Robert C. Davis, Carl Jensen, Lorrianne Kuykendall and Kristin Gallagher
As a result of advances in DNA and other forensic technologies, police agencies are showing increased interest in cold-case investigations, with larger departments dedicating…
Abstract
Purpose
As a result of advances in DNA and other forensic technologies, police agencies are showing increased interest in cold-case investigations, with larger departments dedicating staff to conducting these investigations or forming cold-case squads. The purpose of this paper is to provide information on how police agencies organize and conduct cold-case investigations.
Design/methodology/approach
To assess the current practices used in cold-case investigations, an exploratory survey was sent to a stratified random sample of police agencies across the US survey findings are based on 1,051 returns.
Findings
Results include the following. Most agencies do little cold-case work, with only 20 percent having a protocol for initiating cold-case investigations, 10 percent having dedicated cold-case investigators, and 7 percent having a formal cold-case unit. Cold-case funding is tenuous: 20 percent of cold-case work is funded through line items in the budget, with most funded by grants or supplemental funds. Success rates for cold-case investigations are low: about one in five cases are cleared. Agency factors associated with higher clearance rates included level of funding and access to investigative databases.
Practical implications
As new forensic tools are developed, cold-case investigations will become an increasingly prominent activity of criminal investigation units. The survey reported on in this paper gives the first glimpse of how agencies are handling these cases.
Originality/value
To the knowledge, there are no other empirical studies on how agencies structure and conduct cold-case investigations.
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Kristen Marcussen and Christian Ritter
This chapter examines the effects of mental health services and stigma on changes in self-concept and well-being for individuals with SPMI.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter examines the effects of mental health services and stigma on changes in self-concept and well-being for individuals with SPMI.
Methodology/approach
Data for this chapter come from structured interviews and service data for 140 individuals with severe and persistent mental illnesses. We use structural equation modeling to examine the relationship between perceived and internalized stigma, as well as the relationships among stigma, self-concept (self-esteem and mastery), and well-being (quality of life and functioning).
Findings
We find that case management is negatively related to quality of life and psychiatric services are positively related to functioning. Crisis services and assessment are associated with mastery in opposite directions. Internalized stigma is positively associated with self-esteem and mastery, and negatively associated with functioning. We do not find a relationship between services and stigma.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation to this chapter is the sample size, which prohibits us from examining a full range of services and outcomes. Nonetheless, our findings provide information about how services and stigma impact well-being, and may be used as a starting point for considering strategies for improving services and reducing stigma. Future work should consider pairing outcomes with services to determine their effectiveness.
Originality/value
This chapter builds on previous research that examines the relative effects of services and stigma among individuals in community health care by extending measures of both services and stigma, and by examining the relationship between them, in order to better determine their implications for self-concept and well-being.
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This essay examines how two Marxist anti-colonial intellectuals from Portuguese India and French India – Aquino de Bragança and V Subbiah – differentially theorized movements for…
Abstract
This essay examines how two Marxist anti-colonial intellectuals from Portuguese India and French India – Aquino de Bragança and V Subbiah – differentially theorized movements for independence from colonial rule. Through the analysis of primary source documents in French, Portuguese, Italian and English, I compare V Subbiah's Dalit, anti-fascist anti-colonial Marxism to Aquino de Bragança's internationalist anti-colonial Marxism. Both theorists' approaches have similarities in (1) theorizing the relationship between fascism and colonialism given that the Portuguese Empire was administered by Salazar's Estado Novo and the French Empire was under Vichy rule, (2) rethinking Marxism to better fit the Global South context and (3) intellectual and political connections to Algeria were critically important for theory and praxis. Despite the distinct geographic and social spaces in which they lived and worked, both produced remarkably similar theories of anti-imperialism.
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Craig Hochbein and Kristin E. Harbour
For a variety of reasons, the districts, educators, and students of the largest cities in the United States garner substantial popular and scholarly attention. In the discourse…
Abstract
For a variety of reasons, the districts, educators, and students of the largest cities in the United States garner substantial popular and scholarly attention. In the discourse and debate related to urban education, policymakers and researchers often cite accounts and articles derived from these larger urban areas. Yet, we found that school districts educating 47,700 or fewer students accounted for 61 percent of students educated in urban school districts in the United States. Comparison of the composition of student populations revealed that larger urban school districts exhibited greater concentrations of students identified as non-white and receiving free or reduced lunches. Overlooking the variation among urban school districts could result in ineffective reforms, poor educator preparation, skewed funding, and irrelevant research.
Drawing on interviews with men and women gun carriers, this paper considers the intersection of femininity and guns. It argues that two sets of expectations shape the normative…
Abstract
Drawing on interviews with men and women gun carriers, this paper considers the intersection of femininity and guns. It argues that two sets of expectations shape the normative relationship between women and guns: First, armed women are a blind spot in feminist discourse, which tends to reproduce the “pacifist presumption” that women are nonviolent caretakers and peacemakers. Second, contemporary pro-gun discourse often bases women’s gun carry within their duties and obligations as mothers in a form of “martial maternalism.” Inflected with a post-feminist appropriation of rights and equality, this pro-gun discourse reproduces gender binaries through a discourse of gender inclusivity. Following previous analyses that emphasize the contradictory politics of gender in conservative spaces, my analysis emphasizes how the gendered politics of guns is sustained by multiple, though not necessarily shared, understandings of women’s guns by men and women within American gun culture.
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Charles Lockhart, Kristin Klopfenstein, Jean Giles-Sims and Cathan Coghlan
Federal and state governments collaborate on state Medicaid nursing facility long-term care (SMNF-LTC) programs. These programs are increasingly expensive as the baby-boomers…
Abstract
Purpose
Federal and state governments collaborate on state Medicaid nursing facility long-term care (SMNF-LTC) programs. These programs are increasingly expensive as the baby-boomers retire. Yet serious resident outcome problems continue in spite of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) extensive process-focused regulatory efforts. This study identifies a promising and simpler auxiliary path for improving resident outcomes.
Methodology/approach
Drawing on a longitudinal (1997–2005), 48-state data set and panel-corrected, time-series regression, we compare the effects on resident outcomes of CMS process-focused surveys and four minimally regulated program structural features on which the states vary considerably.
Findings
We find that each of these four structural features exerts a greater effect on resident outcomes than process quality.
Research limitations/implications
We suggest augmenting current process-focused regulation with a less arduous approach of more extensive regulation of these program features.
Originality/values of chapter
To date SMNF-LTC program regulation has focused largely on member facility processes. While regulating processes is appropriate, we show that regulating program structural features directly, an arguably easier task, might well produce considerable improvement in the quality of resident outcomes.