Implementing pay reform in the public sector: Different approaches to flexible pay in sweden and the united states

A set of implementation criteria drawn from the United States experience provide a framework for examining pay reform in the Swedish public sector. The study finds that the Swedish approach is quite distinct and this may be attributable to unique features in the Swedish labor market. The reform toward flexible or individualized pay in government agencies appears to be based on an assumption of greater cost efficiency in human resource management and a broad unwillingness to employ objective measures of individual or organizational productivity. Consequently the study calls into question the utility of an analytical framework based on the Anglo-American experience for examining the Swedish case.     

A comparison of the effects of witnessing community violence and direct victimization among children in Cape Town, South Africa

This study is based on a sample of children from the Cape Town area in South Africa. The study compares the effects of witnessing school or neighborhood violence compared with being victimized in each context on psychological distress. The findings suggest that in the context of the school, victimization has a somewhat stronger effect on distress than witnessing violence. However, in the neighborhood, the opposite was the case. "Unknown locus of control" was also analyzed as a moderating variable. The findings are interpreted in the context of violence in South African society. The study also investigates the overlap between witnessing violence, victimization, and perpetration in the child's school and neighborhood. The vast majority of victims had been witnesses as well as perpetrators. Longitudinal research, which could track involvement in various forms of violence starting at a very early age, is needed to clearly assess the differential impact of each form of violence.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Abstract

A Handbook for Cultural Trustees: A Guide to the Role, Responsibilities and Functions of Boards of Trustees of Cultural Organizations in Canada , Marion Paquet, with Rory Ralston and Donna Cardinal. Waterloo, Ont.: University of Waterloo Press, 1987. 75 pages, $22.95. Reviewed by Brann J. Wry.

Bureaucratizing the Muse: Public Funds and the Culture Worker , Steven C. Dubin. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. 226 pages, index. Reviewed by George C. Koch and Joan Jeffri.     

Drug use in India: Historical traditions and current problems

By all accounts, drug abuse in India — as elsewhere around the world — is reaching near epidemic proportions. Although India has been a world producer of legal drugs for pharmaceutical markets, it also has an ancient tradition of using drugs in daily activities and ceremonial rituals. Only in recent years has this historically drug‐rich country developed a drug abuse problem. Because of its history of tolerance of drug use in culturally sanctioned activities, India offers a rich site for investigating the conditions that foster responsible and irresponsible use of drugs. Global efforts at crop reduction, interdiction, and criminal sanctions continue to be disappointing at best. A more realistic approach may be to identify factors that make drugs particularly alluring to some segments of the population and not to others. This approach emphasized responsible conduct in drug‐rich environments rather than depending on the increasingly unlikely eradication of the supply.     

Validating a novel tool for coding body worn camera footage of police-community member interactions

Objectives

This study aimed to validate a tool for coding police body-worn camera (BWC) footage to measure the dynamics of police–community encounters, including items related to community members, officer performance, and situational outcomes.

Methods

Over 1000 BWC videos were scored by five coders who participated in an iterative interrater reliability exercise to improve the agreement. Krippendorf's alphas and a multilevel simultaneous component analysis were used to assess interrater reliability and the component structure of ratings, respectively. Bootstrapped and multilevel exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to ascertain any underlying dimensions supporting officer and community member behavior, and cluster analyses were performed to examine whether interactions could be grouped into coherent categories.

Results

The lower bound of unweighted means of bootstrapped alphas ranged from 0.67 to 0.96 depending upon item type, and 21.60% of the total variance in raters was between-subjects. Factor analyses revealed only a single factor (“defensiveness”) underlying four items related to hostility directed toward officers by community members. Cluster analyses described seven categories that were highly overlapping but conceptually plausible with cluster silhouette means ranging from −0.06 to 0.13.

Conclusions

We validated a collection of interval-level coding metrics on a random sample of over 1000 interactions between police officers and community members recorded through BWCs. In doing so, we provide a roadmap for researchers and practitioners to effectively measure the dynamics of police–community encounters and officer performance within those encounters and a framework for addressing the validity and reliability of items in future studies involving the measurement of BWC footage.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of a police department’s early intervention system

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Police departments around the country are implementing Early Intervention Systems (EIS) to identify officers who may be exhibiting problematic or...     

Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot seen through a stronger lens: experimental results from high-fidelity laboratory simulations

Background

Research on racial bias in the United States includes findings that Americans tend to view blacks as more dangerous than whites. Some have argued that this bias provides a likely explanation for the disproportionate number of ethnic and racial minorities shot by police. One piece of evidence for this proposition comes from experimental work in which research participants push “shoot” or “don’t shoot” buttons when still images of people and objects that may or may not be weapons are presented in rapid succession. These studies have established that participants tend to subconsciously pair black individuals with weapons and white individuals with neutral objects. However, it is not clear from these studies that the subconscious racial bias identified by researchers affects actual decisions to shoot, perhaps because the techniques used to assess the bias-shooting link bear so little resemblance to real-world shootings.

Methods

This paper reports on the results of a novel laboratory experiment designed to overcome this critical limitation by using high-fidelity deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators to assess both subconscious and behavioral bias among 48 research participants, recruited from the general population.

Results

Study results suggest that subconscious associations between race and threat exhibited by participants are not linked to their shooting behavior.

Conclusions

The implications of this finding for understanding how race and ethnicity affect decisions to shoot, and for conducting empirical research on this important topic, are discussed.