The criminal justice response to wife assault

This paper reviews the criminal justice response to wife assault. By establishing a set of conditional probabilites for the reporting, detection, prosecution, and conviction for wife assault, the paper establishes that a “winnowing process” occurs that is not dissimilar to that reported for other crimes. The probability of wife assault being detected by the criminal justice system is about 6.5%. Given that it is detected, the probability of arrest is about 21.2% [comparable to a 20% arrest rate for a composite of 121 crimes reported by Hood and Sparks (1970)]. Subsequent conditional probabilities for conviction and punishment generate an aggregate probability that, given that an event of wife assault occurs, the perpetrator has a 0.38% chance of being punished by the courts. The policy implications of this review are that the greatest impact on wife assault recidivism reduction would be generated by police arrest rates regardless of court outcome. At present, however, it is not known whether this effect is produced by specific deterrence or by the didactic function of law. It is concluded that too little is known of the subjective states of wife assaulters to ascertain whether deterrence or some other mechanism accounts for the decreased recidivism reported after arrest.     

Slips and falls in stores and malls: Implications for community‐based injury prevention

An empirical analysis of the behavioral ecology of slip, trip, and fall accidents in grocery stores and shopping malls is presented. The store data set comprised 36 consecutive months of data collected from a chain of grocery stores in the Midwestern USA and the mall data set included 24 consecutive months of data collected from 22 malls across the continental USA, with a concentration in the southern region. Analyses showed that the majority of the slip, trip and fall accidents occurred on the inside of the establishments, on the same level, and resulted from a water or liquid spill or food item on the floor. Design deficiencies accounted for the least amount of occurrences and cost of the accidents, while housekeeping and inspection deficiencies accounted for the bulk of the accidents. Data‐based recommendations for slip, trip and fall injury‐prevention strategies in these public places, focusing on management action, are offered.     

La fonction publique canadienne a perdu ses repères

Some thirty years ago, politicians in Anglo‐American democracies introduced a series of measures designed to give them the upper hand in shaping public policy and to push senior public servants to become better managers. The government of Canada was no exception. Politicians essentially decided to look to the private sector to improve public sector management. The efforts have failed, have been costly to taxpayers, and have knocked the federal public service off its moorings. The article argues that the public service needs to rediscover its roots and walk away from simple assumptions tied to economic self‐interest and deductive models and from the mantra that reforms inspired by the private sector can drive productive change in the public sector.     

Evaluating academic technology transfer performance by how well access to knowledge is facilitated––defining an access metric

Why should research institutions engage in technology transfer? Some say it is about the money. Others say it is about public service and benefit. In the end, we measure what we value. If we only measure money, we confound the non-profit mission of the research institution. If we measure economic impact, the non-profit technology transfer office is often expected to become the economic developer, confusing real estate and business development with technology transfer, often without additional funding. These mission strains lead to overwhelm, fatigue, service shortcomings, and unhappy customers across all classes of stakeholders. This article suggests a return to center for academic technology transfer offices (TTOs) by focusing on a most important question for drivers of our present global knowledge economy––how well does a TTO facilitate access to knowledge protected by intellectual property of its faculty and institution? This article proposes that academic technology transfer performance should be evaluated by how well a TTO avails access to knowledge. Given that performance measures are also referred to as “metrics,” we call this preferred outcomes orientation an access metric.