Reputational inmate leaders: Some comparative contact patterns

A small number of studies have presented data on the sociolegal correlates of inmate leadership. These studies have based their results on traditional designs of data collection, including official records and interview questionnaires. The literature has not captured reciprocal contact patterns between inmate leaders and followers, nor has research addressed the question of how leaders differ from nonleader inmates on behavioral dynamics. This article presents the results of a videotaping procedure which captures leader contact patterns in task-related decision making. The general findings support the behavioral leadership studies performed on noninmate populations and suggest that leadership is a transcendental quality which cannot be explained by the functional model of inmate subculture.     

Public affairs perceptions and practices: a ten‐year (1993–2003) comparison

• The past ten years have been marked by significant changes in technology, politics and economics. These changes have affected the social and regulatory environments in which public affairs (PA) officers operate. This paper describes how PA officers at 74 large US corporations perceive these environmental changes and how PA activities have changed from ten years ago.
• The data reported in this paper were collected first in 1993, then again in 2003. The results show a rather even split between respondents: half (39) believe that their political/regulatory environment is simpler today than was the case ten years ago, half (33) believe that it has become more complicated; half (35) believe there is less social interest in their operations and half (32) believe there is more. The paper then examines the changes in PA activities and performance over the past ten years
• Overall, PA officers are more pleased with their performance (at least in managing social issues and achieving social objectives) than they were in 1993.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Detecting Spatial Movement of Intra-Region Crime Patterns Over Time

Many of the traditional measures of the degree to which crime patterns change over space and time have limitations. In particular most are unable to determine any change in spatial crime pattern within an areal unit. Usually studies measure the change in crime levels in contiguous areas (expressed as discrete sub-divisions of a study area), but this can become problematic due to difficulties such as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). This paper describes a technique developed to allow researchers to examine intra-study region changes in crime patterns between two time periods without the need to aggregate crime counts to within-city areal boundaries. The method presented uses a random point nearest neighbor test combined with a Monte Carlo simulation. The process resolves problems of patterning and the MAUP that are common with a number of spatial displacement and pattern movement studies. This technique is demonstrated with example data from a city-wide police burglary crackdown in the Australian capital.