Comparing drug use between welfare-receiving arrestees and non-welfare-receiving arrestees

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) symbolized a comprehensive change to the nation's welfare system. Despite several provisions within PRWORA that focus on the use of illegal drugs, few studies have attempted to identify the prevalence of illegal drug use among welfare recipients. Moreover, no scholarly works have compared rates of drug use in welfare-receiving populations to those of non-welfare-receiving populations with an objective measure of drug use. In the current study, urine specimens were collected from 1,572 arrestees interviewed through Houston's Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program in 1999. Drug positive rates are compared between welfare-receiving arrestees (n = 116), non-welfare receiving arrestees living below the poverty level (n = 539), and non-welfare receiving arrestees living above the poverty level (n = 917). Welfare-receiving arrestees were more likely to be female, older, less educated, and to test positive for opiates and benzodiazepines than the other subgroups. Implications for welfare reform policy are discussed in light of the current findings.     

The foster care system simulation: Evaluation of a training innovation

Although foster care is often spoken of as a system with many interactive facets, foster care personnel often carry out their specific roles with little understanding or consideration of the ultimate impact of that system. A simulation of public foster care service delivery designed to sensitize participants to these interactions is described. Evaluation of the simulation's accuracy in portrayal of actual service delivery and a study of the kinds of learning demonstrated by participants at three points (pretest, posttest, and follow-up) are reported. Participants found the simulation an attractive training method, indicated a greater appreciation of system-wide foster care problems, and reported changes in foster care thinking and work, but other indicators of learning were inconsistent.     

Civil Religion and Church and State*

Earlier conceptualizations suggest a socially integrative civil religion in the United States and define it as not infringing upon church and state separation. No published empirical evidence exists, however, of the alleged compatibility of these two beliefs in the minds of the citizenry. Because the idea of civil religion rests largely upon such an assumption, the relationship between civil religion and church-state separatism is tested in an analysis of data from over 3000 respondents to a state survey. The findings indicate no conflict between the two belief systems. Institutional and organizational implications of civil religion in relation to the legalistic notion of separatism are discussed.     

Partners and processes in HIV services for inmates and ex-offenders. Facilitating collaboration and service delivery

The elevated rates of HIV/AIDS among inmates are due in part to the high concentration of incarcerated persons with behavioral risk factors for HIV infection. Corrections, public health, and community-based organizations should partner to take full advantage of the opportunity to maximize effectiveness and efficiency in addressing HIV/AIDS in inmate populations. The purpose of this study is to document issues inhibiting collaboration, service delivery, and multisite evaluation as identified by members of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Health Resources and Services Administration Corrections Demonstration Project (CDP). Examining the barriers (and identifying ways to resolve them) is important in developing and maintaining successful programs that ultimately benefit HIV-infected inmates and the communities to which they return.     

A Robust Measure of Uncertainty Importance for Use in Fault Tree System Analysis

The analysis of probabilistic fault trees often involves the investigation of events that contribute both to the frequency of the top event and to the uncertainty in this frequency. This paper provides a discussion of three measures of the contribution of an event to the total uncertainty in the top event. These measures are known as uncertainty importance measures. Two of these measures are new developments. Each of the measures is shown to have unique advantages and disadvantages. The three measures are based on, respectively, the expected reduction in the variance of the top-event frequency should the uncertainty in an event be resolved, the same measure based on the log frequency, and a measure based on shifts in the quantiles of the distribution of top-event frequency.