The Appointment, Removal and Responsibilities of Public Sector Chief Executives in Australia: Some Recent Developments

In the little over the decade since the publication of Smith's Public Employment Law and McCarry's Aspects of Public Sector Employment Law, much as changed in the law of public sector employment in Australia. This article briefly surveys some of the major developments in public sector employment law in Australia during the 1990s in relation to departmental chief executive departmental heads.     

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Victimization and fear of crime in an entertainment district crime “hot spot:” A test of structural-choice theory

Theories of criminal opportunity and criminal victimization (lifestyles, routine activities, and structuralchoice) all stress the convergence of motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of guardianship in time and space. They each assert the chances of victimization increase as proximity to motivated offenders, exposure to highrisk environments, target attractiveness, and ineffective guardianship increase. This study tests Miethe and Meier’s structuralchoice theory by examining domainspecific victimization and fear of crime among patrons of an entertainment district crime “hot spot. ”Regression results show both victimization experience and fear of crime are associated significantly with indicators of proximity and guardianship, but not with exposure or target attractiveness. White patrons of this area are more likely to be victimized, nonwhites report significantly higher levels of fear. The research for this paper was supported by Grant No. 97PRWX0298 from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

Inter-comparison of unrelated fiber evidence

The foreign textile fibers recovered from one item of evidence from each of 20 unrelated crimes in three categories (bank robbery, kidnapping, and homicide) were cross-compared. The items of evidence were scraped to remove the trace evidence and a sample of the collected fibers was examined using a standard scheme of analysis. The fibers were examined with light microscopy (including polarized light microscopy), fluorescence microscopy, and microspectrophotometry. The fibers were divided into natural and manufactured groups and then categorized by color and generic (polymer) class. Cross-comparing all 2083 fibers resulted in 2,168,403 comparisons, after removing duplicate (same fiber) comparisons. Colorless and denim fibers were excluded from this study. No two fibers were found to exhibit the same microscopic characteristics and analytical properties. Therefore, it is rare to find two unrelated items that have foreign fibers that are analytically indistinguishable. These results corroborate other population studies conducted in Europe and target fiber studies conducted both in the US and in Europe.     

A Theoretical Note on the Differences Between Attitudes,Opinions, and Values

This theoretical note examines the concepts attitude, opinion, and value. It is argued that such acquired behavioral pre-dispositions are re-lated but have different conceptual foci and tend to address different phenomena. Although it is important to recognize their interconnected-ness, their indiscriminate use is likely to lead to messy theoretical ar-guments and misleading interpretations of empirical findings. This ar-ticle discusses key-aspects that need to be considered in the study of at-titudes, opinions, and values, as well as the relations between these.