Professionals at bay: Managing boston's public schools

Boston's public schools have long drawn national attention in educational and political studies and more recently in legal accounts of desegregation. With the rise of remedial law, the maturation of public unions, and the improvement of constituencies—all forces flowering in the 1970s—the traditional concept of organizational rationality has been effectively undermined for professionals in the school system. Problem-solving skills and professional concepts relating to resource allocation and accountability are submerged by the inescapable need for coalition building, negotiation, and compromise. In the process, the critical roles are those of amateurs, neither committed to the organization or program, nor responsible for results.     

Vancouver police raid needle exchange run by drug users

The police claimed that drug trafficking was going on at the needle exchange run by the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, but they failed to provide any evidence to that effect. The police later apologized for their remarks and the exchange re-opened.     

Establishing the Limits of TrueAllele® Casework: A Validation Study

The limits of the expert system, TrueAllele^® Casework (TA), were explored using challenging mock casework profiles that included 17 single‐source and 18 two‐, 15 three‐ and 7 four‐person DNA mixtures. The sensitivity (ability to detect a minor contributor) of the TA analysis process was examined by challenging the system with mixture DNA samples that exhibited allelic and locus dropout and other stochastic effects. The specificity (ability to exclude nondonors) was rigorously tested by interrogating TA derived genotypes with 100 nondonor profiles. The accuracy with which TA estimated mixture weights of contributors to the two‐person mixtures was examined. Finally, first‐degree relatives of donors were used to assess the ability of the system to exclude close relatives. TA demonstrated great accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. TA correctly assigned mixture weights and excluded nearly all first‐degree relatives. This study demonstrates the analysis power of the TrueAllele^® Casework system.     

Evaluating the Child Abuse and Neglect Institute: Does Training Affect Decision‐Making?

Traditionally, training evaluations have focused on participants' satisfaction and self‐reported knowledge gain. The current study uses a different approach to evaluate the Child Abuse and Neglect Institute (CANI), a training program designed to educate judicial officers on best practices in child abuse and neglect cases. CANI participants were asked to review a case scenario and render decisions about the case before and after the trainings. Findings suggest CANI has several positive impacts on judicial decision‐making, including an increased willingness to engage the father, an increased focus on the child, and increased motivation to comply with the Indian Child Welfare Act.