Suchergebnisse

The Crime Bill of 1994 has generated a large cash flow of federal funds into state and local coffers for hiring additional personnel. In the rush to get the federal funding, many agencies have altered their hiring practices for police personnel in order to meet deadlines and quotas. Agencies have experienced a vast array of libelous situations, occupational problems, non-productive employees, and worst of all, bad cops charged with criminal activities when pre-employment screening practices have been shortcut. This article examines what can happen when hiring practices are accelerated and thorough background investigations condensed or eliminated. The article presents three elements of a quality background investigation and five policy development guidelines for producing a background investigation manual and procedure. The article also presents a sample Background Investigation Manual and Procedure and related forms developed by the author for use in his agency utilizing the concepts and principles presented.

This article uses the models of Paul Sabatier and Peter Hall, which stress the role of ideas and social learning in the policy process, to illuminate an historical case study over a hundred-year period. This concerns the Drink Question 1850–1950 in Britain and the various techniques for control of alcohol. In turn, the case study is used to suggest ambiguities or problems with the approaches. The case study finds the concept of social learning to be of some utility but casts doubt upon some of the assumptions of Sabatier and Hall: especially the threefold categorization which each author employs. Both models play down unduly the role of external forces in shaping the policy process and do not satisfactorily take into account the changing nature of a political system. In the case study the interplay between social problems, policy objectives and policy techniques is more fluid and complex than their theories suggest.

Organizations involved in the development of innovative social programs are coming under increasing pressure to establish structures through which the users, targets, or beneficiaries of program activities can be involved in program planning and implementation. The dynamic that this sets up between the program and its wider environment, particularly in areas in which "new social movements" are operating, can be quite challenging. This article seeks to examine these dynamics, particularly in the context of program evaluation. It is argued that an engaged evaluation approach (drawing on an action research orientation) has particular strengths in such a situation, although the limitations and challenges of such an approach are also outlined. It may, for example, require careful management in terms of the dynamics of the evaluation team. The discussion is illustrated by examples drawn from the evaluation of a European program for disabled people in which the author as member of a research team from The Tavistock Institute was involved.

Surprisingly little data is available on Latino nonprofits in the United States. The author describes a new content analysis strategy for extracting Latino subsets from large data sets that lack Hispanic identifiers. The strategy was used to generate statistics on Latino nonprofits from data on tax-exempt organizations compiled by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Findings indicate that Latino nonprofits comprise less than four tenths of 1% of all tax-exempt organizations. A relatively high proportion (two thirds) of all Latino nonprofits recognized by the IRS are recognized under I.R.C. ß 501(c)(3). Half of all Latino nonprofits are less than 10 years old. Latino nonprofits tend not to affiliate with other organizations. They are concentrated in the southwestern United States. Popular activities among Latino nonprofits are programs for veterans, scholarship and educational programs, and promotion of business and commerce. Rare activities include youthservices, legislative and political activities, litigation, and legal aid.

Development of intranet technology has become the most efficient way to manage the formidable task of benefits communication. Using the same technologies as the Internet, but restricting access to qualified users, the intranet-without any additional operating cost-can serve as an around-the-clock staff, seven days a week. Employees can log on at work or from any location and instantly access company information regarding medical and dental plans, 401(k) savings plans, family assistance programs, and wellness programs and can even revise benefit forms and update their records. "By breaking down the organizational boundaries that often separate employee groups, the intranet allows the benefits staff and users to cut through red tape and communicate directly with one another," says the author. "The question of developing an intranet centers not on 'if' but on 'when'." And for most companies, he says, "the answer is now."

If one country lowers its tariffs, other countries might follow suit by liberalizing or defend their market by raising tariffs or do nothing at all. The question of a state's reaction to the tariff policy of another has been undertheorized, although it plays an important, implicit role in debates between theories. To understand these reactions, the author proposes a model of trade policy and tariff reciprocity that encompasses variables from both the domestic and international levels of analysis in a way that is compatible with several different theories. Two major testable propositions follow from the analysis. First, two countries' tariffs will move in opposite directions without trade agreements. Second, two countries' tariffs will move in the same direction when they have signed a trade agreement. These hypotheses find substantial support in both quantitative and qualitative tests against the period from 1815 to 1914, when there was substantial variation in countries' willingness to sign reciprocal tariff agreements.

Recent changes in the local finance system in Portugal are analysed as is the impact of present government proposals. A brief description of local finance in Portugal reveals a system structured into three main components, showing an increase in local taxes and a relative decrease in grants since 1979. Taxes on immovable property are dominant as are unconditional block grants in state budget transfers. Another characteristic is a clear geographical differentiation in most municipal revenue components. The importance of local government expenditure in relation to total government expenditure is one of the lowest in Europe. The reform in preparation will result in an increase in local government expenditure as a proportion of total public expenditure, the percentage being expected to double to 15%, representing an increase in the overall weight given to local taxes and a diversification of taxes. In the second part of the paper the author discusses the impact this will have on the financing of municipal planning and urbanisation, with the issue of equity a central point.

Recent literature on empowerment-oriented social work practice raises intriguing questions about the nature of power in client/worker relationships. This qualitative study explores client and worker perceptions of power in their relationships with each other. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted in residential settings serving men and women with histories of homelessness and psychiatric hospitalization. Staff and residents' experiences with helping relationships were probed, with particular attention to characteristics of mutuality, equality, and power. Client and worker preferences were conceptualized as ranging from partnership-oriented relationships to mentorship-oriented relationships. The author draws on empowerment and feminist theory in analyzing the study simplications for social work practice. The question is posed as to whether social work practice can fully realize the goals of shared power, mutuality, and collaboration associated with feminist and empowerment-oriented practice models when client/worker relationships are embedded in a hierarchical power structure.

In this narrative, the author compares identical twin brothers—one gay, one straight—to the character Jaromil in Milan Kundera's novel Life Is Elsewhere. He describes in some detail various rebellious experiments that one brother conducted and the way in which mother, Jaynet, managed the two brothers. The essay examines, implicitly, the notion that gay men come from families with a distant father and a strong mother. It is, coincidentally, also a critique of American upper middle-class liberalism, in the same sense as that Betty Freidan advanced in The Feminine Mystique. The methodological assumptions behind this essay agree with what sociologist Richard Sennett proposed in his book Authority, in which he asserted, boldly and perhaps heretically, that when a sociological study can capture the inner life of the individual under historical and psychological stress with the authenticity of a good novel, then the science of sociology might have a valid raison d'être.

The measure of trust that people vest in their fellow citizens or institutions depends on three factors: the `reflected trustworthiness' of the target as estimated by themselves in a more or less rational manner, the attitude of `basic trustfulness' deriving from socialization, and the `culture of trust' pervading their society and normatively encouraging the trusting orientation. The author presents a model of a structural context conducive for the emergence of the culture of trust, and then argues that democratic organization contributes to trust-generating conditions, such as normative certainty, transparency, stability, and accountability. This influence is found to be doubly paradoxical. First, democracy breeds the culture of trust by institutionalizing distrust at many levels of democratic organization. And second, the strongest influence of democracy on the culture of trust may be expected when the institutionalized distrust remains a resource used sparingly and only when there appear significant breaches of trust.

In U.S. national policy, K-12 education is slated to play a significant role in the development and deployment of the National Information Infrastructure (NII). Analysis of legislation, policy documents, and histori cal narratives about attempts to use communications technologiesfor K-12 education shows, that these texts and discourses construct knowledge about, and allowable domains for, education in communications and national policy contexts such as the NII. This article fashions a counternarrative of policy pasts and presents that constructs new knowledge about the NII and education and questions the many relations that have structured, and continue to structure, the process and practice of education relative to communications- based technologies. By briefly drawing attention to such counternarratives, the author encourages communications and educational policy makers to consider how education's position might be constructed and envisioned differently as they design policies for current and future uses of telecommunications-based educational technology and the NII.

With the enactment of the law of 25 July 1889 on the divestiture of paternal authority, French civil courts were for the first time allowed to divest parents they deemed "morally dangerous" of all rights over their children. These rights were widely perceived as belonging to fathers alone, in accordance with the provisions of Napoleonic civil law. Although the masculine foundation of parental rights appeared indisputable, the law's definition of moral danger was extremely am biguous. This ambiguity was most apparent in the instance of poor single women. In making cases about morally dangerous mothers, authorities constructed nar ratives that reconfigured gendered conventions defining the distribution of author ity and responsibility in the family. Only through these narrative reworkings could magistrates transform legislation centered on the codified authority of the male head of household into an effective means of regulating a feminine parental power that had no recognized status in nineteenth-century civil law .

During the 1990s geographers of diverse philosophical orientations have shown a renewed interest in questions of justice. The author draws on empirical work on childcare provision in Sheffield, England, in order to evaluate two different approaches to the geography of justice and hence the theories of social justice which lie behind these; in particular she explores the different geographies of childcare produced by the territorial-justice approach, which is based on a liberal conception of social justice, and a study of childcare cultures, which owes more to poststructuralist understandings of justice. The specific differences between these approaches in terms of their conceptualisation of what counts as childcare, who needs it, and how its delivery is structured raise broader questions about the understandings of society and space, about the importance of moral geographies, and about the possible strategics for achieving justice that underpin the different traditions of thought on social justice.

Walking in Ernest Fortin's scholarly universe is a great pleasure. One breathes an atmosphere of serenity, good sense, and profound erudition. Fortin is at once highly serious yet often amusing; he is both learned and unpretentious; he is frequently skeptical but never unpleasant or destructive. The traveler in his universe encounters not only a great number of interesting discussions but also particularly brilliant pieces, such as "The Bible Made Me Do It: Christianity, Science, and the Environment," where the author fully exposes the absurdity of the claim that Genesis 1, in which God grants humanity dominion over the rest of creation, bears responsibility for the damage done in recent times to the physical environment. In bringing together the essays and reviews that make up these volumes, Brian Benestad has performed an important service not only for the community of Christian scholars and thinkers but for all who are interested in the history of philosophy and political theory.

From the vantage point of her personal experience, the author examines milestones since the 1960s which have changed the medical library profession and helped shape the Medical Library Association. The advent of automation, including cataloging with OCLC and online literature searching through the SUNY Biomedical Communication Network, was a dramatic event that transformed the work and priorities of librarians, fulfilling the dreams of earlier visionaries. The application of technology in libraries led to an increased demand for education and training for librarians. The Medical Library Association responded with continuing education programs, and a series of important reports influenced how the association filled its role in professional development. Legislation providing federal funding, such as the Medical Library Assistance Act, resulted in a period of expansion for libraries and their services. The Medical Library Association has developed a legislative agenda to influence action in areas such as copyright. In the future, health sciences librarians must take a leadership role.