The Impact of Officer and Agency Characteristics on the Likelihood of Arrest in Domestic Violence Situations among Rural Law Enforcement Officers

Domestic violence cuts across all demographic groups. The factors related to why police officers arrest in some domestic violence situations but not others have been often studied. Little research, however, has been conducted on the arrest views of rural police officers. One hundred seventy line officers in six rural Midwestern counties were surveyed to determine the impact of officer personal characteristics and agency type on arrest decisions in various hypothetical domestic violence scenarios. First, the same situational factors appeared to be important in shaping the arrest decision in domestic violence calls of rural officers as have previously been found with urban officers. Second, the characteristics of officers and the type of agency had some impact on the likelihood of arrest, particularly if there was evidence of a physical assault. Third, the presence of evidence of a physical assault helped shape the arrest decisions of rural officers. Fourth, situational factors were more important than officer characteristics and the type of agency. Nancy Hogan and Shannon Barton contributed equally to the paper. The authors thank Janet Lambert for editing and proofreading the paper. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.     

Jurors'Evaluations of Expert Testimony: Judging the Messenger and the Message

Jurors are laypersons with no specific expert knowledge, yet they are routinely placed in situations in which they need to critically evaluate complex expert testimony. This paper examines jurors'reactions to experts who testify in civil trials and the factors jurors identify as important to expert credibility. Based on in-depth qualitative analyses of interviews with 55 jurors in 7 civil trials, we develop a comprehensive model of the key factors jurors incorporate into the process of evaluating expert witnesses and their testimony. Contrary to the frequent criticism that jurors primarily evaluate expert evidence in terms of its subjective characteristics, the results of our study indicate that jurors consider both the messenger and the message in the course of evaluating the expert's credibility.     

The differential predictive validity of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory: the role of gender

Most criminogenic risk assessments are developed and empirically validated on samples of boys or samples comprised of mostly boys, and subsequently applied to girls. Using a sample of male (n = 1,267) and female (n = 453) probationers, the purpose of the current study was to examine the potentially differential performance of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) and the instrument’s eight domains for female juvenile offenders. Findings revealed gender differences in the predictive validity of the YLS/CMI in which girls scored significantly higher on the risk assessment, but recidivated at significantly lower rates than boys two years following the administration of the assessment. The predictive validity of the instrument was impacted by these gender differences in which the YLS/CMI total score was a better predictor of recidivism for boys (area under the curve (AUC) = .623) than girls (AUC = .565). The only subscales that significantly predicted recidivism for girls were the family (AUC = .607) and personality (AUC = .572) domains, whereas all of the subscales significantly predicted recidivism for boys. Directions for future research as well as gender-responsive assessment, programming, and policy implications are discussed.     

Mulling over “muddling through” again

Gottfredson, Michael R. and Don M. Decision-making in Criminal Justice: Toward The Rational Exercise of Discretion, Ballinger Publishing Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980.

Levine, James P., Michael C. Musheno, and Dennis J. Palumbo. Criminal Justice: A Public Policy Approach, Harcourt Brace Jovanavich Inc., New York, 1980.

Misner, Gordon E. Criminal Justice Studies: Their Transdisciplinary Nature, The C.V. Mosby Company, St. Louis, 1981.

Silberman, Charles E. Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice, Random House, New York, 1978.

Schwartz, Tony. Media: The Second God, Random House, New York, 1981.     

From public action to public administration: where does it lead?

Minnowbrook I and Minnowbrook II differ in one important way. Minnowbrook I involved mostly scholars who came to the field primarily through formal academic training. Several of those who participated in Minnowbrook II are products of comrnunity-based applied revisions of so-called new public administration in the 1960s. Radin served as a union employee and then a staff member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Cooper worked as a minister at several inner-city churches. Both Radin and Cooper took their doctorates later in their careers, after extensive street level experience. From this perspective they focus on the unique political setting of public administration, on the field's publicness, on the salience of theories of change, on a process perspective, and on “soft” research methodologies.

Through much of its history, the field of public administration in the United States has been punctuated by figures who moved from the arena of action to opportunities for reflection, either through writing or teaching or both. A review of the literature of the field up to the 1960s provides strong evidence of this pattern and is particularly illustrated by two important eras of public administration—the municipal reform period and the post-New Deal period.⁽¹⁾ The decade of he 1960s was one of the few periods of the twentieth century in which action was not the predominant pathway to concern about administrative issues. In contrast to this earlier pattern, the generation of public administration academics in the 1960s focused on writing and teaching as a goal unto itself, rather than as a way of searching for the meaning of action in which one was previously engaged.

Indeed, the original group of participants in the Minnowbrook conference came to the field of public administration through formal academic training; their quest for values, relevancy, and meaning developed as they looked out of the windows of the academy to the turbulent society of which they were a part.⁽²⁾

While some were on the inside looking out during the 1960s, others were attempting to define meaning and relevancy within the world of action rather than the world of the academy. This paper is an attempt to explore the influence of that action experience on the public administration field. The authors of this paper spent the 1960s engaged in a part of the social action that spawned the “new” public administration movement.

We believe that our involvements in the 1960s led to the development of perspectives on public administration which are somewhat different from those of individuals who were primarily involved in academe during those turbulent times. This paper begins with a short autobiographical account which provides the personal context for our perspectives. It then contrasts our views with those of the Minnowbrook group and focuses on those elements that make up our perspective on the field.     

Explaining Organizational Variety in Evaluation Quality Assurance: Which Conditions Matter?

The growth in evaluation practice has not always gone hand in hand with an increase in the actual quality of these evaluations. This article addresses this concern, by examining the factors that explain organizational variety in the application of evaluation quality assurance measures. We present the results of an analysis of 18 Flemish (Belgian) public sector organizations. To unravel different explanatory trajectories, we combine two comparative methods that rely on Boolean analysis: the most similar different outcome/most different similar outcome technique on the one hand, and crisp set qualitative comparative analysis on the other hand.     

The common European security and defence policy and the ‘third‐country’ issue

The Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP) of the European Union (EU) was launched in 1999 and has been perceived as a landmark step toward European security cooperation, particularly in the field of crisis management. Still in its early stages, some difficult issues have become apparent. Of these, the so‐called ‘third‐country’ issue may prove to be among the most significant. This problem refers to the necessity of associating states outside the EU with CESDP. In this regard, three states stand out — the United States, Turkey and Russia — and this article considers their concerns and the European response in detail. This is prefaced by a general overview of how the third‐country problem emerged and what the EU has done to address it. It concludes by suggesting that third‐country considerations could well determine where and how EU‐led missions operating under the auspices of CESDP are deployed.