Police psychology: The influence of Daubert and its progeny

In the current legal atmosphere, any practicing professionals, including police psychologists, may expect to have their decisions challenged in court. If such a challenge is not met, it may have a disastrous financial and reputational impact for both the psychologist (and other expert consultant) and the employer or contractor by whom the psychologist has been retained. The rules for expert witness qualification throughout the nation have been very strongly effected by the introduction of the Federal Rules of Evidence in 1975 and subsequent case law, particularly theDaubert, Joiner, andKumho Tire Supreme Court decisions. This article examines the history of the development of theDaubert Standard and proposes principles for potential expert witnesses in order to minimize the likelihood of aversive consequences, such as disqualification or malpractice accusations. Authors' Note: Cary Rostow, Ph.D., is president of Matrix, Inc., Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is in private practice in Baton Rouge. He holds a Diplomate in Police and Criminal Psychology from the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology. Robert Davis, Ph.D., is executive vicepresident and director of science, research, and development, for Matrix, Inc., and has a private practice in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He holds a Diplomate from the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology. Judith Levy, Ph.D., is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Matrix, Inc.     

National Identity or National Interest? Scottish,English and Welsh Attitudes to the Constitutional Debate

This article analyses political attitudes to the union in England, Scotland and Wales after the Scottish independence referendum. Using public opinion data, we explore constitutional preferences and perceptions of national grievance, before examining the role that national identity plays in structuring preferences. Our evidence shows that considerable demand exists for nationally demarcated forms of government within the UK, although these constitutional preferences do not translate in support for policy diversity across the UK. We also find evidence that these constitutional preferences relate closely to national identity, but relate also to appeals to national interest.     

Whither Power in Public Administration? Attainment,Dissipation, and Loss

Norton Long's 1949 essay, “Power and Administration,” has a complicated legacy. First, analysis reveals both support for and important refinements of Long's arguments since the article's publication. Second, Long's claim has proven problematic that competition among agencies for power would bring more coordination and a cross‐agency sense of purpose to the federal government. Third, the bureaucratic pluralism that he explained and defended produced special interest biases that were off‐putting to large segments of citizens and thus helped create an unsupportive political environment for needed capacity building in the federal government. Fourth, by not considering how institutions “coevolve,” Long failed to warn that “horizontal power” building by individual agencies would provoke efforts by elected officials to enhance their control over bureaucracy in ways that, over time, diminished their collective sources of power. Finally, much remains to be done before what Long called a “realistic science of administration” incorporating the “budgeting of power” exists in public administration.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Citizen Participation in City Governance: Experiences From Vietnam

The radical political and economic reforms sweeping through former socialist countries during the last several decades have facilitated economic growth and urbanization. During this period of market reform and urbanization, citizen participation is greatly needed yet easily lost to other priorities. We employ stakeholder theory to examine whether citizen participation differs between large and small cities and between the poor and non‐poor people in Vietnam. Using data from a sample of citizens in five centrally managed cities, we found that citizens in large cities and citizens that belong to “unofficially poor” groups participate less. For policy makers, this implies that citizen participation should be of central importance in the management of current cities' expansions. In addition, the categorization of “poor households” needs to be closely monitored to minimize the risk of de facto poor households being excluded from the group. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using Bayesian Aldrich‐McKelvey Scaling to Study Citizens' Ideological Preferences and Perceptions

Aldrich‐McKelvey scaling is a powerful method that corrects for differential‐item functioning (DIF) in estimating the positions of political stimuli (e.g., parties and candidates) and survey respondents along a latent policy dimension from issue scale data. DIF arises when respondents interpret issue scales (e.g., the standard liberal‐conservative scale) differently and distort their placements of the stimuli and themselves. We develop a Bayesian implementation of the classical maximum likelihood Aldrich‐McKelvey scaling method that overcomes some important shortcomings in the classical procedure. We then apply this method to study citizens' ideological preferences and perceptions using data from the 2004–2012 American National Election Studies and the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Our findings indicate that DIF biases self‐placements on the liberal‐conservative scale in a way that understates the extent of polarization in the contemporary American electorate and that citizens have remarkably accurate perceptions of the ideological positions of senators and Senate candidates.     

You’ve got to fight to be white: the rural foundation of the new militia for race control

In this paper, we situate the recent rise of racialized and often violent political discourse within a framework of a class-based conception of nature and property. In this theoretical work, we contribute to thinking about how Whites are racially constituted by showing how an understanding of whiteness among the far right is significantly linked to narratives surrounding rural spaces as havens of individualism and in sharp contrast to the perceived multiculturalism of the city. In developing our argument, we utilize public statements made by Ted Nugent as observable examples of this far-right, violent, and racialized rhetoric. We argue that the far right is able to create a common ground with moderate conservatives around a shared understanding of rural places as embodiments of virtuous white culture, private property, and individualism. This politicized whiteness project, we argue, helps to galvanize and strengthen a conservative coalition while simultaneously pulling their collective ideology further to the right.     

Animal rights is a social justice issue

The literature on social justice, and social justice movements themselves, routinely ignore nonhuman animals as legitimate subjects of social justice. Yet, as with other social justice movements, the contemporary animal liberation movement has as its focus the elimination of institutional and systemic domination and oppression. In this paper, I explicate the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the contemporary animal rights movement, and situate it within the framework of social justice. I argue that those committed to social justice – to minimizing violence, exploitation, domination, objectification, and oppression – are equally obligated to consider the interests of all sentient beings, not only those of human beings.     

Sexually violent predators and civil commitment: is selection evidence based?

Sexual offenses represent an alarming proportion of crimes committed yearly. To address these concerns, several states, including South Carolina (SC), have enacted laws requiring sexually violent predators (SVPs) to be civilly committed to treatment. To date, no published study has examined sexual offenders recommended for treatment in SC. This study used a specially designed statewide database (SC-SVP research database) to determine which offender and offense characteristics were associated with increased likelihood of being recommended for civil commitment. Factors correlated with being more likely to be recommended included: being of a younger age at time of evaluation, prior sex convictions, having related and unrelated victims, a higher number of victims, frequent substance use, and a history of suicide attempts. Prior sex convictions, having both related and non-related victims, and a higher total number of victims align with characteristics associated with sexual recidivism. Frequent substance abuse and a history of suicide attempts do not mirror previous findings regarding sexual recidivism. These findings present new information regarding the civil commitment process of offenders being committed to the SC-SVP treatment program, characterize types of offenders committed to SC-SVP treatment program, and provide a foundation for using a computerized database in conducting sex offender research.