Animal Scavenging and Scattering and the Implications for Documenting the Deaths of Undocumented Border Crossers in the Sonoran Desert,

Since 1998, over 5500 people have died while attempting to cross the U.S.–Mexico border without authorization. These deaths have primarily occured in the Arizona desert. Despite the high volume of deaths, little experimental work has been conducted on Sonoran Desert taphonomy. In this study, pig carcasses were used as proxies for human remains and placed in different depositional contexts (i.e., direct sunlight and shade) that replicate typical sites of migrant death. Decomposition was documented through daily site visits, motion-sensitive cameras and GIS mapping, while skeletal preservation was investigated through the collection of the remains and subsequent faunal analysis. Our results suggest that vultures and domestic dogs are underappreciated members of the Sonoran scavenging guild and may disperse skeletal remains and migrant possessions over 25 m from the site of death. The impact of scavengers and the desert environment on the decomposition process has significant implications for estimating death rates and identifying human remains along the Arizona/Mexico border.     

A Comparison of Retained and Appointed Counsel in Cases of Capital Murder

We examined the role of counsel as a source of arbitrary and capricious sentencing in cases of capital murder. The method is a reanalysis of the data of Baldus, Woodworth, & Pulaski (1990) on 606 cases of capital murder in Georgia in the 1970s. Controlling for variables describing the character of the defendant and the circumstances of the crime, a death sentence was more likely when defense counsel was appointed rather than retained privately. This was a consequence primarily of the prosecutor's decision to seek a death sentence rather than jury bias in sentencing. Our data support the conclusion that sentencing under the Georgia statute was in the 1970s, and is today to some degree, arbitrary and capricious.     

The 'Publicness' of Public Organizations

This article analyses the diversity of public organizations focusing on variations in their degree of publicness. We define 'publicness' as organizational attachment to public sector values: for example, due process, accountability, and welfare provision. Based on a survey of Danish public organizations, we show that organizations with a high degree of publicness differ from organizations with a low degree of publicness. The former are characterized by complex tasks, professional orientation, many external stakeholders, conflicting environmental demands, and low managerial autonomy. The latter are the opposite. We explore in detail both the relationship between the organizations and their parent ministries and their responses to organizational change. Organizations with a high degree of publicness are subject to a tight ministerial control and have formal and distant relations with the ministry. They also have strong vertical links, externally and internally. High internal control is the joint product of ministerial control and the stress on the public sector value of rule compliance. All organizations ranked high on publicness are reluctant to adopt organizational changes stemming from the 'New Public Management'. Again, organizations with a low degree of publicness are the opposite, keen to adopt new ideas. We show that degree of publicness matters, across both functional types of organizations and policy sectors. Finally, we discuss alternative theoretical explanations of publicness drawn from contingency theory and the new institutionalism.     

Introduction to Jesse Burkhead Symposium

Government budgeting is one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled. To the extent that this is done well, governmental programs are brought increasingly to the service of its citizens, enhancing their material and cultural status.
The study of government budgeting is a study in applied economics—in the allocation of scarce resources. This study must look at operations and begin with organization and procedure, the routines which have been established for decision–making in government. It should extend to an examination of the influences, governmental and nongovernmental, that come to bear on the decision-making process.
Ours is both an organized society and a society of organizations. The significance of organization is nowhere more evident than in the public sector. Here organizational arrangements bring together the learning of all social scientists. The patterns for decision-making do not provide separate compartments for economic knowledge, for political knowledge, for social knowledge. These are merged in the organizational arrangements which have been established for the conduct of governmental affairs.1