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ARE YOU PREPARED FOR THE LAW ENFORCEMENT IT REVOLUTION? Law enforcement agencies that are laggards in Information Technology (IT) will soon, if not already, be considered mismanaged. Whether you are in an operational position, or you are a police officer who aspires to a higher rank, you must be aware of how IT can help you perform your job and help your organization. DON'T BE INTIMIDATED BY IT ANY LONGER. With extensive experience implementing large-scale IT projects to the law enforcement community, author Jim Chu has assembled a comprehensive, one-stop guide that enables you to und

Organizations can motivate and coordinate work by socializing members to internalize organizational values. Existing theories posit that organizations achieve normative control through encapsulation, wherein peers and managers are primary sources of members' socialization. Drawing on ethnographic data from a not-for-profit school, I show how an external actor—beneficiaries—can become a source of normative control. I develop a multistage process that explains how teachers were socialized by parents, specifically by hearing these parent beneficiaries narrate their needs; engaging in collective storytelling about beneficiaries; experiencing episodic shaming centered on how teachers' daily performance met (or did not meet) beneficiaries' needs; and receiving validation from beneficiaries. Because these sequential stages establish beneficiaries as sources of control through social interactions set in specific times and places, and establish shared emotional states among organizational members, I theorize that these stages compose a ritual of integration. Although teachers initially arrived at the school with heterogeneous values, this ritual led many of them to internalize the organizational value of self-sacrifice. Teachers who were unmoved by parents' stories or came to see parents as exploitative did not internalize this value, and they tended to exit the organization. This study reveals how normative control can arise not only through socialization from in-group members but also from ritual interactions with and about beneficiaries.

Inequalities in college access are a major concern for policymakers in both developed and developing countries. Policymakers in China have largely tried to address these inequalities by helping disadvantaged students successfully transition from high school to college. However, they have paid less attention to the possibility that inequalities in college access may also arise earlier in the pathway to college. The purpose of this paper is to understand where inequalities emerge along the pathway to college in China, focusing on three major milestones after junior high. By analysing administrative data on over 300,000 students from one region of China, we find that the largest inequalities in college access emerge at the first post-compulsory milestone along the pathway to college: when students transition from junior high to high school. In particular, only 60 per cent of students from poor counties take the high school entrance exam (compared to nearly 100 per cent of students from non-poor counties). Furthermore, students from poor counties are about one and a half times less likely to attend academic high school and elite academic high school than students from non-poor counties. (China Q/GIGA)

There is substantial concern about democratic backsliding in the United States. Evidence includes notably high levels of animosity toward out-partisans and support for undemocratic practices (SUP) among the general public. Much less is known, however, about the views of elected officials—even though they influence democratic outcomes more directly. In a survey experiment conducted with state legislators ( N = 534), we show that these officials exhibit less animosity toward the other party, less SUP, and less support for partisan violence (SPV) than the general public. However, legislators vastly overestimate the levels of animosity, SUP, and SPV among voters from the other party (though not among voters from their own party). Further, those legislators randomly assigned to receive accurate information about the views of voters from the other party reported significantly lower SUP and marginally significantly lower partisan animosity toward the other party. This suggests that legislators' democratic attitudes are causally linked to their perceptions of other-party voters' democratic attitudes. Our findings highlight the importance of ensuring that office holders have access to reliable information about voters from both parties.

Students in rural China are dropping out of secondary school at troubling rates. While there is considerable quantitative research on this issue, no systematic effort has been made to assess the deeper reasons behind student decision making through a mixed-methods approach. This article seeks to explore the prevalence, correlates and potential reasons for rural dropout throughout the secondary education process. It brings together results from eight large-scale survey studies covering 24,931 rural secondary students across four provinces, as well as analysis of extensive interviews with 52 students from these same study sites. The results show that the cumulative dropout rate across all windows of secondary education may be as high as 63 per cent. Dropping out is significantly correlated with low academic performance, high opportunity cost, low socio-economic status and poor mental health. A model is developed to suggest that rural dropout is primarily driven by two mechanisms: rational cost-benefit analysis or impulsive, stress-induced decision making. (China Q/GIGA)