Jail drug and alcohol treatment program reduces recidivism in nonviolent offenders: a longitudinal study of Monroe County, New York's, Jail Treatment Drug and Alcohol Program

Substance abuse treatment has become the new fashion for reducing recidivism among inmates. But the question is, does this work? Various studies have been done tracking the same cohort of inmates over time to assess the validity of treatment. This study assesses one treatment program's success over 5 years to determine if drug and alcohol treatment reduces recidivism among nonviolent, short-term (sentence of less than a year) inmates. Monroe County's drug treatment program demonstrates that for 1 year after receiving the treatment, three different cohorts of nonviolent, short-term inmates (1995, 1998, and 2000) were found to be substantially less likely to be recidivists than control group inmates.     

Ethanol formation in unadulterated postmortem tissues

During the investigation of aviation accidents, postmortem samples obtained from fatal accident victims are submitted to the FAA's Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) for toxicological analysis. During toxicological evaluations, ethanol analysis is performed on all cases. Many species of bacteria, yeast, and fungi have the ability to produce ethanol and other volatile organic compounds in postmortem specimens. The potential for postmortem ethanol formation complicates the interpretation of ethanol-positive results from accident victims. Therefore, the prevention of ethanol formation at all steps following specimen collection is a priority. Sodium fluoride is the most commonly used preservative for postmortem specimens. Several studies have been published detailing the effectiveness of sodium fluoride for the prevention of ethanol formation in blood and urine specimens; however, our laboratory receives blood or urine in approximately 70% of cases. Thus, we frequently rely on tissue specimens for ethanol analysis. The postmortem tissue specimens received by our laboratory have generally been subjected to severe trauma and may have been exposed to numerous microbial species capable of ethanol production. With this in mind, we designed an experiment utilizing unadulterated tissue specimens obtained from aviation accident victims to determine the effectiveness of sodium fluoride at various storage temperatures for the prevention of microbial ethanol formation. We found that without preservative, specimens stored at 4 degrees C for 96 h showed an increase in ethanol concentration ranging from 22 to 75 mg/hg (average 42 +/- 15 mg/hg). At 25 degrees C, these same specimens showed an increase ranging from 19 to 84 mg/hg (average 45 +/- 22 mg/hg). With the addition of 1.00% sodium fluoride, there was no significant increase in ethanol concentration at either temperature.     

Victim Protection Orders and the Stake in Conformity Thesis

Victim Protection Orders have gained wide use by local courts as one method to protect victims of domestic violence. This study of protection orders involves interviews with individuals who obtained such orders in Arizona. The research questions specifically addressed those variables known as the stake in conformity variables in the six attempted replications of the Sherman–Berk Minneapolis Police Study, to examine their potential relevance for the effectiveness of victim protection orders. The findings of this study are analyzed in terms of other research about the effectiveness of victim protection orders.     

Evaluation of microfinance projects

This paper criticizes the quick system proposed by Henk Moll for evaluating microfinance projects in the article ?How to Pre-Evaluate Credit Projects in Ten Minutes?. The author contended that there is a need to emphasize the objectives of the project. The procedure used by Moll, he contended, is applicable only to projects that have only two key objectives, such as credit operations, and the provision of services. Arguments are presented on the three specific questions proposed by Moll, ranging from the availability of externally audited financial reports, the performance of interest rate on loans vis-a-vis the inflation rate, and the provision of loans according to the individual requirements of the borrowers. Lastly, the author emphasizes that the overall approach is not useful and suggests that careful considerations should be observed in the use or abuse of a simple scoring system or checklist such as the one proposed by Moll.     

A general model of rent seeking for public goods

This paper generalizes the model of collective rent-seeking over a public good. Expanding the rent seeker's consumption bundle to include preferences over the public good and a private good, our results suggest collective rent-seeking is positively related to group size. Although free riding exists within a group, there is not a one-for-one tradeoff. In addition, rent seeking increases with wealth. Finally, total effort expended by both groups increases if either group increases in membership size, except in the case of an extremely lopsided contest. The key condition underlying these results is that the marginal utility of the public good is not inversely related to the private good.