Unitary regulatory supervision or multi-entity supervision? A computational approach to a numbers problem in financial regulation

Policymakers globally have debated (and often implemented) the idea of consolidating numerous financial regulatory supervisory entities into one unitary entity. This article uses a computational model to explore the effect such a decision would have on supervisory performance. Using insights from organizational scholarship on consensus-making among individuals within organizations, the simulation suggests that under most conditions a unitary supervisory entity yields lower performance than smaller, numerous entities with unique mandates, keeping the number of regulatory inspectors constant. This result arises from the heterogeneity of perspectives being shared within the entity and the influence of precedent actions. The results also show a decreasing utility to disaggregation: performance decreases when too few inspectors share among themselves in building consensus. When insufficient heterogeneity within supervisors exists, unitary frameworks outperform multi-entity frameworks. These findings have implications on the design of supervisory frameworks and contribute to research on consensus-building, heterogeneous group membership, and computational modeling.     

Managing incidental findings in human subjects research: analysis and recommendations.

No consensus yet exists on how to handle incidental findings (IFs) in human subjects research. Yet empirical studies document IFs in a wide range of research studies, where IFs are findings beyond the aims of the study that are of potential health or reproductive importance to the individual research participant. This paper reports recommendations of a two-year project group funded by NIH to study how to manage IFs in genetic and genomic research, as well as imaging research. We conclude that researchers have an obligation to address the possibility of discovering IFs in their protocol and communications with the IRB, and in their consent forms and communications with research participants. Researchers should establish a pathway for handling IFs and communicate that to the IRB and research participants. We recommend a pathway and categorize IFs into those that must be disclosed to research participants, those that may be disclosed, and those that should not be disclosed.     

Psychological Injury and Law: Special Issue Epilogue

To conclude the special series in the issue, which marks the end of the first volume of the journal, Psychological Injury and Law, the epilogue highlights its major goals and contributions. The special issue takes the field in more diverse directions. It demonstrates the multiple research and practice foci that are emerging in the field and its interdisciplinarity, from the law and forensics to practice and treatment. The field needs to view the person in context and not from one side or the other of the adversarial divide.     

What happens when a reform works? The need to study unanticipated consequences of mandatory processing of domestic violence

One of the primary facets of the sociology of law is concerned with the relationships between formal rules and regulations having the force of governmental social control and the values, norms and practices of those who enforce them (or not). This “law in action” perspective enables research to test out the differential impact on legal decisions of both formal and informal aspects of social control (Hawkins, 1992). One of the limitations of recent work on domestic violence is that it focuses too narrowly on one or two negative sanctions, e.g., arrest or restraining orders, to the exclusion of the other options and the mix of formal and informal decisions in the criminal justice system as a whole (Reiss, 1974). This research attempts through a close analysis of the workings of the Quincy, Massachusetts criminal justice system in response to domestic violence, to identify the consequences, unanticipated and anticipated, of decisions made in several domains (public, police, prosecutors, and courts) of the criminal justice system. This study uses in-depth interviews with batterers, victims and criminal justice agency and related personnel as well as agency policies, training materials and records to examine possible unintended consequences of aggressive intervention in cases of domestic violence. This study will explore the impact of the Quincy Domestic Violence Program, considered to be a national model, on the lives of victims and offenders who are treated by the court. We have selected the District Court at Quincy, Massachusetts as our research site. It has a well deserved national reputation treating abusers systematically from the initial intake by arresting officers through close supervision in probation.