The Responsible Administrator Has The Ethics Edge

Books reviewed:
Terry L. Cooper, The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role
Evan M. Berman, Jonathan P. West, Stephen J. Bonczek, eds., The Ethics Edge     

The Death of Freddie Gray and Its Impact on Homicides in Baltimore and Maryland

This study evaluated the impact that Freddie Gray’s death on April, 19, 2015, had on homicides within Baltimore, Prince George’s County, and the rest of Maryland. The numbers of these deaths were compared in the 2 years prior and after his death. The average number of homicide per month in Baltimore and Prince George’s County, but not the rest of Maryland, showed a statistically significant increase in the 2 years after his death, with a sudden spike in homicides in Baltimore immediately following his death. Spatial density (“heat”) maps of homicides showed an increase in clustering of deaths after Freddie Gray’s demise in portions of Baltimore, particularly near his arrest site. Hot spot maps showed a massive expansion of statistically significant clusters of homicides in areas of West and East Baltimore after his death. An emerging hot spot analysis revealed consecutive hot spots in large areas of West Baltimore with new hot spots prominent along the southern edge of this area. A review of the history of Baltimore, as well as discussions with Baltimore homicide detectives, revealed that prior socioeconomic and political trends likely primed Baltimore for the protests and violence that occurred after Freddie Gray’s death. It is probable that a perceived “overcharging” of officers involved in his death by the State’s Attorney resulted in a “pullback” from policing that directly led to increased homicides in Baltimore.     

The new outlawry and Foucault’s Panoptic nightmare

Michel Foucault seized upon Bentham’s “Panopticon” prison design as a metaphor to illustrate the mechanisms of social control in post-industrial society. In our recent rush to invent alternatives to incarceration, we have created a new and burgeoning class of outlaws, persons for whom privacy is not a legally cognizable right. Combined with Supreme Court decisions finding surveillance of even innocent citizens to be constitutionally benign, our well-intentioned efforts to reduce prison populations are close to bringing Foucault’s metaphor to literal reality.     

Political Disagreement and Socratic Civic Competence

Contemporary democratic theories that draw on Socrates for inspiration have addressed his method of investigation too narrowly because there has been insufficient attention to the need for authority, which Socrates also identifies. Because his appeals to authority initially appear antidemocratic, we cannot overlook this aspect of his thought. I describe a virtue, civic competence, which is the excellence of citizens who critically engage with the norms of the community, but who also recognise that authority is politically necessary. Deliberation requires elenctic-like scrutiny, but also a willingness to accept some arguments as authoritative. My overarching claim is that failure to exhibit such character traits can appear in more than one form, a point neglected in recent literature, and that not all such forms are antidemocratic. Civic competence is susceptible to corruptions that may never result in citizenship that is simply undemocratic. I define two corruptions of civic competence: 'disagonism' and 'eristicism'. The former treats disagreement as signalling either confusion or wickedness and deliberation as a process of clarifying and tidying discourse. The latter treats disagreement as ineliminable and deliberation as gaming with words in order to defeat an opponent in argument.     

Computer controlled scanner for laser enhanced photography

The use of a scanner to control the photography of fingerprints, shoeprints and other trace contacts which fluoresce under irradiation from an argon ion laser is described. This scanner has been built to cover areas varying in size from a single fingerprint to a shoeprint and provides for variable speed, step size and angle of radiation which are all very important in this highly specialised area of photography.     

A social skills analysis in childhood and adolescence using symbolic interactionism

Support is obtained from the literature about the need for advances in the conceptualization of social skills. There is agreement that much is known about how to improve social skills, but less attention has been given to what to change or improve. The present article outlines a model of social skills in childhood and adolescence using the concepts and literature on symbolic interactionism in an attempt to provide a possible conceptual framework for social skills. The proposed model is organized around the concepts of role-taking, role-making, definition of the situation, and self. Each concept is taken in turn and how it could contribute to the analysis or understanding of social skills in childhood and adolescence is shown. The article concludes with a discussion of ways in which the proposed scheme might be used in one area of social skills — friendship making. Some possible difficulties and limitations in the model are noted.Received his Ph.D. from University of Adelaide in 1971. Research interests are behavior disturbances in children, and parent-child relationships.