Stepping Up to the Plate: Minor Leaguers Attempt to Remedy their Unconscionable Plight

Professional baseball players are often thought of as making multi-million-dollar salaries, but most professional baseball players have recently made under $15,000 a year. Minor league players toiled under an onerous system resulting from baseball's judicially created antitrust exemption and lobbying efforts that exempted them from minimum wage and overtime. These factors allowed teams to impose a uniform player contract (UPC) on players with numerous unconscionable provisions for years. However, a late-night Tweet in August of 2022 sent shockwaves through the sports and labor world, announcing that the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) was sending out authorization cards to represent minor league players. After years of fighting to maintain the authority to impose conditions on minor league players, through lobbying and litigation, Major League Baseball (MLB) turned over a new leaf and recognized the unionization of minor league players under the MLBPA less than three weeks later. In light of this long sought-after recognition, this article takes a novel approach. First, it provides historical context for baseball's unique ability to impose working conditions on minor leaguers without significant concern for legal ramifications. Second, it provides an overview of the doctrine of contractual unconscionability and analyzes the prior UPC as an unconscionable agreement. Finally, it details the historic unionization process and makes detailed recommendations to ameliorate the unconscionable conditions minor league players have faced when they negotiate with MLB owners to draft their initial collective bargaining agreement.     

A mixed DNA profile controversy revisited

Semaan et al. (J Forensic Res, 2020, 11, 453) discuss a mock case “where eight different individuals [P₁ through P₈] could not be excluded in a mixed DNA analysis. Even though … expert DNA mixture analysis software was used.” Two of these are the true donors. The LRs reported are incorrect due to the incorrect entry of propositions into LRmix Studio. This forced the software to account for most of the alleles as drop-in, resulting in LRs 60–70 orders of magnitude larger than expected. P₁, P₂, P₄, P₅, and P₈ can be manually excluded using peak heights. This has relevance when using LRmix which does not use peak heights. We extend the work using the same two reference genotypes who were the true contributors as Semaan et al. (J Forensic Res, 2020, 11, 453). We simulate three two-donor mixtures with peak heights using these two genotypes and analyze using STRmix?. For the simulated 1:1 mixture, one of the non-donors’ LRs supported him being a contributor when no conditioning was used. When considered in combination with any other potential donors (i.e., with conditioning), this non-donor was correctly eliminated. For the 3:1 mixture, all results correctly supported that the non-donors were not contributors. The low-template 4:1 mixture LRs with no conditioning showed support for all eight profiles as donors. However, the results from pair-wise conditioning showed that only the two ground truth donors had LRs supporting that they were contributors to the mixture. We recommend the use of peak heights and conditioning profiles, as this allows better sensitivity and specificity even when the persons share many alleles.     

Observer determination of the make,model, and year of questioned vehicles

Often, criminal acts involving a vehicle are caught on digital video surveillance systems. While potentially useful for an investigation, the recording conditions are typically less than optimal for the extraction of key information for the identification of the perpetrator, such as a license plate. Providing the make, model and year of a questioned vehicle is a common request for examiners, to narrow the field of potential suspect vehicles. This study seeks to compare the performance of a nonpeer-reviewed make, model, and year determination between two separate groups, specifically, trained forensic image examiners and nontrained individuals. Results show that even with varied image capture conditions and quality, the trained forensic image examiners more correctly and completely identified the test group of questioned vehicles make, model, and year.     

Harming America: Corporate Crime in a Context of Deregulation

ABSTRACT

Like many Republican presidential candidates before him, Donald J. Trump campaigned on a pro-business, anti-regulation platform, and since his election in November 2016, he has directed his administration to move forward with deregulation in many arenas, including consumer financial protections, environmental controls, and workplace safety among others. Past efforts to roll back regulations governing certain industries, such as the savings and loan and the mortgage industries, have had harmful consequences for the general public or for specific interest groups. In this study, we review what the Trump administration has accomplished with regard to deregulation to date. Then, based on past deregulatory fiascos, we theorize the harmful collateral consequences that may result from this most recent swing of the regulatory-deregulatory pendulum.     

An Honourable Profession: Public Employees and Identity Construction in Chile, 1880–1920

This paper analyses how public employees at two Chilean government offices constructed their occupational identities. In contrast to the vast majority of previous work, which took the 1920s as its starting point, this study focuses on the period between 1880 and 1920. Additionally, the construction of identity is analysed in direct relation to performance in the workplace. The paper asserts that public criticism of their performance prompted public employees to develop an image of themselves based on the concept of their honourability as competent and honest workers.     

A conceptual replication of the Strategic Training Initiative in Community Supervision (STICS)

Objectives

This study was an attempt to replicate the findings from an earlier experimental evaluation of a probation officer training program by Bonta et al. (Criminal Justice and Behavior, 38: 1127–1148, 2011). An experimental design was used with an improvement in the random assignment of clients and was tested with a sample of probation officers from a new jurisdiction.

Methods

Probation officers from the Canadian province of Alberta were randomly assigned to training or probation-as-usual. Officer behavior was measured by audio recordings of supervision sessions and recidivism was defined as a new conviction within 2 years of the initial recording. Attrition resulted in 27 probation officers submitting audio recordings of supervision sessions over a 6-month period (15 in the experimental group and 12 in the control). There were 160 recordings of 81 probationers submitted.

Results

The audio recordings showed inconsistent changes in officer behavior and no differences in recidivism between the clients of the experimental and control probation officers. However, the use of cognitive techniques by the probation officers was associated with a longer time to recidivism. In addition, by 10 months, more than half of the trained officers stopped their involvement in ongoing professional development activities.

Conclusion

Although the study failed to replicate the major findings reported by Bonta et al., it did highlight the importance of cognitive techniques in officer training. The results are interpreted with respect to the replication literature and the difficulties inherent in direct and conceptual replications especially in real-world settings.

     

日常性:民族地区社会工作的实践取向

解决好我国社会工作在区域之间"不平衡"的发展问题,将是社会工作专业进一步参与提升民族地区基层社会治理能力和治理体系现代化水平的重要着力点和突破口.但当前民族地区社会工作发展的相关研究,为了突出民族地区的特殊性,将文化本身从当地的日常生活中抽离出来,成为研究的客体和对象,忽略了民族地区社会工作的"日常性",即少数民族群众生活的绵延性和社会工作的结构性的矛盾与统一.从日常性出发,民族地区社会工作应当遵循浸入而非介入、主体而非客体、理解而非解释、互构而非设计的实践取向.     

人民政协专门协商机构制度建设的国家治理逻辑

人民政协作为专门协商机构在国家治理体系和治理能力现代化建设中具有重要地位和作用,体现着中国特色社会主义民主政治的优势。国家治理的本质特征、价值理念与运作过程为人民政协专门协商机构制度建设赋予必要前提、基本遵循与现实要求,人民政协专门协商机构制度的功能结构主要包含政治协商、民主监督、决策参与、凝聚共识。基于体系过程与结构功能分析以及主体角色与优势效能分析,人民政协专门协商机构制度建设的关键领域分别是人民政协政治协商更好纳入国家治理决策过程以及人民政协政治协商有效发挥国家治理共识凝聚功能。     

关于混合性党内法规的理论与实证研究

混合性党内法规能不能作为概念存在?其与党政联合发文是什么关系?它因何"入"规?有没有必要"入"规?这些问题都与当前建立完善的党内法规制度体系、协调党内法规与国家法律关系、推进依规治党等任务密切相关.基于对党政联合发文的实证分析可以得出,区分混合性党内法规和其他党政联合发文,把混合性党内法规纳入党内法规体系,并进一步规范其调整范围、制定实施、备案审查、清理等基本问题,是贯彻落实习近平法治思想,加快建设完备的党内法规制度体系,实现以"良法促进发展,保障善治"的基本条件.为此,还应当结合党内法规的形式和实质特征,合理控制党政联合制定混合性党内法规的数量,并明确混合性党内法规的边界,将其限定在党政机构统筹改革、党的直接管理、党政同责等领域.     

The effect of outpatient methadone maintenance treatment facilities on place-based crime

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This study evaluates the effect of outpatient methadone maintenance treatment (OMMT) facilities on crime in surrounding areas. Between 2007 and 2017 in...