Predicting turnover of police officers using the sixteen personality factor questionnaire

This study examined the relationship between personality characteristics assessed by the sixteen personality factor questionnaire (16PF) and turnover. The sample consisted of 280 police officers who voluntarily terminated their employment during an eight-year period and 280 officers who remained employed in the police force. A limited number of personality characteristics were found to predict turnover. These were Factor C: affected by feelings versus emotionally stable, Factor I: tough-minded versus tender-minded, and Factor H: shy versus venturesome. Contrary to expectation, two conscientiousness scales (Factor O: placid versus apprehension, and Factor Q4: relaxed versus tense) and two emotional stability scales (Factor O: placid versus apprehension, and Factor Q4: relaxed versus tense) were unrelated to turnover. The authors also explored the existence of differential validity based on gender; no evidence of this was found.     

How staff attitude and support for inmate treatment and rehabilitation differs by job category: An evaluation of findings from Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections' employee training curriculum ‘Reinforcing Positive Behavior’

In July 2006, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections began delivering a training session titled Reinforcing Positive Behavior to all new employees. The training educated staff about the department's philosophy on inmate treatment programming and about staff responsibilities for reinforcing treatment concepts. Findings from a survey administered immediately after the training revealed that treatment and clerical staff strongly agreed that how they treat inmates and how they behave in a correctional facility impacts inmate rehabilitation efforts, and that reinforcing positive behavior among inmates was a requirement of their profession. Also, treatment and clerical staff, more so than correctional officers, recognized that staff support of treatment programs impacted inmate rehabilitation outcomes and that staff actions and interactions with other staff and inmates can make a correctional facility a more positive place.     

Deregulation and the Racial Composition of Airlines

Economic theory suggests that the enhanced product market competition of deregulation reduces employers' ability to discriminate when hiring. Recent studies of the effect of deregulation on racial employment in the naturally competitive trucking industry find that deregulation increased minority employment. This study examines the effect of deregulation on racial employment in the airline industry. Because deregulation transformed airlines from wasteful service competition to rigorous price competition, deregulation's effect on racial hiring in this continuously competitive industry is not apparent. This study finds that deregulation only modestly changed the racial composition of major airline occupations, which suggests that the change in market structure as a result of deregulation may largely determine the effect of regulatory reform on the racial composition of an industry. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Information Wants to be Property: Legal Commodification of E-commerce Assets

In the global information age, information per se is becoming one of the most valuable assets of many businesses. Because of this, the laws of many jurisdictions have started evolving to extend the protections for such information against unauthorised access, use and/or interference. These legal moves tend to have the direct or indirect effect of 'propertizing' aspects of the information in question. Recent moves in the area of copyright law in particular have shown a marked trend towards increased legal support for the commodification of commercially valuable information. Examples of this trend can be seen in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States and the Database Directive in the European Union. The following discussion examines this phenomenon and raises some questions about the desirable limits of legal commodification of information in this context.     

The legal control of drunken driving: A comment on methodological concerns in assessing deterrent effectiveness

Appearing in this volume are papers by Votey and Phillips, Ray, and Votey that raise basic questions about the effectiveness of efforts to reduce drunken driving through legal controls implemented in the criminal justice system. The primary issues of extent, source, and duration of any effect are raised by those authors. This paper discusses the concern for deterrence expressed by Phillips, et al., and particularly focuses on some methodological problems in demonstrating the deterrent effectiveness of criminal sanctions on drunken driving.