political characteristics identified which may influence use. The data suggested that of the six characteristics tested, gender, party and seniority had most impact on adoption. Applying Jones and Pittman's 1982 typology, there is clear evidence that MPs use Twitter as a tool of impression management. Constituency service is a secondary function of the use of Twitter by MPs. Where MPs use Twitter as part of their constituency role it is to promote their local activity. This article notes that a small group of MPs use Twitter as a regular communication channel, but most are only occasionally dipping their toe into the microbloggersphere.     

Suicide by drowning: a 20-year review

Drowning as a method of suicide is known to occur, but has primarily been described in environments with readily available access to water, such as coastal regions. In this study, we describe and analyze a series of suicidal drownings occurring in a noncoastal area of Texas. Between 1977 and 1996, 52 cases of suicidal drowning were investigated at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas, Texas. Such deaths accounted for only 0.85% of all suicides and 4% of all drowning deaths. In contrast. suicidal drownings reportedly account for 2.8 to 8.9% of all suicides in regions with easy access to water. As with other studies of suicidal drowning, the victims are usually sober white males over the age of 40 years. Our results also confirm that certain individuals who commit suicide by drowning use weights to facilitate the process. A detailed analysis of the cases is provided. as is a synopsis of several questions that may aid in determining the manner of death in suicidal drowning cases.     

Civil Liberties vs. Security: Public Opinion in the Context of the Terrorist Attacks on America

In the tradition of research on political tolerance and democratic rights in context, this study uses a national survey of Americans conducted shortly after the September 11, 2001 attack on America to investigate people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for greater personal safety and security. We find that the greater people's sense of threat, the lower their support for civil liberties. This effect interacts, however, with trust in government. The lower people's trust in government, the less willing they are to trade off civil liberties for security, regardless of their level of threat. African Americans are much less willing to trade civil liberties for security than whites or Latinos, even with other factors taken into account. This may reflect their long-standing commitment to the struggle for rights. Liberals are less willing to trade off civil liberties than moderates or conservatives, but liberals converge toward the position taken by conservatives when their sense of the threat of terrorism is high. While not a forecast of the future, the results indicate that Americans' commitment to democratic values is highly contingent on other concerns and that the context of a large-scale threat to national or personal security can induce a substantial willingness to give up rights.     

Integrative Regulation: A Principle-Based Approach to Environmental Policy

This article builds on recent field research to articulate a principle-based approach to environmental regulatory design that is applicable to a wide variety of circumstances, irrespective of political and social particularities. At its core, this approach recognizes that an excessive reliance on "single-instrument" policies is misguided, because all instruments have strengths and weaknesses, and none is sufficiently flexible and resilient to successfully address all environmental problems in all contexts. A better strategy is to harness the strengths of individual mechanisms while compensating for their weaknesses by the use of additional instruments. That is, in the large majority of circumstances, a mix of regulatory instruments is required, tailored to specific policy goals. The article identifies a series of regulatory design principles that sequentially address the problems and opportunities arising from the application of multi-instrument mixes and engaging a variety of first-, second-, and third-party participants in the regulatory process. The importance of choosing inherently complementary instrument combinations is also highlighted, with practical guidance provided to policymakers. Although the focus of the article is on environmental regulation, the general principles articulated should also be applicable to other areas of social regulation.     

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.

     

The Threat Review and Prioritization trap: how the FBI’s new Threat Review and Prioritization process compounds the Bureau’s oldest problems

Abstract

In the nearly 15 years since the events of 11 September 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has undertaken a succession of efforts to become an agency capable of fulfilling the intelligence functions with which it has been entrusted. However, historically, the FBI’s experience with intelligence has been reactive due to a law enforcement culture that closed cases rather than identified ways to keep opportunities for collection open, as well as bureaucratic wariness due to the differing expectations from one Presidential administration to the next. The Threat Review and Prioritization (TRP) process is the most recent iteration of the Bureau’s attempt to organize as an intelligence service. However, TRP is informed not by a mission of developing intelligence that will help to disrupt emerging threats or exploit opportunities at both the strategic (policymaking) and tactical (arrests), but instead reactively focuses on the threats which have become fully manifest within the FBI’s own domain. TRP leaves the US at a disadvantage vis-à-vis state and non-state adversaries and competitors. Organizationally, it institutionalizes the shortcomings of reactivity and insularity that were the unfortunate characteristics of the pre-9/11 FBI.