Encouraging Residential Moves to Opportunity Neighborhoods: An Experiment Testing Incentives Offered to Housing Voucher Recipients

Substantial benefits can accrue from living in low-poverty neighborhoods, yet approximately 80% of the 2.2 million Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) recipients rent homes in moderate- or high-poverty census tracts. The Chicago Regional Housing Choice Initiative tested several ways to promote opportunity moves. It included the first experiment that tests whether two types of light-touch incentives induce opportunity moves for HCV recipients who had requested a moving voucher. Based on the 2,005 HCV recipients in the study, we found that neither the offer of a $500 grant nor the offer of a $500 grant coupled with free mobility counseling induced opportunity moves. The receipt of mobility counseling also did not boost opportunity moves. Regardless of the type of offer, 11%–12% of participants moved to opportunity neighborhoods. Despite requesting a moving voucher, half of the study participants remained in place, indicating significant barriers to moving. We offer potential reasons for the results and conclude with two recommended pilots to increase opportunity moves.     

Supportive Community Resources Are Associated with Lower Risk of Substance Use among Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Questioning Adolescents in Minnesota

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Research has indicated that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer/questioning (LGBQ) adolescents have disproportionately high rates of substance use compared to...     

Haplotype analysis for Irish ancestry

Forensic haplotype analysis of the male Y chromosome is currently used to establish the number of male donors in sexual assaults, the number of male bleeders in blood pattern analysis, and for ancestry correlation to genetic founder populations in biogeographic studies. In forensic laboratory applications, its primary use is for DNA profile generation with trace amounts of male DNA in the presence of excess female DNA (e.g. spermatozoa identification, male component of fingernail scrapings). Our study supports the potential use of the Y chromosome in a “dragnet” approach (most haplotypes are unique) similar to that described by Kayser in 2017 for solving a cold case sex assault and homicide in The Netherlands. Our study also researched the potential for the identification of an ancestral Irish genetic “footprint” linked to surname O’Brien and identified multiple founder group origins in Ireland and England as well as three samples with the Dal Riata (a Gaelic overkingdom) ancestral haplotype. This study indicates correlation to ancestral Irish ancestry by haplotype but not conclusively to the O’Brien surname.     

Documenting Disparity in Minority Contracting: Legal Requirements and Recommendations for Policy Makers

The challenge of advancing policy goals and public administration is compounded when legal compliance rests on data and complex analysis. This is true of disparity studies that support local government‐sponsored minority contracting programs. How can local governments prepare to work with such programs in this complex environment? The authors analyze several court cases challenging minority contracting programs and illustrate the difficulty of administering public programs at the juncture of public policy goals, subtle changes in law, and demands for quality statistical analysis. Many public agencies, especially at the local level, are not prepared to address the data requirements demanded by these programs. To help with this challenge, the authors develop a set of guiding principles to help practitioners satisfy the legal requirements and meet the policy goals of minority contracting and similar programs. This includes a new emphasis on continuous gathering of valid, local‐level data.     

Common Sense, Competence, and Talent in the Public Service in the USA: Finding The Right Mix In A Complex World

In the career civil service the US federal government has long been guided by a merit system. This article traces how the principle of merit in appointment and promotion has developed since the nineteenth century and examines contemporary applications of competency frameworks in the US – their development, character, strengths and weaknesses. If core competency discussions and frameworks are to have a broader impact at both the government wide and the agency level, the frameworks will have to be disentangled. Existing notions of competencies for the political appointees, the leadership echelons of the career service, the rest of the career service, the entire government, central agencies, individual agencies, and badly needed future leaders not only suggest superhuman abilities, but also contain seriously conflicting expectations.     

Object relations in criminal psychopaths

Although many empirical studies have documented the range and severity of problems caused by psychopaths, considerably less attention has focused on understanding its origins. Efforts to treat this potentially dangerous population have been equally frustrating, as psychotherapeutic approaches have almost always proven ineffectual. Because of the limited understanding of the psychological and interpersonal dynamics underlying psychopathy, the authors sought to assess the extent to which object relations theory could inform our understanding of psychopathy. In addition to eliciting background information, 74 men sentenced to probation following a criminal conviction were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version, a clinician-rated measure of psychopathy, and were administered the BORI, a self-report measure of object relations. Results showed significant correlations between object relations dimensions, psychopathy scores, and childhood environment data. Furthermore, object relations scores added to the prediction of psychopathy even after demographic and behavioral variables were considered, suggesting that object relations deficits comprise a significant component of psychopathy. Results suggest that psychopaths harbor profound underlying psychosocial damage including intense anxiety, anger, bitterness, and resentment. Implications for interventions and future research are discussed.