School crime policy changes: The impact of recent highly-publicized school crimes

Highly-publicized school shootings have heightened concern over school safety. This study examines the impact of school crimes on campus policy. The administrators of 336 Texas middle and high schools were surveyed. Policy changes were related to parental complaints about school crime policies and administrator perceptions that students felt less safe. School administrators should base safety policies on strategies that have been evaluated for their effectiveness in reducing school crime and fear. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Does Spending Time in Public Settings Contribute to the Adolescent Risk of Violent Victimization?

Objectives

Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents in Finland this research examined the influence of spending time in public settings on the risk of physical assault and robbery victimization.

Methods

Binary and multinomial regression models were estimated to disaggregate associations between hours spent in public settings and characteristics of the victimization incident. The amount of causality/spuriousness in the association was examined using a method of situational decomposition.

Results

Our findings indicate that: (1) an active night life (any time after 6 pm) has a strong effect on victimization for boys, whereas much of the association between night life and victimization is spurious for girls; (2) after-school activity is not a risk factor; (3) adolescents who frequent public places at night increase their risk of victimization by people they know as well as strangers; and (4) much of the risk of night time activity in public settings is alcohol-related.

Conclusions

Our research suggests that a good deal of the risk associated with spending time in public settings is a function of the victim’s own risky behavior rather than inadvertent physical contact with motivated offenders in the absence of capable guardians. In addition, this lifestyle is significantly more victimogenic for males.     

Customising Freedom of Information Law Reform in South Pacific Micro-States

Abstract

This article highlights the importance of adopting a pluralist approach to developing freedom of information (FOI) schemes within specific states in an age of ‘adopter intensification’. The limitations of imposing universal ‘off the shelf’ schemes without addressing multifaceted and unique state requirements are highlighted. The South Pacific Region is utilised as an example that demonstrates adoption is merely the initial and simplest step in an ongoing process of adaption and implementation. Comprehension of the ongoing commitment required in implementing effective FOI schemes should exist prior to legislative conception. Draft schemes must consider not only the supply and demand element of FOI within specific states, but also their broader macro- and micro-level intricacies. Vanuatu and Tonga are used as examples to demonstrate that even where a pluralist and staged approach is undertaken progress can still be slow and problematic.     

Gender differences in research productivity among criminal justice and criminology scholars

Prior research suggests gaps in productivity by gender in the fields of criminal justice and criminology as well as other academic disciplines. Utilizing survey data from a sample of ASC and ACJS members, this study examined the overall extent of disparity in publishing between female and male academics. It also examined the impact of background, departmental, professional, work load characteristics, and other academic factors on publishing. While males published more than females, the disparity was reduced once other relevant variables, such as career length, time devoted to research, rank, and teaching in a program offering a masters or doctorate, were considered. Finally, the factors that influence productivity among male scholars were found to have a similar effect on female scholarship.     

Personal Value Orientation as a Moderator in the Relationships Between Perceived Organizational Justice and Its Hypothesized Consequences

This study examined whether personal value orientation moderated the relationships between perceived organizational justice and its three hypothesized consequences: group pride, respect within the group, and turnover intentions. On the basis of conceptual correspondences between self-enhancement and self-transcendence values of Schwartz's value typology and previous conceptualizations of distributive and procedural justice two hypotheses were developed and tested with a sample of 160 employees of a research organization. It was predicted and found that relationships between distributive justice and outcome variables were stronger among people who were high in self-enhancement values (power, achievement). The relationships between procedural justice and outcome variables, by contrast, were predicted to be stronger among those high in self-transcendence values (universalism, benevolence). Our results provided no support for the latter hypothesis.     

Think Nationally,Act Locally: The Municipal-Level Effects of the National Crime Prevention Program in Finland

This paper gauges the effects of the National Crime Prevention Program (NCPP) on the level of crime in Finland. The research design involves comparisons between municipalities that vary in terms of their participation in the NCPP. Is this characteristic related to improvements in community safety? The analyses utilize data from victim surveys as well as police statistics. Findings from each type of analysis suggest that active participation in the national initiative has not resulted in reduced levels of crime and violence. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the NCPP.     

Organisations as Epistemic Capital: the Case of Independent Children’s Rights Institutions

Why do national organisations proliferate in practically all areas of policymaking and organisational life, and why are they involved in supranational networks and organisations? The article approaches this mystery by exploring how organisations are built and used as authorities in domestic policymaking. The empirical focus is on the establishment of the institution of children’s ombudsman and its uses in influencing Finnish child policy. The theory developed in the article suggests that organisations are accumulations of authority, here termed epistemic capital, which is the primary reason that they are established and sustained. Once these are institutionalised, various actors can use the authority of organisations to legitimate their policy objectives. The case of independent children’s rights institutions shows how this mechanism operates in child policy. The Finnish office of the ombudsman for children has worked actively to become an established ontological and moral authority in child policy, and it has also attempted to utilise the mandate and authority of the United Nations and the Convention on the Rights of the Child to pressure the state into more child-friendly policy decisions.     

Fiscal Explanations for Inflation: Any Evidence from Transition Economies?

Recent arguments, motivated partly by the new fiscal theory of price level, suggest that fiscal deficits undermine price stability in transition economies. This paper addresses these claims by examining vector-autoregressive models of inflation for three transition economies (Bulgaria, Romania and Russia). The results indicate that fiscal deficits have increased inflation in Bulgaria and Romania but not in the case of Russia. In Bulgaria and Romania, money aggregates and exchange rate have also been more influential to inflation than fiscal deficits. The analysis based on this method therefore suggests that while fiscal deficits have some influence on inflation, monetary factors mostly determine inflation in these three countries.