An impact of community policing: Reported stressors, social support, and strain among police officers in a changing police department

Community-based policing requires a radically different philosophical and organizational approach from the more traditional approach to policing. Stress may be experienced during organizational change as areas of responsibility and roles are altered. This study had three primary objectives: to identify (1) the areas officers and their immediate supervisors actually consider stressful, (2) the officers' and supervisors' responses to stress, and (3) the influence of their social support systems on these responses. Data were collected from community coordinators, radio response officers, and sergeants of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina. The officers and sergeants report specific physiological responses, lack of job involvement, and propensity to leave law enforcement; all responses that are considered by the literature to be related to stress. Stressors that are both common in law enforcement in general and stressors unique to a department implementing community policing are found to be significant. Work social support does appear to affect the level of job involvement of the officers. The finding that sergeants do not appear to feel that they have work social support may be working to the detriment of their ability to cope with stress and their willingness to be involved with their job.     

Working at the intersection—a story from Australia

Conceived by nurses in the hospital of a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, and inspired by Norwegian People's Aid, the international aid agency of the Australian trade unions was designed to give a genuine material base to solidarity with national liberation struggles. Bridging the difficult division in Australian labour politics between the Catholic right and the social democratic and pro‐Moscow lefts, Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad (now Union Aid Abroad APHEDA) was able to channel funds from unions and the Australian government to agriculture, health, and vocational training projects in many countries in the South. Unlike most counterpart organisations in Europe and the USA, its earlier partners were rarely trade unions. Only recently has APHEDA directly supported trade union training in Cambodia, East Timor, and Indonesia, under pressure from Australian unions, who see workers' rights in neighbouring countries as crucial to their own fate. Yet unions in advanced capitalist countries don't spontaneously understand the humanitarian and development needs of countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where waged workers are a small minority of the population. Unionisation is only one part of the solution. The April 2000 Durban congress of the ICFTU called for trade unions to ‘organise the unorganised’, such as informal‐sector workers, and to build alliances with NGOs and civil society around shared values. As a trade union NGO, APHEDA is located in the middle of a challenging intersection. Mandated to educate Australian workers on globalisation issues, APHEDA finds itself often more partisan than other international development NGOs in Australia, sometimes more circumspect. With attacks on union rights and the increasing share of the Australian aid budget delivered through private companies, APHEDA faces decisions about its independence, alliances, direction, and sustainability.     

Methodology for the analysis of civil commitment detention times and costs

The authors expand their methodology for quantifying and comparing civil commitment processes by developing new formulas for the determination of the average commitment detention time and cost. They also examine the effects of specific changes in commitment procedures on the average detention time and cost. Using data from Oregon's civil commitment process, the authors present several examples of the practical application of their methodology and conclude with a discussion of its major administrative and research implications.     

Human immunodeficiency virus infection in cases presenting to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

Serum samples were available from 492 of 1,058 cadavers seen at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office between August 4 and December 15, 1989. These sera were tested for the presence of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blot. The overall prevalence of HIV in the autopsy population was 2.24%. The following populations showed increased prevalence as compared to the total sampled population: blacks (3.60%, p less than 0.01), males (2.51%, n.s.), and homicide victims (3.74%, n.s.). Seroprevalence data from this study are compared with those from earlier studies of other related populations, with regard to overall prevalence and risk factor analysis.