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The Cook County State Attorneys’ Deferred Prosecution Program (DPP) is a pre-trial diversionary program that accepts first-time, non-violent defendants charged with a felony crime. The purpose of this paper is to document the development, implementation, and program patterns of the DPP to better understand the program’s scope and reach in diverting defendants from traditional criminal prosecution.

The approach to evaluating Cook County’s DPP is primarily qualitative. Through interviews with program administrators and current and former participants, the authors document the process of creating and implementing such DPP that aims to avoid a felony conviction altogether. The authors provide program participant patterns to shed light on the program’s scope and reach in diverting defendants from traditional felony prosecution.

Using data from staff, administrators, and program participants, the authors found that the DPP was developed and implemented through supportive leadership who instilled a culture of collaboration and buy-in. Expanding the program could include increasing the capacity of DPP to include additional participants or having a DPP incorporated into each branch court, instead of the centralized system under which it currently operates. Increasing the capacity and scope of the program could both further decrease criminal court caseloads and most importantly avoid a higher number of stigmatizing felony convictions for first-time non-violent defendants.

DPPs are cost effective and can be easily implemented within existing systems. Collaboration and buy-in from all stakeholders are crucial to the program’s success. DPP offers opportunities for expansion. Increasing the capacity and scope of the program could both further decrease criminal court caseloads and most importantly avoid a higher number of stigmatizing felony convictions for first-time non-violent felony defendants.

The main goals of DPP were two-fold. The first was to minimize the level of resources allocated for non-violent offenders in the criminal justice system by diverting such defendants out of the criminal justice system early in the process and reducing the recidivism rates of program participants. The second aimed to provide an option for eligible defendants to avoid a felony conviction, thereby avoiding the collateral consequences associating with a felony conviction.

The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.

Summarizes changing employment patterns. Documents the rising incidence of vocational training for the economically active adult workforce, using data from successive Labour Force Surveys, and considers the issue of positive externalities arising from worker mobility.

The homelessness of those 50–64, older homeless people, is a growing problem in the United States. This chapter seeks to understand the unique healthcare issues faced by this population. Data in the city of Chicago was collected and analyzed through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. Data included answers to survey questions by older homeless individuals, interviews with providers and older homeless individuals, focus groups with older homeless individuals, and agency data from homeless service organizations. Findings agree with previous research that shows a growth in the homeless population, the greater number and severity of health problems in the population, the significant number of barriers that the population encounters in obtaining health care, housing, and jobs, and the concern with preventative health that the older homeless have. After outlining these findings, this chapter offers policy and program recommendations for the larger health care and homeless service systems.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the nation's first hospital to housing for homeless individuals. The Chicago Housing for Health Partnership (CHHP), a Housing First and Harm Reduction model, creates a new comprehensive system of health care, housing and supportive services.

The researchers conducted a year long process evaluation of the housing program using a multi‐method approach, which involved qualitative interviews, focus groups, document analysis and observations. The paper examined the CHHP system at three different levels (the administrative, service provision and the client levels).

The study allowed the organizational participants the ability to better understand their program by visually modeling the system for the first time and documenting its effectiveness. It also furthered the understanding of how and why the housing first model is best accompanied by a harm reduction approach. Finally, the paper was able to show how and why organizational system design is important in creating the most effective environment in which programs have a real impact.

The authors were able to help CHHP program leaders conduct strategic planning and to present their program as an effective model future funding agencies and to policy makers. CHHP has incorporated the recommendations into their permanent model. In addition, the CHHP leadership, in a network with other Housing First advocates, has disseminated the findings at national conferences and networking meetings. The authors' relationship with CHHP will continue with the design of a second stage research strategy in order to continue research on Harm Reduction Housing and policy advocacy.

The purpose of this study is to explain rationale for regulatory change in Australia and New Zealand after the global financial crisis.

Outline regulatory changes and relate to crisis experience and regulatory shortcomings exposed.

Regulatory change was driven primarily by need, as capital importing nations, to comply with emerging global standards, and the different approaches in both nations are also related to domestic political considerations.

The process of regulatory change in response to the crisis is ongoing.

A number of areas for further improvement in financial regulation are identified.

Costs of poor regulation and financial crises are identified.

A comparison of regulatory approaches in two countries dominated by the same four large banks helps understand the challenges of cross-border financial regulation cooperation.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on “the ‘new’ policy partnership”.

The paper highlights the significance of policy‐academic partnerships and outlines the papers included in this issue.

It is important to form and maintain partnerships and collaborations with new nontraditional stakeholders. One place where this is evident is in academia.

The special issue includes original articles that address innovative ways in which researchers and policy makers can collaborate to move policy agendas forward.

This last edition of the column begins with the disadvantages of sleeping in the library and ends with 60-year-old overdue loans, but in between are alternate ways of using different technology to access information!

Sleeping in the library is trending on the internet, not because it is a nice pastime, but because it is one of the most viral trends of the year.

The real advice is that falling asleep in public places such as libraries is not good. A lot of wild reactions to the picture of a girl sleeping in a university library has caused all sorts, as “photo-shoppers”have had a field day, putting the sleeper in all sorts of situations – in Drake’s “Hotline Bling” music video, dancing with Michael Jackson and more.

Derrick Lewis on 26th August reported that an Orange County library had made wi-fi devices available for rural internet users.

It is helping rural families make faster connections, and it is free to try the device which can be borrowed for 3 weeks and renewed twice if no one else has booked to use it.