Age of First Arrest,Sex, and Drug Use as Correlates of Adult Risk Behaviors Among Rural Women in Jails

Incarcerated women frequently report initiation of substance use and sexual encounters at an early age, and often engage in high-risk drug use and sexual behaviors as adults. This study examined the timing of first sex, drug use, and arrest, as well as their unique influences on specific risky behaviors in adulthood, among a high-risk population of rural women recruited from jails. Ages of initiation were all positively and significantly correlated, and each independently increased the likelihood of several risky behaviors in adulthood. Implications are discussed for screening, intervention, and treatment targeting high-risk women and girls in rural areas, particularly within criminal justice settings.     

The effect of community policing on fear and crime reduction,police legitimacy and job satisfaction: an empirical review of the evidence

Since the 1970s, community policing strategies or the language thereof have been purportedly initiated by a number of police departments nationwide to address notable issues such as crime, neighborhood disorder, and fear of crime. This policing philosophy has received considerable attention and support among scholars, police administrators, and criminal justice practitioners. This article synthesizes the available empirical evidence on the effectiveness of community policing initiatives using a variety of outcome measures. An overview of community policing is first provided with particular attention paid to its essence and objectives. Prior studies that have analyzed community policing effectiveness are then reviewed and assessed in terms of their methodological rigor and scientific merit. A discussion and future research considerations are presented to conclude.     

The Democratic Deficit in the States

We study how well states translate public opinion into policy. Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state‐level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. We show that policy is highly responsive to policy‐specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. But we also uncover a striking “democratic deficit”: policy is congruent with majority will only half the time. The analysis considers the influence of institutions, salience, partisan control of government, and interest groups on the magnitude and ideological direction of this democratic deficit. We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party—leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.     

Focal Points in Public Policy: Evidence from Voluntary Regulation

Numerous studies argue that law affects behavior “expressively”—such as when states create focal points that overcome the coordination difficulties firms face. We argue that governments help firms overcome coordination dilemmas by explicating a preferred strategy for firms weighing investment in voluntary regulation. Firms would prefer to coordinate on a common strategy as a way of reducing the costs of voluntary regulation and increasing its benefits. We test our hypothesis about the efficacy of focal point selection with the European Union's (EU) advocacy of the Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) over a rival environmental management system, International Standards Organization (ISO) 14001. EU nations have statistically significantly lower rates of ISO 14001 certification than comparable countries at least in part due to their advocacy of EMAS. These results emphasize the role the state plays in coordinating business behavior even when such policy is simply expressive.     

Race,Ethnicity, and Perceived Minority Police Presence: Examining Perceptions of Criminal Injustice Among Los Angeles Residents

Although the conventional wisdom holds that increasing the number of minority officers will enhance residents' perceptions of police and the criminal justice system, further systematic investigation of this hypothesis may be needed. Building on the group‐position thesis, the representative bureaucracy theory, and prior research, this study investigates whether perceived minority police presence within residents' neighborhoods affects residents' perceptions of criminal injustice, whether this effect is more pronounced for minority residents and in minority neighborhoods, and whether perceived minority police presence has a stronger effect on perceptions of criminal injustice for minority residents in more integrated and white neighborhoods than minority residents in minority neighborhoods. Analyses of data collected from Los Angeles, CA, show that residents perceive a lower level of criminal injustice when they report that officers in their neighborhoods are not white‐dominated, and this finding is not dependent on the respondent's race/ethnicity or the racial/ethnic composition of the neighborhood. In addition, perceived minority police presence seems to have a weak to no effect on residents' perceptions of criminal injustice for Hispanic communities. We discuss these findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy.     

Next Step: State Funding for the Parties?

The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 marked the most comprehensive and radical overhaul of British party finance for over 100 years. It instituted reforms in many areas, with the notable exception of the comprehensive extension of state funding for political parties. However, despite the radicalism of the Act, questions have already arisen as to whether further state funding should occur. This article argues that in order to examine the case for more comprehensive state funding, policy–makers need to look beyond the current calls and make a decision by evaluating several criteria on the basis of empirical evidence rather than assumptions. First, however, it is worth outlining the stage we are at presently by summarising the new Act, looking at its impact to date and examining the claims made in recent episodes which have led to calls for more comprehensive state funding of political parties.     

Development Ballot Measures, Interest Group Endorsements, and the Political Geography of Growth Preferences

In response to rapid population and economic growth, many communities have turned to voter initiatives to resolve their land use disputes. We find that despite strong public concern about growth, voters often support measures that allow or encourage new development. We consider the sources of this support by analyzing patterns of voting on a range of prodevelopment ballot initiatives. These initiatives provide a valuable opportunity to understand how economic self-interest, geography, interest group endorsements, and public goods affect citizen support for development policies. We find that interest group endorsements significantly increase public support for new development. These endorsements help voters evaluate the personal impact of complex development proposals and allow voters to behave in ways that reflect a high degree of sophistication .