Forensic psychiatry and malpractice

This paper concerning the last 87 malpractice cases referred to the Department of Psychiatry and Law, Menninger Clinic, includes 57 suits against mental health practitioners and/or institutions, and 30 nonpsychiatric suits against general hospitals, surgeons, obstetricians, etc. A patient was available for interview in only 12 percent of the psychiatric cases; in 88 percent we reviewed medical records and consulted with attorneys. In the psychiatric cases the crucial question was whether a generally accepted standard of care was breached. The inherent problems of applying appropriate criteria to standards of care by practitioners and institutions are discussed. In half the psychiatric cases we found no significant deviation from acceptable clinical performance; in half we concluded that negligent practice had occurred. We did see a litigant for evaluation in 90 percent of the nonpsychiatric cases. The main issue involving them concerned harm or disability related to presumed negligence by medical personnel. How we evaluate such cases and apply disability criteria is discussed.     

Survey of gunshot residue analysis in forensic science laboratories

The purpose of this survey was to determine the methods of analysis being used on gunshot residue (GSR) samples in forensic science laboratories across the United States. In addition, the two general techniques of GSR analysis are compared and contrasted. Problems encountered by analysts using scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (SEM/EDX) are discussed.     

The extent of aspartic acid racemization in dentin: a possible method for a more accurate determination of age at death?

In the current study the objective was to find to what extent a reliable determination of age at death is made possible by establishing the degree of aspartic acid racemization in the dentin of teeth. The results of the investigation of 46 teeth are in agreement with the values found by other authors. The method presented makes a reproducible and accurate estimation of age possible. We intend to elaborate and improve this promising method for determination of age at death. The relevant points are presented here.     

Federal Reimbursement for Mandates on State and Local Governments

One of the remedies sought by state and local officials for the growing burden of federal mandates is a mandate reimbursement law. A major purpose of mandate reimbursement is to deter Congress from imposing excessive costs on state and local governments by making it fully accountable for its actions. The paper begins by extending the economic theory of grants to mandates and reimbursed mandates. It goes on to assess the benefits and costs of mandate reimbursement, and to distinguish mandates that should be reimbursed, should a reimbursement program prove desirable, from those that should not. Then, using the economic theory of grants and mandates, the paper compares reimbursed mandates with two alternatives for accomplishing the same objective, compensating grants and procedural rules. It concludes that the latter are more promising than mandate reimbursement.     

Restoring accountability in pretrial release: the Philadelphia pretrial release supervision experiments

As drug arrests and jail overcrowding added pressure to increase pretrial release in localities during the 1980s and 1990s, the need to manage a larger and higher-risk pretrial population of defendants awaiting adjudication in the community became a high priority for justice agencies. In the late 1990s Philadelphia officials sought to discover the ingredients of a successful supervision strategy through four interlinked field experiments to provide an empirical basis for a major reform of the pretrial release system. The results of the linked randomized experiments question common assumptions about “supervision,” its impact and effectiveness, about the underlying nature of the noncompliant defendant, and deterrence implications. The study emphasizes the importance of interpreting the findings in the context of implementation of the policy reform. Findings suggest that facilitative notification strategies wield little influence on defendant behavior and that deterrent aims are undermined by the system's failure to deliver consequences for defendant noncompliance during pretrial release. The most significant contribution of the article is its illustration of a major evidence-based policy reform undertaken by a major court system.     

DOES ECONOMICS PROVIDE A RELIABLE GUIDE TO REGULATING COMMODITY BUNDLING BY FIRMS? A SURVEY OF THE ECONOMIC LITERATURE

This article surveys the voluminous economic literature on commoditybundling. While bundling has been widely studied, the vast majorityof the literature has focused on theoretical treatments of bundlingthat demonstrate a wide range of reasons why firms might engagein bundling. These papers generally contain restrictive assumptions,including assumptions regarding the existence of monopoly insome markets, and the nature of rivalry in others. The modelscontained in these papers also generally suppress the more obviousand ubiquitous reasons firms may use bundling. Moreover, thesemodels have not been subject to robustness checks, nor havetheir assumptions been tested empirically. This review of theeconomic literature generally confirms the US Solicitor General'sview in 3M v. LePage's regarding the underdeveloped state ofthe economics literature and its position that the US SupremeCourt should defer promulgation of antitrust standards for bundling.While the literature has demonstrated the possibility that bundlingcan generate anticompetitive harm, it does not provide a reliableway to gauge whether the potential for harm would outweigh anydemonstrable benefits from the practice. As a result, the widespreadapplication of the antitrust laws to bundling by firms can generatesignificant error costs by erroneously condemning or deterringefficient business practices. In the future, economists shouldseek to expand their understanding of both the anticompetitiveand procompetitive reasons firms engage in bundling. This willentail studying the reasons why bundling is adopted by firmswithout market power, relaxing the assumption of monopoly intheoretical models, and generating testable hypotheses and thedata to test them.