Looking Forward to Cuts: A Simulation Decision Tool for Cutback Management

This study addresses managerial strategies to adapt public spending in anticipation of fiscal stress. It simulates a cutback to a federal agency, providing a decision tool that applies normative recommendations from the cutback management literature. Using agency data, we develop a menu of options that illustrate how different distributions of budget reductions affect organizational goals. We show five alternatives that consider the political, legal, and fiscal implications of the agency's responses to anticipated budgetary pressure. This simulation demonstrates that public agencies can apply existing data to generate rational and viable strategic plans for weathering fiscal stress.     

Observing the Breach: Dignity and the Limits of Political Theology

This paper draws together a number of debates concerning ‘dignity’. It points to reasons for the endurance of the concept of dignity, and thereby indicates some limits to analysis via political theology. Dignity is incongruous in law and ethics: it is naturalised theology illicitly augmenting liberal and postmodern theory. At the same time, phenomenologies of dignity suggest that it is something ‘observed in the breach’ when we encounter the diminution of the individual. Political theology would encourage us to treat this appearance of diminution as a point of aporia in ethics and closure in law, ostensibly articulating the loss of ‘humanity’ but in fact revealing nothing more than the reduction of all norms to sovereign decision. However, deconstructive counter-arguments to political theology are possible. First, the persistence of dignity hinges upon perception of loss rather than on any distinctive norms. Second, language games invoking dignity should be seen as performing solidarity. Third, there is a productive instability in the languages of dignity and human dignity. Together, these qualities mean that dignity, despite its theological genealogy, can justifiably play some role in both liberal and postmodern ethics.

Public vs. elite opinion on correctional reform: Implications for social policy

Demands for changes and reform in our correctional system have a long history. Currently many of those active in determining policy are advocating a shift away from the use of imprisonment to greater local supervision. However, many of these “elites” perceive the public as unreceptive and thereby an obstacle to change. This study focuses on an analysis of public opinion in the state of Washington and a comparison of those attitudes with the attitudes of elites (decision makers) in the state. Further, the study describes elite perceptions of public opinion and the implications of those perceptions for social policy. The public is found to be far less punitively oriented than elites expected and far more receptive to the reforms advocated.     

Medicare utilization by disabled-worker beneficiaries: a longitudinal analysis

Medicare eligibility for Social Security disabled-worker beneficiaries begins after 2 years of cash benefit receipt. Extension of the current coverage is often proposed as a way to encourage beneficiaries to return to work. Little is known, however, about the long-run Medicare costs for the disabled and how costs vary by demographic and health characteristics. This article describes Medicare utilization and reimbursement amounts for 1974-81 for a cohort of disabled-worker beneficiaries under age 62 and first entitled to cash benefits in 1972. The data come from a first-time linkage of Disability Insurance program data with data on Medicare utilization. The tables provide a detailed look at several factors that are associated with variation in Medicare costs among beneficiaries and over time.     

Time and crime: The link between teenager lifestyle and delinquency

This paper—based on data from a national survey of 14 and 15 year olds and their parents in England and Wales—examines the relationship between teenager lifestyles and activity patterns and self-report offending. The legal ways in which teenagers spend their time show consistent relationships with involvement in crime. Offenders and nonofienders differ markedly on both general and specific measures where they go, whom they are with, and what they do. Consistent with models of criminal behavior based on group processes, these differences in activity patterns also extend to a number of the major correlates of delinquency whose effects on crime are typically conceived in lifestyle terms. These results further indicate that the link between activity patterns and delinquency is different between males and females in the age group surveyed.