MANAGING CITIZEN CALLS TO THE POLICE: THE IMPACT OF BALTIMORE'S 3‐1‐1 CALL SYSTEM*

Research Summary: Our paper explores the impact of implementing a nonemergency 3‐1‐1 call system in Baltimore, Maryland. We found a large (34.2%) reduction in 9‐1‐1 calls following the introduction of the 3‐1‐1 nonemergency call system. Many, but not all, of these calls simply migrated over to the 3‐1‐1 call system. Overall, we identified a 7.7% reduction in recorded citizen calls to the police post 3‐1‐1 intervention. This recorded reduction in citizen calls was confounded by an increase in high priority calls to the 9‐1‐1 system (27.5%), a large overall reduction in low priority calls (54.3%), and an estimated increase (perhaps 8%) in unrecorded calls to the police. We also note a small increase in response times to high priority 9‐1‐1 calls following the implementation of the 3‐1‐1 call system and virtually no change in the amount of officer time available for community policing or problem‐oriented policing activities. Policy Implications: Our findings suggest that nonemergency call systems, such as 3‐1‐1, can greatly facilitate police efforts to better handle citizen calls for police service. However, the intrinsic value of nonemergency call systems is tightly woven with a police department's willingness to change dispatch policies (especially for those calls received via the 3‐1‐1 system), reallocate patrol resources, and adopt organizational reforms to support alternative methods (apart from dispatch) for handling nonemergency calls for service.     

PROFESSIONAL POWER PLAY: ORGANIZING MANAGEMENT IN HEALTH CARE

Because of the managerialization of health care and the rise of health care managers, professionals and managers increasingly ‘clash’. To reduce clashes, managerial and professional domains have not only been (re)connected; they have also been restructured. Managers, in particular, have started to make sense of their own ‘professionalism’. Health care managers are professionalizing in order to cope with reform consequences. They have established professional associations, which establish educational programmes, journals, and codes of conduct, in order to define and standardize managerial work. By tracing the evolution of a new profession of Dutch health care executives, and by studying its educational underpinnings, this article will analyse whether the professionalization of managers homogenizes occupational definitions and standards. It will show that managerial education masks ideological struggles over the substance of ‘good’ health care management. Different ‘schools’ have arisen, producing heterogeneity in executive circles.     

Epistemological Perspectives in Legal Theory

Abstract The authors deal with several important epistemological problems in legal theory. The Nineteenth century background is analyzed from the emergence of legal science freed from the constraints of natural law and built on the model of the empirical sciences. The authors show how this science of law has been influenced by the social sciences and trends in ideological criticism throughout the Twentieth century. The epistemological question central to legal science is tackled, i.e., what kind of “epistemological break” should there be with regard to the object studied? To answer this question, the authors plead for the adoption of a “moderate external point of view” which bears in mind lawyers' “internal point of view.”     

Bringing Justice Back to the Community

As states and local governments struggle to meet the demands of increasing workloads with decreasing revenues, a strategy is emerging that brings new energy and resources to the juvenile justice system. This strategy, Community Justice, empowers the community to prevent and resolve problems once thought to be the exclusive responsibility of the justice system. Juvenile courts operating within this new approach are discovering that community residents are willing to become actively involved when allowed to participate in defining the goals, objectives, and their roles in furthering community safety. This article describes this new approach, provides examples of promising practices, and articulates the crucial role of the court in promoting community justice strategies.     

THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYMENT ON LONGITUDINAL TRAJECTORIES OF OFFENDING: A FOLLOW‐UP OF HIGH‐RISK YOUTH FROM 18 TO 32 YEARS OF AGE*

This article analyzes the effects of employment on delinquent development from 18 to 32 years of age in 270 high‐risk males. Prior to 18 years of age, all men had undergone residential treatment for serious problem behavior in a juvenile justice institution in the Netherlands. We use semiparametric group‐based models to investigate the effect of employment on their offending, taking into account static personality and background characteristics. We examine the effect of being employed and further distinguish the effects of job quality (“on the payroll” or being employed through temporary work agencies) and job stability (duration). We find that employment is significantly related to delinquent development among most (active) offender groups. Among high‐frequency chronic offenders, only temporary employment is significantly associated with a reduction in offending, whereas among high‐frequency desisters, the association is significantly stronger with regular employment. Stability in employment was limited in our sample, and it did not have an additional effect on offending.     

A psycho‐political profile of party activists and left‐wing and right‐wing extremists

Previous studies comparing ideological groups have been restricted to tests of between‐group differences in the means of relevant political psychological variables, thereby neglecting group differences in the variances, meanings and nomological networks of the tested variables. A first exploratory study used data from the European Social Survey (N = 7,314) comparing groups of political party members on the basis of their scores on a self‐placement left–right scale. The second study (N = 69) constituted an in‐depth test for the presence of differences between samples of political activists of moderate parties, communists, anarchists and right‐wing extremists. The results revealed that there is a fair amount of heterogeneity within left‐wing and right‐wing extremists, indicating a substantial amount of within‐group variance of social attitudes, values and prejudice. Moreover, the extremist ideologies are best approached as distinct ideologies that cannot be reduced to extreme versions of moderate ideology, and differences in the meanings and nomological networks of the various extremist ideologies were also obtained. It is erroneous to consider members of extremist groups as being ‘all alike’. The findings obtained from samples of political moderates are not a particularly solid basis for theories about extremism.     

A VERY PUBLIC SEARCH FOR PUBLIC VALUE: ‘RHETORICAL SECRETARIES' IN WESTMINSTER JURISDICTIONS

Senior bureaucrats in central agencies in Westminster jurisdictions frequently give keynote speeches as a part of their official function. What are these administrative leaders talking about, and to whom, and why does it matter? This paper will seek to answer those questions through the lens of public value theory by considering whether ‘public rhetorical leadership’ by senior bureaucrats is a legitimate contribution to the search for public value, and what challenges such behaviour may present to good governance. The speeches of senior bureaucrats in four Westminster jurisdictions – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – are examined as examples of how bureaucratic ‘public rhetorical leadership’ is currently being exercised. The paper concludes that the way in which senior bureaucrats exercise their rhetorical power can have significant implications for the implementation of policy, and for questions of bureaucratic accountability.