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During the 1990s, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) instituted a policy of arresting and detaining people for minor offenses that occur in public as part of their quality‐of‐life (QOL) policing initiative. The purpose of this paper is to examine the pros and cons of the current policy and compare it with possible alternatives including: arrest and issuing of a desk appearance ticket (DAT); issuing of a non‐criminal citation (violation); street warnings; and toleration of public marijuana smoking.

The paper reviews several studies of QOL policing and examines the pros and cons of the current NYPD policy, compared to possible alternatives.

The number of NYPD arrests for marijuana in public view (MPV) (with most detained for one or two days) increased from 3,000 in 1994 to over 50,000 in 2000, and have been about 30,000 in the mid‐2000s. Most of these arrestees (84 percent) were minority; Blacks were 2.7 more likely and Hispanics 1.8 times more likely to be detained than Whites for an MPV arrest. Minorities received more severe dispositions, even controlling for demographics and prior arrest histories.

The paper recommends that the NYPD change to routinely issuing DATs to reduce detention for marijuana violators. Drug policy reformers might wish to further pursue changing statutes regarding smoking MPV into a violation (non‐criminal) or encourage the wider use of street warnings, as in Britain. Any of these policy changes would help reduce the number detained and the disproportionate burden on minorities associated with the current arrest and detention policy. These policies could help maintain civic norms against smoking marijuana in public.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature pertaining to occupational health disparities experienced by Latino immigrant workers in the USA and to advance a general framework based on systems science to inform epidemiological and intervention research.

Using papers and other sources from 2000 to the present, the authors examined the employment conditions and health outcomes of Latino immigrant workers and critically analyzed the pervasive evidence of health disparities, including causal mechanisms and associated intervention programs.

The occupations, including the work environment and resultant living conditions, frequently performed by Latino immigrants in the USA represent a distinct trigger of increased injury risk and poor health outcomes. Extant intervention programs have had modest results at best and are in need of more comprehensive approaches to address the complex nature of health disparities.

An integrated, systems-based framework concerning occupational health disparities among Latino immigrant workers allows for a holistic approach encompassing innovative methods and can inform high-leverage interventions including public policy.

Reductionist approaches to health disparities have had significant limitations and miss the complete picture of the many influences. The framework the authors have provided elucidates a valuable method for reducing occupational health disparities among Latino immigrant workers as well as other populations.

Ethical concerns about the use of the Mental Health Act (MHA) have led to calls for developmental disorders to be removed from the list of mental disorders for which individuals can be detained. In parallel, there are long-standing concerns of ethnic disparity in the application of the MHA. Nonetheless, the impact of the intersections of developmental disorder diagnosis, adolescence and ethnicity on the application of the MHA is unknown. This study aims to explore ethnic differences in MHA sections and the factors accounting for this, in an adolescent inpatient developmental disorder service.

File reviews were conducted to explore differences in MHA status, as well as demographic, clinical and risk factors that may account for this, between 39 white British and ethnic minority adolescents detained to a specialist inpatient developmental disorder service.

Consistent with adult literature, adolescents of an ethnic minority were overrepresented in the sample and were significantly more likely to be detained on Part III or “forensic” sections of the MHA than White British counterparts, with five times greater risk. Analyses revealed no significant differences between ethnic minority and white British participants on demographic variables, clinical needs, risk behaviours, risk measures nor application of restrictive practices and safeguarding procedures.

National audits exploring patterns of detention under the MHA across adolescent developmental disorder populations need to include analysis of intersections to ensure that the MHA is used as a means of last resort and in an equitable manner.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first comprehensive exploration of the impact of ethnicity on detention patterns in ethnic minority and White British populations.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a basic organizing framework for when a plaintiff’s race, ethnicity, or sex may impact civil jury awards. The framework takes into account psychological and structural sources of bias and the ways in which they may interact when jurors have more or less discretion. Second, the paper employs a methodological innovation to overcome one of the primary barriers to empirical field research on bias in civil legal decisions: the absence of plaintiff demographic information.

The data set is comprised of jury verdicts in tort cases combined with information from the US Census Bureau regarding race and ethnicity. Statistical tests measure the relationships between race, ethnicity, sex, and awards for economic damages and pain and suffering.

Overall, the results were consistent with the psycho-structural framework. Where jurors had discretion (i.e. pain and suffering damages), they awarded less to black plaintiffs than to white plaintiffs, indicating potential psychological bias. Where jurors had little discretion (i.e. lost income) they awarded less to female plaintiffs and more to Asian plaintiffs than to male and white plaintiffs, respectively, a potential reflection of structural income disparities. Thus, the framework and method have promise for exploring relationships between structural and psychological bias and differential civil jury awards.

Because demographic information is not easily available, there is very little research on race and gender bias in civil cases. This study introduces and provides a conceptual test of a novel framework for when bias is most likely to impact damage awards in these cases and tests it using advances in social demography that can help researchers overcome this barrier.

African-Americans historically report greater exposure to discrimination and also experience unfavorable outcomes associated with physical health, poverty concentration, residential segregation, and poorer education. The effects of discrimination are particularly harmful on mental health as discriminatory experiences contribute significantly to diminished mental health status and psychological distress. African-Americans pursuing graduate education may experience additional stressors, increasing the risk for poorer mental health. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of psychological health and discrimination experiences among black and white graduate students at a southeastern university.

Participants were 505 graduate students at a predominantly white southeastern institution. Researchers collected data via self-administered online and paper questionnaires during the spring 2010 semester. Graduate students were asked questions pertaining to individual demographics, discrimination, and psychosocial concerns.

Approximately 15 percent of the graduate students reported psychological distress. Additionally, black graduate students reported significantly higher levels of day-to-day and lifetime discrimination when compared to white graduate students. In addition to the proportions of psychological distress differing by race, African-American graduate students reported better psychological well-being when exposed to both day-to-day and lifetime discrimination than whites with similar exposure.

Resilience factors and coping strategies should be examined further among African-American graduate students for greater understanding. Moreover, it is important to develop applications to improve mental health outcomes for all graduate students.

This is one of the few studies to focus on the mental health and discrimination experiences among a graduate student population. The sample is drawn from the southeastern USA where there are long vestiges of discrimination and a sizable sampling of African-Americans who live in the USA.

The health care industry has experienced vibrant growth since the last few decades. Total health care business has reached more than US$160bn in the country and is still growing, but sustainable growth of industry is a major area of concern. An unsustainable and uneven growth might contribute in growth presently, but will not help in the long run due to extinction in future. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The research has been divided into two phases to analyze the barriers to achieve sustainable growth, i.e., identification of barriers and their analysis. The study has used three different research phases: identification of barriers from the literature, interviews with experts of industry and designing an ISM model. The identification phase led to the selection of 19 barriers from literature and by suggestions from industrial experts. The interpretive structural modeling (ISM) analysis was used to understand the impact and linkage of identified barriers. The barriers are further classified into four major categories on the basis of drive power and dependence power using “Matrices d’Impacts Croises Multiplication. Appliqué a un Classement” analysis.

The present research identifies 19 barriers in the field of growth of health care mainly in rural area with 11 levels in ISM-designed model. Barriers such as lack of awareness, medical mistrust, cost/benefit, transportation, high out of pocket expenditure, lack of health insurance, medical unawareness and the cultural dimension (traditional beliefs) have very high dependency power. These variables are highly influenced by other barriers. Barriers such as low outreach (geographical reach), information and communication, insufficient capacity planning, and highest growth in population have very high driving and dependence power. They have a very high impact on the system as any change in them will have a direct impact on others. Remaining seven selected barriers have a very high driving power and they are generally independent in nature and have less impact on the system as whole.

This study seeks to identify which barrier is acting as the most dominant one and this result is helpful for policy-makers to achieve goals of National Health Mission (NHM) by removing the dominant barrier.

Total health care business reaches more than US$160bn in the country and is still growing, but sustainable growth of industry is a major area of concern. This paper is one of the preliminary attempts to identify which barrier is acting as the most dominant one and this result is helpful for policy-makers to achieve the goals of NHM by removing the dominant barrier.

The purpose of this study is to describe the full picture of how public libraries contribute to overcoming social division through their resources, programming and services.

A systematic literature review and analysis was conducted. Literature was collected from LISA and LISTA, two primary databases of library and information science literature. Through individual analyses and discussion among researchers, data from 47 documents were analyzed and classified into three categories: “digital”, “economic” and “demographic” divisions. Examples from the literature were used to illustrate how public libraries impact social division in each of these categories.

The three categories reveal that public libraries contribute to overcoming social division by reducing inequality and promoting interaction among citizens. This is done by addressing digital, economic and demographic divisions within society.

This study is the first to summarize in a comprehensive way how public libraries contribute to reducing social division. By classifying how public libraries address this important social issue, this study contributes to the literature about how social division can be overcome.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of discriminatory job loss (DJL), which occurs when discrimination and job loss intersect. The paper aims to discuss the antecedents and consequences of DJL and calls for research on the topic.

Diversity and careers research from management, psychology, economics, and sociology literatures on discrimination, job loss, and unemployment are examined.

Discriminatory job loss involves discriminatory termination, discriminatory layoff, retaliatory termination, and constructive discharge and exacerbates negative outcomes of discrimination or job loss alone. Antecedents to DJL are the external and internal environments. DJL affects unemployment duration and reemployment quality and targets self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and perceived control.

When large numbers of people experience DJL and long unemployment durations and lower re‐employment quality, this affects the individuals as well as society. In times of high employment, when jobs are scarce, individuals have fewer employment options and employers have more freedom to engage in discrimination. Having large groups of people know that their ability to maintain employment is negatively affected by their demographic group membership while others know that their demographic membership provides employment privileges can result in long‐term negative individual, organizational, and societal consequences.

This paper brings attention to, and calls for research on, DJL and its negative consequences.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify prominent patterns of media use across six media (e.g. television, social media, public libraries) and four gratification contexts (e.g. studying, leisure activities), and second, to investigate whether media use patterns vary with six individual characteristics by introducing the construct of information repertoire.

Data were collected through an online questionnaire completed by 811 adult internet users in the USA. Latent class analysis (LCA), including latent class regression, was performed to analyse the data.

The study found eight information repertoire profiles. The user characteristics associated with each profile, such as age, race and ethnicity, were identified. The profile with the most respondents was characterised by heavy use of TV and the internet for everyday leisure activities. Overall, the eight profiles do not show exclusive use of one or two media (such as a power-law pattern). However, the profiles do exhibit patterned behaviour, in which respondents use the same configuration of media in two or more gratification contexts. These findings suggest some level of gratification-based heuristic in media selection and use when respondents face contexts they deem to be similar.

In conceptual development, the study introduced the construct of information repertoire to capture media use profiles that account for multiple media use across multiple contexts. Methodologically, less-used LCA was applied, which allowed combining the 24 variables (6 media×4 gratification contexts) and the six demographic covariates in a single, unified analysis.

Information privacy is currently regarded as one of the key ethical issues of the information age. Rapid technological developments and the advent of Internet based commerce or electronic commerce (e‐commerce) have forced several nations of the world to enact legislation to protect the information privacy of their citizens and corporations. Transborder data flows (TBDFs) have been known to have a significant impact on multinational and transnational corporations with respect to international data transfers. This paper discusses the issues and implications of TBDFs and provides a comparative account of the privacy laws on individual data protection in different countries. Also proposed is a theoretical model relating to diffusion of social policies of use with respect to the adoption and diffusion of privacy laws by different nations of the world in a global e‐commerce environment.