A Comparison of Defendants with Mental Illness Represented by Public Defenders and Private Attorneys: an Analysis of Court-Ordered Pretrial Psychiatric Evaluations

This study compared the characteristics and court-ordered evaluation questions and responses among 4,430 defendants to determine if differences existed between those represented by public defenders and private attorneys when receiving trial competency or responsibility psychiatric evaluations from a state department of mental health. Defendants represented by public defenders were more likely to be younger, to have less education, to have psychotic disorders, to have a history of inpatient psychiatric treatment, to live in urban or rural counties, and to be jailed at the time of the evaluation. In addition, defendants represented by public defenders were less likely to have a request for a criminal responsibility evaluation and more likely to be evaluated as having a mental illness, to be incompetent to stand trial, and to need hospitalization pending trial. Consideration of whether defendants with public defenders receiving less requests for responsibility evaluations was indicative of a therapeutic jurisprudence approach is discussed. Implications for research on types of legal representation of defendants with mental illness are discussed.     

A Clinical Comparison,Simulation Study Testing the Validity of SIMS and IOP-29 with an Italian Sample

The Inventory of Problems–29 (IOP-29) was recently introduced as a brief, easy-to-use measure of non-credible mental and cognitive symptoms that may be applied to a wide variety of contexts or clinical conditions. The current study compared its validity in discriminating bona fide versus feigned (via experimental malingering paradigm) psychopathology against that of the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS). Specifically, 452 Italian adult volunteers participated in this study: 216 were individuals with mental illness who were asked to take the SIMS and IOP-29 honestly, and 236 were nonclinical participants (experimental simulators) who took the same two tests with the instruction to feign a psychopathological condition. Two main, broad categories of symptom presentations were investigated: (a) psychotic spectrum disorders and (b) anxiety, depression, and/or trauma-related disorders. Data analysis compared the effect sizes of the differences between the patients and experimental simulators, as well as the AUC and classification accuracy statistics for both the SIMS and IOP-29. The results indicate that the IOP-29 outperformed the SIMS, with the differences between the two tools being more notable within the psychotic (IOP-29 vs. SIMS: d?=???1.80 vs. d?=???1.06; AUC?=?.89 vs. AUC?=?.79) than within the anxiety, depression, and/or trauma related subgroup (IOP-29 vs. SIMS: d?=???2.02 vs. d?=???1.62; AUC?=?.90 vs. AUC?=?.86). This study also demonstrates that the IOP-29, with its single cutoff score, is generalizable culturally and linguistically from the USA (English) to Italy (Italian).     

The “new” view of investment decisions and public policy analysis: An application to green lights and cold refrigerators

Recent research in investment theory emphasizes the importance of sunk investment costs, uncertainty in returns, and flexibility in investment timing. Allowing for the presence of these characteristics alters traditional discounted cash flow rules for when to invest. Those rules will recommend investing at lower rate-of-retum thresholds than is optimal. This article describes this research and suggests the range of potential situations to which the theory applies. It also discusses the implications for policy analysis and suggests that government programs to encourage investment may, in some cases, be inappropriate. After discussing a wide array of possible applications, we focus on one in particular: programs to encourage energy-efficient investment. The examples suggest the importance of applying the new investment theory for economic analysis of investment in energy-efficient technologies.     

Technology transfer and value creation: Extending the theory beyond information exchange

Most interfirm models of technology transfer involve the exchange of information. As technology gains increasing importance in competitive strategy, however, the information-exchange perspective becomes increasingly limited. This paper conceptually extends the interfirm technology-transfer process to include aspects of commercialization and value creation. Like other areas of organizational science, much of the problem associated with technology transfer involves implementation. The model developed in this study, in its simplest form, links the technology-transfer process to the well-developed process models of new-product and new-venture development.