Does a helping hand put others at risk?: affirmative action,police departments,and crime

Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped and creating better contact with communities and victims? Or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross‐sectional time‐series data for U.S. cities for 1987, 1990, and 1993, I find that hiring more black and minority police officers increases crime rates, but this apparently arises because lower hiring standards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the areas most heavily populated by blacks. There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when more women are hired, and this raises questions about whether norming tests or altering their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The article examines how the changing composition of police departments affects such measures as the murder of and assaults against police officers.     

RATIONING BY SELLER'S PREFERENCE AND PACIAL PRICE DISCRIMINATION

This paper investigates the behavior of a seller who has a preference for a certain group of customers. The seller maintains stable prices over time and supplements price rationing with a nonprice rationing. In this situation the preferred buyers would have priority over nonpreferred buyers in purchasing the commodity, and if the latter purchase the commodity they may be paying higher prices. It is proposed here that the premium paid by the nonpreferred buyers is a necessary bribe to induce the seller to forego his search for the preferred buyers.     

Scheduling and the problem of computational complexity

Why is it that the problem of scheduling is so computationally difficult to solve? At last recent developments in modern mathematical complexity theory are providing some insights. The paper describes in essentially non-mathematical terms the computational technique known as the ‘Branch and Bound Method’. This, the best general optimising technique available for scheduling, is also shown to have its limitations. It now appears that efficient computational and optimising algorithms are unlikely ever to be found for all except special cases of the general industrial scheduling problem. It seems that heuristic (rule-of-thumb) methods leading to approximate solutions are likely to offer the only real promise for the future.     

Procedural Justice and the Cooperative Worker: An Interactional Model of Union Participation

Using data collected from a United Steelworkers of America local, we examine the extent to which fair union decision-making processes (procedural justice) and member disposition interact to promote union-supportive behavior. Although results indicate both procedural justice and a collectivist work disposition are positively related to union-supportive behavior, hierarchical regression reveals that procedural justice influences the behavior of members with individualistic work dispositions but not the behavior of members with a collectivist work disposition. So, employers who adopt human resource practices consistent with the high- performance work paradigm may foster increased levels of union-supportive behavior, and unions may need to take member disposition into account when selecting training programs aimed at fostering union-supportive behavior.     

THE IMPACT OF TELEVISION VIEWING ON MENTAL APTITUDE AND ACHIEVEMENT: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY

Previous studies of the effects of telecision viewing on mentalabilities have shown mixed results, but most suffered from oneor more of the following shortcomings: a small or other-wiseunrepresentative sample, a cross-sectional rather than longitudinalapproach, and a failure to consider intervening variables betweentelevision viewing and cognitive skills. This study was designedto overcome these deficiencies by using nationally representativedata from the National Health Examination Cycle 2 and Cycle3 Surveys. These surveys included 1,745 children who were studiesboth when 6 to 11 years old (between July, 1963, and December,1965) and about four years later when 12 to 17 years old (betweenMarch, 1966, and March, 1970). Simple analysis at just one time-pointreveals substantial relationships between the amount of televisionviewing and depressed IQ and Wide Range Achievement Test (Readingand Arithmetic) scores of adolescents. When longitudinal controlsare added, however, these relationships become statisticallyinsignificant and substantively unimportant. Although thesedata are 20 years old, they indicate no significant causal relationshipbetween the amount of television viewed and the mental aptitudeand achievement test scores of adolescents, thus supportingand extending Gaddy's (1986) recent longitudinal study of anational sample of youth.     

THE MAN IN THE TEFLON SUIT?: THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONNECTION, POLITICAL DRAMA, AND POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY

An examination of public support during the presidency of RonaldReagan reveals a unique pattern. The major features includetwo instances of rapidly declining support followed by historicallyunprecedented and sustained recoveries. The recovery of supportis particularly surprising given that the literature of theearly 1980s emphasizes the irrecoverable erosion of public supportand a resulting "no win" presidency. In this sense, the patternof public support from 1981 to 1987 raises a significant questionabout the "no win" presidency. Does the Reagan case contradictrecent assertions about the inability of modern presidents tomaintain public support or is Reagan an exception that "provesthe rule"? To answer this question, the analysis is divided into five parts.The first examines the literature and shows that there is astriking uniformity in contemporary accounts of Reagan's publicsupport. These explanations discount the importance of conditionsin the environment and emphasize that Reagan's public supportis based upon a mixture of luck, personality, and politicaldrama. Part two defines political drama and examines its usefrom 1981 to 1987. In part three, we develop a methodology forincorporating political drama into a general model of publicsupport for Reagan. Part four estimates the model and uses theresults to assess the relative impact of the economy and politicaldrama on public support for Reagan. These results are used inthe final section to evaluate the specific explanations of Reagan'spublic support and to reflect upon the competing general explanationsfound in the literature.     

Attitudinal Conformity and Anonymity

Past research has shown that surveillance, unanimity of others,and ambiguous stimuli all contribute to conformity. This studysought to determine whether people will conform to a group theyidentify with even in the absence of all three contributingconditions. Using college students as subjects, the researcherposed as a pollster asking for responses to six statements onpublic issues. The falsified results of an earlier "nationalcollege sample" were used as the majority consensus stimulus.A written questionnaire was administered in private, and thenplaced in a locked ballot box. This study found no evidenceof conformity, suggesting that when people have definite attitudes,and when others are not unanimous in their opinions, the socialpressures produced by surveillance are necessary in order toproduce conformity