The Social Context of Police Lying

This is an analysis of the social context of normal police lies. We define lies as speech acts which the speaker knows are misleading or false, are intended to deceive, and where evidence to the contrary is known to the observer. Lies are relative to a moral context, and what an audience will accept. Lies include excuses, which deny full responsibility for an act, but acknowledge its immorality, and justifications, which accept responsibility but deny blame-worthiness. Police learn to lie and to carefully distinguish normal (or acceptable) lies from unacceptable lies, suggesting that lies are a part of a negotiated occupational order. We show how and why some types of lies are rewarded by police using ethnographic data from an 18 month field study of a large urban force. Lies can be of little issue, or become troublesome. We report and analyze two kinds of troublesome lies: case lies, recognized stories an officer utilizes in a courtroom or on paper to facilitate the conviction of a suspect, and cover stories, lies an officer tells in court, to supervisors, and on the job with the aim of providing a verbal shield or mitigation in the event of discipline. Both excuses and justifications are woven together in these vignettes. An example of a refusal to lie is used to illustrate some of the limits on lying as well organizational factors in lying. Some implications for official lying are also noted.     

A Tabu Search Heuristic for the Location of Multi-Type Protection Devices on Electrical Supply Tree Networks

The problem of determining the number of multi-type protection devices and their locations on electrical supply tree networks with subtree dependency is investigated. The aim is to reduce the amount of inconvenience caused to customers that are affected by any given fault on the networks. An appropriate implementation of tabu search is proposed. We exploit a variable neighborhood and a soft aspiration level, and we embed a data structure and reduction tests into the search to speed up the process. Computational tests are performed on randomly generated electrical tree networks varying in size and branch complexity with encouraging results.     

Significance of the Dermal Route of Exposure to Risk Assessment

The skin is a route of exposure that needs to be considered when conducting a risk assessment. It is necessary to identify the potential for dermal penetration by a chemical as well as to determine the overall importance of the dermal route of exposure as compared with inhalation or oral routes of exposure. The physical state of the chemical, vapor or liquid, the concentration, neat or dilute, and the vehicle, lipid or aqueous, is also important. Dermal risk is related to the product of the amounts of penetration and toxicity. Toxicity involves local effects on the skin itself and the potential for systemic effects. Dermal penetration is described in large part by the permeability constant. When permeability constants are not known, partition coefficients can be used to estimate a chemical's potential to permeate the skin. With these concepts in mind, a tiered approach is proposed for dermal risk assessment. A key first step is the determination of a skin-to-air or skin-to-medium partition coefficient to estimate a potential for dermal absorption. Building a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model is another step in the tiered approach and is useful prior to classical in vivo toxicity tests. A PBPK model can be used to determine a permeability constant for a chemical as well as to show the distribution of the chemical systemically. A detailed understanding of species differences in the structure and function of the skin and how they relate to differences in penetration rates is necessary in order to extrapolate animal data from PBPK models to the human. A study is in progress to examine anatomical differences for four species.     

EVALUATING CHANGES IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF CAPITAL WEALTH

A small-scale general equilibrium model in which the distribution of capital wealth is a key parameter is employed to examine the potential economic consequences of greater capital wealth equality. Every performance indicator examined – aggregate income, consumption equality, social welfare in the sum-of-utilities sense, and aggregate saving –is improved by greater capital wealth equality. However, the bottom-line social welfare gain, relative to the present high-inequality situation – even from the maximum achievable level of complete equality in capital wealth distribution – would be numerically rather modest.     

Bayesian analysis of outlier problems using divergence measures

A Bayesian approach is presented for detecting influential observations using general divergence measures on the posterior distributions. A sampling-based approach using a Gibbs or Metropolis-within-Gibbs method is used to compute the posterior divergence measures. Four specific measures are proposed, which convey the effects of a single observation or covariate on the posterior. The technique is applied to a generalized linear model with binary response data, an overdispersed model and a nonlinear model. An asymptotic approximation using Laplace method to obtain the posterior divergence is also briefly discussed.     

Who Gets What From Government? Distributional Consequences of Child‐Care Assistance Policies

Given the fragmented structure of child‐care assistance in the United States, it has been difficult to obtain accurate estimates of which families are assisted, through which mechanisms, and at what level. Making use of survey data from New York City, we analyze the distribution of several forms of public child‐care assistance. Results suggest that about 40% of all families with young children receive some form of child‐care assistance. Considering all forms of assistance, the distribution of child‐care help is targeted in both expected and some unexpected ways. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of U.S. child‐care policies governing access and benefit levels.     

Lumpers and Splitters: The Public Opinion Information that Politicians Collect and Use

Are the decisions of American policymakers informed by generaltrends in the public’s ideology or by the public’spolicy-specific preferences? In this article we discuss twoexplanations for the types of public opinion information thatpoliticians collect and use. Using a unique data set of privatepolls from the White House of Richard Nixon, we find that whenopinion data on specific policies were available, the presidentrelied on them and not on general ideology data. On less importantissues, however, we find that the president often chose notto collect policy-specific data and instead relied on generalideology data. The differential collection and use of informationby policymakers reflect varying strategic calculations. Theyalso have profound implications for representative democracyand the demands placed on citizens and governors.     

The role of family help in the housing decisions of young people

Recent debates about flows of help within the family have indicated considerable diversity according to the type of help (money, services), and ages and gender of those involved, and have shown that values are only a partial guide to the scale of such flows. This paper focuses on a particular occasion for help, young people's housing, and a particular region, South-East England, where one would expect family financial help to be high given the capacity to help of older generations (due to higher average incomes and wealth) and the affordability problems faced by young people. It is shown that contrary to hypothesis only 12% of a sample of young people had received financial help for housing purposes since they had left home, less than found in previous studies with different samples. The amounts involved were less than young people believed their parents could afford. The role of inheritance was also found to be minor. The results from the different studies are explained as due to changes in the housing market, changing values regarding financial help and differences among the samples. Intensive re-interviews with three households from very different backgrounds are used to show the different ways in which family help operates.