Law Enforcement Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina

Major disasters represent infrequent events that often require response organizations to vicariously learn from the experiences of others in order to improve their operations. A primary mechanism for such knowledge diffusion is the different practitioner and empirical journals for the organizational fields that comprise disaster response. A review of the literature for the law enforcement field, however, reveals that little attention is given to how these organizations manage actual disasters. In particular, the presentation of organizational experiences, whether through case studies or other methodologies, is very limited in the practitioner and empirical literature of this field. This represents a considerable problem for improvements of disaster response operations given that law enforcement agencies represent a key component in such efforts. The research presented in this article is an effort to fill this knowledge gap and thereby facilitate organizational learning to improve future law enforcement disaster response activities. The authors traveled to Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina to examine the response efforts of state and local law enforcement agencies to the storm. The findings from this research are reported here in a lessons‐learned format to inform law enforcement disaster response policy.     

Does border enforcement deter unauthorized immigration? The case of Mexican migration to the United States of America

This paper asks whether the migration decisions of unauthorized Mexican immigrants to the USA have been influenced by stronger US border enforcement efforts since 1993 that have sharply increased the physical risk and financial cost of illegal immigration. These measures were supposed to have decreased the probability of successful entry, thereby lowering the expected benefits of migration. We carried out a logistic regression analysis of data from a recent survey of 603 returned migrants and potential first‐time migrants in rural Mexico. Our findings indicate that tougher border controls have had remarkably little influence on the propensity to migrate illegally to the USA. Political restrictions on immigration are far outweighed by economic and family‐related incentives to migrate. An alternative, labor‐market approach to immigration control with higher probability of effectiveness is outlined.     

Globalization and legal change: The “Americanization” of European law?

Intensified global economic competition, economic liberalization, and the rise of EU governance have led some observers to argue that there has been a trend toward the “Americanization” of the European “way of law.” This article addresses that contention, focusing on legal change in European member states. It first describes ways in which the American legal tradition has differed most sharply from the national legal systems of Western Europe (including Great Britain) and the political and economic factors that account for this “American legal distinctiveness.” Similar political and economic factors currently are at work in Europe, the article acknowledges, creating incentives for legal convergence. But it also argues that European legal culture and the political organization of European national states generate path‐dependent forces that impede European movement toward American ways of law, and it discusses six important differences between European and American law that remain entrenched and are unlikely to disappear.     

Explaining legislators’ positions on outside income limits: Voting on honoraria ceilings in the U.S. Senate, 1981–1983

This article examines roll-call voting by members of the U.S. Senate on three proposals to limit members’ outside income in the 1980s. I find that several factors influenced legislators’ votes on outside income limits legislation (OILL). First, financial self-interest was an important constraint on members’ willingness to support OILL. Members who earned more honoraria were less likely to vote yes, but this opposition was neutralized when limits were attached to the compensating mechanism of a pay raise. Senators from poorer states were generally more likely to support honoraria limits alone but less likely to support limits linked to a pay raise, suggesting a responsiveness to constituent interests in both cases. Finally, when OILL was linked to a pay raise, electoral considerations became prominent in legislators’ vote decisions, with electorally vulnerable members less likely to vote yes.     

Does federally subsidized rental housing depress neighborhood property values?

Few communities welcome federally subsidized rental housing, with one of the most commonly voiced fears being reductions in property values. Yet there is little empirical evidence that subsidized housing depresses neighborhood property values. This paper estimates and compares the neighborhood impacts of a broad range of federally subsidized rental housing programs, using rich data for New York City and a difference‐in‐difference specification of a hedonic regression model. We find that federally subsidized developments have not typically led to reductions in property values and have, in fact, led to increases in some cases. Impacts are highly sensitive to scale, though patterns vary across programs. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

When is Growth Not Growth? The Curious Case of Mental Health Budgeting in New York

This article argues that the adverse impact of Medicaid on state budgets alleged in various public debates has been overstated, in some measure because of the inaccurate and misleading manner in which Medicaid expenditures are appropriated in state budgeting systems. Data on Medicaid and mental health spending in the state of New York is used for analysis. The first section provides a Medicaid spending and budgeting background. The second section discusses Medicaid and mental health in New York. The third section describes actual budgeted spending for mental health in New York, and the final section provides a discussion and concluding comments.