Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that influence officer behavior when encountering suspects of crime who are perceived to have a mental disorder.

This paper utilizes data collected from systematic social observations of street officers during 617 encounters with suspects, including 49 that were perceived to have a mental disorder. Multivariate models are estimated to determine the relative influence mental disorder has on officer decision making.

The paper finds mentally disordered suspects are more likely to demonstrate disrespectful or hostile behavior. The paper also finds that disrespect and hostility increases the likelihood of arrests. However, results also demonstrate that despite behavioral differences, persons with mental disorders are significantly less likely to be arrested by officers. Results support the contention that officers view mental status as a mitigating factor during encounters, and further calls in to question the criminalization hypothesis.

It is not clear what extent informal actions were taken by officers during encounters with mentally disordered suspects. Future research can also examine the interaction process that occurs between police and citizens who are mentally disordered, and consider evaluating the effectiveness of various responses to mentally disordered suspects.

This paper has value for both practitioners interested in understanding the dynamics of the police‐citizen encounter, as well as academics who are involved with theorizing the nature of social control by police officers.

An emerging evidence base, and increased awareness of the effects of trauma on the body, advocates a sensory-based approach to treatment with posttraumatic stress and complex trauma survivors. This paper aims to identify, analyse and summarise the empirical evidence for the sensory-based interventions, which occupational therapists are using in the treatment of adult and adolescent trauma survivors.

An integrative review of the literature was undertaken. Both empirical and conceptual papers were included. An inductive approach and constant comparative method were used to understand and synthesise the research.

The literature search yielded 18 papers describing the types of sensory-based interventions used, sensory processing (SP) patterns and the context and evidence for sensory-based occupational therapy practice with trauma survivors. Nine of the studies were empirical and nine were conceptual and review papers. Themes identified included: atypical SP patterns; type of sensory-based intervention used with trauma survivors; and transdisciplinary treatment programmes can reduce the symptoms of trauma.

Sensory-based interventions with adult and adolescent trauma survivors are emerging as promising areas of practice and research in the literature. Although empirical data is limited, the sensory needs of the body in processing trauma experiences is becoming more recognised and are supported by the atypical SP patterns identified in survivors. A sensory-based, transdisciplinary approach to treatment has the potential to be effective in treating the trauma survivor.

With a skill base in sensory integration and occupational analysis, occupational therapists have much to offer the field of trauma studies. This review begins to address the gap in the literature, recommending more rigorous controlled outcome research with larger sample sizes, person-centred studies focussing on the trauma survivor’s perspective and continuing professional development and mentorship for occupational therapists working with this population.

The Hamilton canal in the western province of Sri Lanka is a man-made canal situated in an area with immense anthropogenic pressures. The purpose of this study is to identify the quality variations of the water in Hamilton canal and human perception about the present status of the water of the canal.

Sampling has been carried out in seven locations in the canal during dry and wet periods for water quality analysis. In situ field-testing and laboratory analysis have been conducted for physicochemical, heavy metal, oil and grease analysis of water. Only Pb, Cd, oil and grease were tested in the canal sediments. The samples were analyzed as per the standard methods of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Manual: 20th edition. A semi-structured questionnaire survey has been carried out to assess the human perception on the water of the canal.

The results revealed that average EC, Turbidity, Total Hardness, TDS, F⁻, Fe²+, Cl⁻, SO₄²⁻ and PO₄³⁻ of the canal water remained above the threshold limits of inland water standards. Concentrations of Pb and Cd were also above the standards in some locations. Oil and grease were in a very high level in water and sediments.

The water of the canal has been affected by nutrient, heavy metal and oil and grease pollution at present. Discharge of domestic, industrial, municipal wastes and sewage are the prominent reasons which have encouraged the deterioration of the quality of water in the canal.

The possibilities that a general autonomous and deterministic dynamical system offers as a model for a single species population is explored in detail. As an application of the algorithm derived from this study, the model is successfully adapted to several concrete situations.

This chapter derives from the movieDr. Strangelovecues for exploring questions about the quest for methodological insularity and purity in socio-legal research. Steven Lukes’ classic three-dimensional model of power provides an intellectual focus for the core exploration of relations between epistemology and data generation, the two key elements that we usually identify with methodology. The discussion culminates in an affirmative argument for the value of approaching methodology as jazz, the creative popular music that grounds reliable, humane sense in Kubrick's movie and provides an apt analogy for much of the leading scholarship in the LSA tradition.

The financial crisis starting in 2008 made many European countries opt for a change of exchange rate regime. The choice of price measure as an entry requirement to the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and as input in the monetary policy decision process re‐appeared as an important political and research issue. This paper aims to argue that, considering the importance of producer prices in international competition, their role is underplayed by policy makers and researchers.

Producer prices are analyzed in the transition from national exchange‐rate regimes to the EMU for 13 two‐digit manufacturing sectors in the first 11 countries to adopt the Euro.

It was found that significant price convergence before 1993‐1998, but no or modest evidence of convergence after 1998‐2005 when the Euro was introduced. This pattern is partly different from what prior studies have found for consumer prices, and is consistent with the change of exchange rate regime to a monetary union anchoring inflation rates. A conditional β‐convergence analysis reveals effective exchange‐rate changes and differences in cyclicality as important determinants of price convergence, suggesting that import of inflation is an important determinant of price developments in the EMU.

The paper concludes that considering the role of producer prices and their deviating pattern from consumer prices, producer prices are underplayed in the research and deserve more attention. It is argued that increased attention to producer prices is warranted.

Focusing monetary policymaking on consumer prices alone appears inefficient. Rather, then, support for the trade‐off approach in monetary policy‐making is supported.

In considering different solutions to the financial crisis, increasing attention should be paid to the development of producer prices.

This is the first study to focus on producer prices in the research on the transition from a national exchange rate regime to a membership of a monetary union.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following research questions: what characteristics do key Belizean educational leaders value in teacher applicants and why? What hiring tools do they use to ascertain whether teacher applicants have the characteristics they prefer?

The authors utilized a mixed-methods approach drawing upon three data sources – face-to-face interviews with Belizean educational leaders, field notes, and government documents. A card sorting activity of applicant characteristics and tools was embedded into the interview.

Informants preferred motivation, caring, subject matter knowledge, and teaching skills. Intelligence was perceived as a potentially negative characteristic unless coupled with other characteristics, such as strong teaching skills, motivation, and caring or the umbrella of other characteristics, such as content knowledge or university training/credentialing. Professional characteristics, such as where one went for teacher training and academic performance, were perceived as having less relative importance than personal characteristics. Least important were applicant demographics. Consistent with the extant literature, Belizean informants perceived the interview, evidence of prior experience, and certification as the most important tools in vetting and hiring applicants.

The exploratory study is limited by the small sample of informants, but provides insights into preferences for applicant characteristics and hiring tools in an understudied international context. This study informs future research that may seek to survey representative samples of various stakeholder groups (i.e. general managers and principals) for their preferences in applicant characteristics and hiring tools from across Belizean schools and educational providers.

The study adds to limited research on preferred teacher characteristics among educational leaders responsible for hiring and/or working with teachers and to the limited international educational leadership research.

We analyze fluctuations in inflation and the nominal exchange rate under optimal monetary policy with local currency pricing by developing two-country DSGE local currency pricing and producer currency pricing models. We estimate our models using Bayesian techniques with Japanese and US data, and calculate impulse response functions. Our estimation results show that local currency pricing is strongly supported against producer currency pricing. From the estimated parameters, we show that completely stabilizing consumer price index inflation is optimal from the viewpoint of minimizing welfare costs and that completely stabilizing consumer price index inflation is consistent with completely stabilizing the nominal exchange rate.

To provide an empirical analysis of what influences police use of field citations (tickets) against citizens in nontraffic and traffic encounters.

The research was conducted using systematic social observations of police‐citizen encounters in Cincinnati, Ohio, from April 1997 to 1998. Multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of legal and extralegal factors on the dependant variable (receipt of a citation) versus an officer doing nothing or arresting a citizen in nontraffic and traffic encounters.

Officers appear to be more likely to issue citations, as opposed to doing nothing formal or making an arrest, in traffic encounters. The extant literature's focus on citation issuance being more relevant to police behavior in traffic encounters as opposed to other routine encounters may be appropriate. When the decision rests between issuing a citation or making a full‐custody arrest in traffic encounters, white officers are more likely to arrest than their black counterparts, and black suspects were significantly more likely than Caucasians to be arrested than cited. Race of the officer or the suspect exhibited no significant effect in any of the other models estimated.

The study utilized data collected on police‐citizen interactions from one police agency in one jurisdiction, and the data do not come from a study designed primarily to examine citation outcomes or traffic encounters.

This study would be useful to researchers examining police use of citations, officer behavior in traffic and nontraffic encounters, quantifying law in police‐citizen encounters, and race‐based policing.

This study provides a comprehensive review of the literature, and an empirical analysis, regarding officer decision making as it pertains to the issuing of tickets relative to other police actions (i.e. arrest) in traffic and nontraffic situations.