“Not Imminent in My Domain!” County Leaders’ Attitudes toward Eminent Domain Decisions

Eminent domain is an urgent problem facing local government administrators and scholars throughout the United States. However, the literature is sparse regarding how local leaders make decisions on this hot‐button issue. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report noted a lack of data about local governments’ use of their eminent domain authority. A survey of county managers in North Carolina was conducted to redress this apparent knowledge gap. Although the findings are primarily generalizable only to other Dillon’s rule states, such data demonstrate that eminent domain applies more often for “narrow” (public use) purposes, such as water and sewer systems, than for “broad” (public good) purposes, such as economic development. Current and future property considerations also influence eminent domain decisions. [A] law that takes property from A, and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. —Associate Justice Samuel Chase, majority opinion, Calder v. Bull (1798)     

The relationship of stress, impulsivity, and beliefs to drug use severity in a sample of women prison inmates

There is a paucity of research examining substance abuse issues among women prisoners. This study explored relationships between perceived stress, impulsivity, and beliefs in the efficacy of drugs as these variables pertain to self-reported drug use severity. Women prisoners (N = 100) participated in structured face-to-face interviews based on established research instruments. Although there was no significant correlation between demographic characteristics and substance use severity, positive relationships were found between substance use severity, perceived stress, impulsivity, and beliefs. A multiple linear model was estimated regressing drug use severity on beliefs, impulsivity, and perceived stress. Only the measures of beliefs and impulsivity were significant correlates of drug use severity. Implications are discussed for prison substance abuse programming and future research.     

Gender-specific factors associated with community substance abuse treatment utilization among incarcerated substance users

This article describes the independent correlates of preincarceration community substance abuse treatment utilization for male and female offenders currently participating in prison-based treatment. As part of the National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies cooperative agreement, this protocol was implemented by four collaborating research centers. Males with a history of treatment utilization were more likely to be older, to have used crack, and to have had a greater number of arrests, and they were less likely to be arrested for a violent charge. Females with previous treatment were more likely to have been hospitalized for a health condition and were significantly more likely to have lived with someone else before prison rather than in their own home. These findings suggest that factors associated with preincarceration treatment utilization differ by gender, which may have important implications for correctional-based treatment assessment, reentry planning, and transitional case management.     

A Pilot Study on the Diagnosis of Fatal Electrocution by the Detection of Myocardial Microhemorrhages

In electrocutions, death may be caused by alterations in the heart conduction system provoking ventricular fibrillation. This study aims to identify histological cardiac markers of high- and low-voltage electrocution. Two groups of decedents were evaluated: group A included 14 fatalities caused by high- or low-voltage electrocution and group B (control) included 14 fatalities due to other traumatic or disease causes. Myocardial sampling with microscopic examination was performed on all the hearts using the hematoxylin and eosin and Masson's trichrome stains to investigate morphological characteristics that could indicate the damage caused by high- and low-voltage electrocutions. Interstitial myocardial hemorrhagic infiltration was the only differentiating finding, which was shown only in high-voltage electrocution. This pathological finding has not been previously reported, and it may be specific to high-voltage electrocution deaths. Further studies are warranted.     

Examining the Mediating Roles of Affective and Normative Commitment in the Relationship between Transformational Leadership Practices and Turnover Intention of Government Employees

The purpose of this study was to investigate the indirect effect of transformational leadership practices on turnover intention of government employees through affective and normative commitment to the organization. A total of 201 respondents were surveyed from the state and local governments in the east region of a mid-Atlantic state in the United States. The results from bootstrapping mediation analysis supported that transformational leadership fosters employees’ affective and normative commitment, which in turn lowers their turnover intention. Furthermore, the strength of the indirect effect of transformational leadership on turnover intention tends to be greater for baby boomers than other generations.     

End of Big Government: Is It Happening in the Nordic Countries?

This paper offers a discussion on how to assess government in the Nordic countries. It shows that an answer to the question of whether big government is ending in the Nordic countries depends on how the words ‘big’ and ‘government’ are defined. ‘Bigness’ can be defined in terms of size or largeness (i.e., number of employees, relative costs, and spheres of involvement). It can also be defined in terms of its importance in society, which concerns the quality of government service (i.e., output and outcome of governmental effort), representation of the will of the people, and social representation. An understanding of the term government also influences how the question of the end of big government is formulated. Classical definitions focus on the need for government to be in control of its territory and in command of the tasks in its sphere of responsibility. Government ability to control and command are now being challenged by unclear horizontal and vertical separation of powers, regionalization and globalization, decentralization and devolution, and involvement of nongovernmental units in the policy steering process (i.e., governance). The general conclusions offered in the paper are that there are trends toward the end of large-size Nordic government at the central level but not at the other government levels. Government is even becoming larger at the lower levels. Also, the European level is becoming bigger in terms of certain measures of size. A different answer isgiven for government importance. All layers of government still show high levels of efficiency and effectiveness and education levels for civil servants, good reflection of the will of the people as well as improving social representation of women. Social representation is more problematic for other marginalized groups in society. Government control and command is impacted at all levels by the trends mentioned above. Nordic government is more porous, and this is changing the prerequisites for Nordic big government. The results of the study should not be interpreted to mean that the extensive welfare states in the Nordic area are without problems. There are problems with citizen efficacy and public trust.     

Invariance of Measures of Prevention Program Effectiveness: A Replication

Recent literature has suggested that measures of risk and protective factorsfor delinquency and substance use are not equally reliable or valid acrossgender and ethnic groups and has recommended differentiated programming andculturally specific evaluation methods. Three data sets containing up tofive ethnic groups were used to determine the degree to which risk andprotective factors are equally reliable and valid predictors of drug use anddelinquency across gender and ethnic groups. Congeneric measurement modelsand structural equation models were evaluated to determine if the factorstructures for these measures and their covariances with measures of druguse and delinquency were equivalent across gender and ethnic groups. Half ofthe risk and protective factors included in this analysis were found to beequally reliable across gender and ethnic groups. When controlling forreliability differences, all of the risk and protective factors were foundto predict both drug use and delinquncy for all gender and ethnic groups. Interms of the magnitude of these associations, no substantive differenceswere found in the validity of risk and protective factors for drug use anddelinquency. Differences in the validity of risk and protective factors weremore prevalent for delinquency than for drug use. However, all differenceswere substantively trivial. We conclude that measures of prevention programeffectiveness are invariant across gender and ethnic groups.     

On Shared Suffering: Judicial Intimacy in the Rural Northland

Rural state and tribal court judges in the upper US Midwest offer an embodied alternative to prevailing understandings of “access to justice.” Owing to the high density of social acquaintanceship, coupled with the rise in unrepresented litigants and the impossibility of most proposed state access to justice initiatives, what ultimately makes a rural courtroom accessible to parties without counsel is the judge. I draw on over four years of ethnographic fieldwork and an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to illuminate the lived consequences and global implications of judges' responses, which can be read as grassroots‐level creativity, as resistance, or simply as “getting by.”