THE EFFECTS OF LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT BLOCK GRANTS ON SERIOUS CRIME*

Research Summary The Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG) Program was second only to the Community‐Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program in its funding levels. Some $3 billion was dispensed to local jurisdictions to reduce crime and improve public safety; yet the effects of LLEBG funding on crime have been all but ignored. Accordingly, panel data from more than 5,000 cities covering a 12‐year period (1990–2001) were collected, and index crime rates were regressed on LLEBG funding and appropriate demographic controls. Additional controls for police levels and other federal grants were also introduced, proper checks for endogeneity of grants (and police levels) were performed, and the models were subjected to an array of robustness checks. A consistent message emerged: LLEBG Program funding was associated with significant reductions in serious crime. Policy Implications Although LLEBG funding seemed to reduce serious crime, the results also revealed that the decrease did not occur through the hiring of additional police officers, even though many funds were used for that purpose. Other mechanisms were thus at work, but the data did not provide insights into what these mechanisms were. In any case, every $1 in LLEBG funding per capita was associated with approximately 59 fewer index crimes per 100,000 people. When combined with the findings from recent studies of the effects of community policing grants on crime, this study suggests additional federal support for local law‐enforcement agencies should be considered.     

Klagebefugnis anerkannter Naturschutzvereine bei der Genehmigung von Bauvorhaben im Außenbereich

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Hyperthermia deaths in Finland in 1970-86

All cases in which hyperthermia had been determined as the basic cause of death during the period 1970-86 were collected from the records of the Central Statistical Office of Finland. Of the total of 230 cases, 228 were included in the present study; the two remaining victims died abroad, and no autopsy was performed in Finland. Most of the hyperthermia deaths occurred while the decedent was taking a sauna bath; most decedents were men aged 42-62 years. An increase in the total number of hyperthermia deaths, and of male victims, was noted from the beginning of the 1970s onward; the number of female victims remained at a relatively steady level throughout, with the exception of a slight rise in 1986. Acute alcohol consumption was detected in most of the victims; in some cases there was also a reference to chronic alcoholism or recent long-term heavy drinking. The findings suggest that in addition to the acute hazardous effect of ethanol on thermoregulatory mechanisms, the long-term consumption of alcohol may have promoted fatal hyperthermia in these subjects.     

Creating Broader Research Impacts through Boundary Organizations

Climate science research documents and predicts changes in the physical environment. This information informs policy decisions and public programs through the design of human interventions that promote adaptive management. Since the early 2000s, federal funding has led to the creation of transdisciplinary regional climate workgroups to facilitate integrative knowledge coproduction and promote shared use of research results by scientific and nonscientific stakeholders. Labeled “boundary organizations,” these workgroups are tasked with facilitating partnerships between climate science researchers and practitioners with expertise in multiple physical and social science disciplines. When these organizations are successful, scientific findings and practitioner experiences are integrated to synergistically create usable knowledge about adaptive management that provides direct public value and creates broader societal impacts. This article explores the broader impacts provided by these boundary organizations through the establishment of regional research agendas and the communication of research results in ways that influence regional public policy and promote adaptive management.     

What Gets Measured,Gets Done: Understanding and Addressing Middle‐Class Challenges

Middle‐class families face a range of challenges, including uneven income growth, imposing child care costs, and affordability gaps for higher education. The ideal policies by which policy makers and public administrators can aid the middle class are far from obvious. Policy solutions are likely to mirror our government and population, meaning that they will be decentralized and varied. Achieving a “growing and thriving middle class” requires understanding the composition of the middle class across the country. Benchmarking and measuring the middle‐class condition at the state and substate levels is critical to crafting and adopting effective policy solutions. This Viewpoint essay highlights the Colorado context to demonstrate the measurement of the middle class and tracking of its lived experiences.     

How Government Reactions to Violence Worsen Social Welfare: Evidence from Peru

Dissident violence inflicts many costs on society, but some of the longest‐lasting consequences for civilians may be indirect, due to the government's response. We explore how government policy responses affect social welfare, specifically through budgetary shifts. Using subnational violence and budgeting data for Peru, we demonstrate that attacks on soldiers during the budget negotiation period drive a shift from local social services, especially health, to defense. One soldier fatality implies a 0.13 percentage point reduction in the local health budget share (2008–12). Health budget cuts due to a single soldier fatality result in 76 predicted additional infant deaths 2 years later. We show that the effect on health budgeting operates through decreases in women's use of health facilities and postnatal services. We offer evidence that Peru's coercive response indirectly harms civilians due to butter‐to‐guns budgetary shifts. Our results identify a budgetary mechanism that translates dissident violence into a deterioration in social welfare.     

Cost‐Effectiveness of Early Childhood Interventions to Enhance Preschool: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Head Start Centers Enrolling Historically Underserved Populations

We evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of two early childhood interventions that use instructional coaching and parent coaching as levers for improvement. The study design allows us to compare the individual effects of each intervention as well as their combined effect on student outcomes. We find that teachers receiving instructional coaching improve their use of evidence‐based instructional practices, while families receiving parent coaching show increases in numerous responsive parenting behaviors associated with positive child outcomes. Both interventions demonstrate positive impacts on students, but only parent coaching shows statistically significant effects across a range of student outcomes. Instructional coaching alone is substantially less costly and may therefore be the most cost‐effective of the three treatment conditions; however, small sample sizes limit our ability to reach definitive conclusions. Policy simulations suggest that implementing these interventions could raise the overall cost‐effectiveness of Head Start by at least 16 percent.