Extent, trends, and perpetrators of prostitution-related homicide in the United States

Prostitute women have the highest homicide victimization rate of any set of women ever studied. We analyzed nine diverse homicide data sets to examine the extent, trends, and perpetrators of prostitution-related homicide in the United States. Most data sources substantially under-ascertained prostitute homicides. As estimated from a conservative capture-recapture analysis, 2.7% of female homicide victims in the United States between 1982 and 2000 were prostitutes. Frequencies of recorded prostitute and client homicides increased substantially in the late 1980s and early 1990s; nearly all of the few observed pimp homicides occurred before the late 1980s. These trends may be linked to the rise of crack cocaine use. Prostitutes were killed primarily by clients, clients were killed mainly by prostitutes, and pimps were killed predominantly by pimps. Another conservative estimate suggests that serial killers accounted for 35% of prostitute homicides. Proactive surveillance of, and evidence collection from, clients and prostitutes might enhance the investigation of prostitution-related homicide.     

Book Reviews

Book Review in This Article:
L aw and E thics in the P ractice of P sychiatry . Edited by Charles K. Hofling, M.D.
M ale P ractice : H ow D octors M anipulate W omen . By Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.
N urse P ower . By Karen O'Rourke and Salley Barton     

ADOPTING PERSONNEL PRODUCTIVITY INNOVATIONS IN AMERICAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Improving the productivity of public employees has increasingly attracted the attention of urban policymakers and administrators concerned about the quality, cost, and efficiency of governmental service delivery. A national survey of local personnel managers was undertaken to ascertain the degree of jurisdictional receptivity to personnel-based management tools, preferred approaches, and the most serious policy and institutional barriers to the implementation of these changes. Research findings concerning the adoption of personnel reforms are generally consistent with those reported in prior studies except for an increase in the utilization of job enrichment techniques by local administrators. The reluctance of labor organizations to accept productivity bargaining and the unwillingness of local authorities to consider financial incentive plans for governmental executives are cited b y our respondents as the chief obstacles to greater managerial effectiveness.     

The influence of length of marriage and fidelity status on perception of marital rape

To what extent does the length of the marriage or the wife's faithfulness to the husband influence the perception of responsibility or trauma in marital rape? In the current study, each participant was presented with one of four marital rape vignettes. The vignettes varied only in the length of the marriage (3 years or 15 years) and the fidelity status of the wife (continuously faithful or involved in an ongoing sexual affair with another man). Results indicate that both length of marriage and fidelity status significantly influence perceptions of marital rape. Specifically, participants assigned greater responsibility for the rape to unfaithful wives than to faithful wives. This finding is particularly salient for wives in long-term marriages as compared to wives in short-term marriages. Additionally, participants perceived rapes within long-term marriages as more traumatic than rapes within short-term marriages.     

When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize

Researchers in moral psychology and social justice have agreed that morality is about matters of harm, rights, and justice. On this definition of morality, conservative opposition to social justice programs appears to be immoral, and has been explained as a product of various non-moral processes such as system justification or social dominance orientation. In this article we argue that, from an anthropological perspective, the moral domain is usually much broader, encompassing many more aspects of social life and valuing institutions as much or more than individuals. We present theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that there are five psychological systems that provide the foundations for the world’s many moralities. The five foundations are psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.

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Public Values in Special Districts: A Survey of Managerial Commitment

Special districts are increasingly important in the landscape of public organizations and now constitute about 40 percent of all U.S. jurisdictions. Yet little is known about the public value commitments of managers in special districts. This systematic study of senior managers in large special districts finds that support for public values is strong and similar to that of senior managers in cities. This study explores the effect of concomitant commitments to “businesslike” values on public values and the impact of concomitant commitments on perceived organizational outcomes. Though a positive relationship exists between commitments to public and businesslike values among senior managers, the authors find evidence that both too much and too little commitment to businesslike values has a negative impact on perceived organizational outcomes, which are furthered by strong commitment to public values. This article demonstrates that special districts are a relevant but underresearched area of public administration.     

Democratic Accountability and Retrospective Voting: A Laboratory Experiment

Understanding the incentives of politicians requires understanding the nature of voting behavior. I conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate whether voters focus on the problem of electoral selection or if they instead focus on electoral sanctioning. If voters are forward‐looking but uncertain about politicians’ unobservable characteristics, then it is rational to focus on selection. But doing so undermines democratic accountability because selection renders sanctioning an empty threat. In contrast to rational choice predictions, the experimental results indicate a strong behavioral tendency to use a retrospective voting rule. Additional experiments support the interpretation that retrospective voting is a simple heuristic that voters use to cope with a cognitively difficult inference and decision problem and, in addition, suggest that voters have a preference for accountability. The results pose a challenge for theories of electoral selection and voter learning and suggest new interpretations of empirical studies of economic and retrospective voting.