Search results

Citizen review of complaints against police officers is an important new aspect of policing which takes many different forms. Explains the reasons leading to the usage of this term in preference to similar terms. Analyzes official documents related to the 65 citizen review (CR) procedures currently in force in the USA. Highlights the problematic relationship between the goals of CR and administrative features. Finds that existing procedures do not always guarantee an independent review of complaints. Suggests additional research on procedures, more critical assessment of the assumptions underlying CR, and rigorous comparative evaluations of complaint review systems, also of the relationship between CR and other innovations such as community policing.

In the USA, rising concern about ethnic conflict has led to the creation of special bias crime units (BCUs) in a number of police departments. The vast majority of states have some form of hate crime legislation against crimes motivated by race, religion, gender, etc. Criticisms have been leveled against this legislation, among them the claim that it could be a tool for discrimination against minorities or that the laws are largely a symbolic response to ethnic conflict. Records an exploratory study of BCUs in 16 small to medium police departments in central USA. Notes that an officer who is prejudiced against a group may fail to apply the law. Details the variety among the departments surveyed, of which only 25 per cent had established a BCU. Concludes that departments’ commitment to BCUs is weak in general. Also finds that Law Enforcement Management Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) data, although widely used, is often inaccurate, due to the inherent limitations of mail surveys.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an accounting association and its key members define, control, and claim their knowledge; adopt a closure and/or openness policy to enhance their status/influence; and respond to structural/institutional forces from international organisations and/or the state in a particular historical context, such as a globalised/neo-liberalised setting.

The authors draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical tools (field, capital, habitus, and doxa) to understand how public sector accrual accounting was defined, and how the Korean Association for Government Accounting was formed and represented as a group with public sector accounting expertise. The research context was the implementation of accrual accounting in South Korea between 1997/1998, when the Asian financial crisis broke out, and 2006/2007, when accrual accounting was enforced by legislation. The authors interviewed social actors recognised as public sector accounting experts, in addition to examining related documents such as articles in academic journals, newsletters, invitations, membership forms, newspaper articles, and curricula vitae.

The authors found that the key founders of KAGA included some public administration professors, who advocated public sector accrual accounting via civil society groups immediately after Korea applied to the International Monetary Fund for bailout loans and a new government was formed in 1997/1998. In conjunction with public servants, they defined and designed public sector accrual accounting as a measure of public sector reform and as a part of the broader government budget process, rather than as an accounting initiative. They also co-opted accounting professors and CPA-qualified accountants through their personal connections, based on shared educational backgrounds, to represent the association as a public sector accounting experts’ group.

These findings suggest that the study of the accounting profession cannot be restricted to a focus on professional accounting associations and that accounting knowledge can be acquired by non-accountants. Therefore, the authors argue that the relationship between accounting knowledge, institutional forms, and key actors’ strategies is rich and multifaceted.

Company Law Reform The Government's long awaited White Paper on Company Law Reform has taken 'disclosure' as its principal theme and many of the areas of current practice which have become the focus of recent criticisms will eventually be covered by new legislation designed to make companies and individuals play a more open hand. Obviously such matters as the Lonhro affair have left their mark on official thinking but attention has also been directed at those areas where pressure for reform has not received the same degree of publicity in the popular press.

To present qualitative data illustrating how some of the largest law enforcement agencies in the USA use risk management in their efforts to control police liability.

To explore this topic, two main data sources were utilized: telephone interviews with 354 law enforcement agencies identified the prevalence of the use of risk management by police agencies; and survey data from police agencies provided descriptive information about the roles, duties, and placement of risk managers within each police organization.

Telephone interviews revealed that 14 of the 354 (0.039 percent) law enforcement agencies identified risk management as one of several tools they use to control police‐related liability within their organizations. This finding is surprising, given the increase in costs associated with settlements/payouts for police‐involved litigation and liability claims over the past few decades.

Future research should identify the reasons why police agencies choose not to use risk management in their police liability management efforts. In addition, future research should explore how the characteristics of city government and/or political culture are associated with the use of risk management by law enforcement agencies.

This paper can serve as a basic resource for police scholars and practitioners, city/county attorneys, risk managers, and various other city/county agents that are interested in learning about risk management as a way to manage police liability.

This paper presents the first national study of risk management in police agencies in the USA.

Nearly 45 years ago, the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists, released their statement, which served as a call to action to address gaps in contemporary Black feminism by engaging in antiracist and antisexist identity politics. In 1983, Jacqueline Fleming explored the making of matriarchs at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Since then, there have been few explorations into the construction of Black womanhood at HBCUs (Njoku, 2017). Educational research across contexts that explores the construction of gender among African-American women has also been limited. This demonstrates a need to speak truth to power, challenging existing power structures throughout the academy. The inadequacy of educational narratives from Sistas at HBCUs, and across all institutional contexts, has yielded a single story of resilience that is used to validate the need for research on Black men, yet ignore Black women. As we look upon the survival of HBCUs beyond 2020, we must reconsider the ways that HBCUs contribute to the idea of identity politics and the existing challenges to these identity politics within HBCUs. In this chapter, we argue the importance for HBCU leaders to engage the Combahee River Collective's call by intentionally investing in Black women and amplifying narratives that give depth and debunk the myths and ignorance of Black women's college experiences. Truth-telling in this case harnesses the voices of African-American women at HBCUs “in the specific goal of confronting existing power relations”. We provide an updated response to the Combahee River Collective Statement in which we delve into the ways HBCUs contribute to identity politics and the challenges to identity politics at HBCUs. This chapter challenges power relations not only within the context that the narratives occurred but also within an academy that has failed to excavate them, until now.

Although numerous studies recently have appeared that identify the most‐cited scholars and works in the general criminology and criminal justice literature and in several specialty areas, no previous citation study has specifically examined the police studies literature. Through an analysis of 370 articles and research notes appearing from 1991 to 1995 in the areas of police studies, published in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and four academic periodicals devoted to police studies, we list the 50 most‐cited scholars and the 36 most‐cited works. The lists of the most‐cited scholars and works in the specialty area of police studies are compared to general lists taken from leading criminology and criminal justice journals and introductory textbooks. We conclude with some thoughts about the relevance of citation analysis to specialists in police studies.

This paper provides a brief historical sketch of cable and telephone regulation in the USA, the purpose of which is to demonstrate the legacy that precedes contemporary debates over competing models of digital networks, and to question the justifications offered for regulating such networks as private property with no corresponding public service obligations.

The paper relies on historical research to examine the rationales that have been used for cable and telephone regulation, based on the use of legal documents (statutes, regulations, court rulings).

The historic justifications that have been used to protect telecommunications from competition amounts to what is known as “corporate welfare”. Today's cable and telephone networks, and the accumulated wealth of the corporations that own them, would not have been possible without the willingness of regulators to favor particular firms and business models, and to protect these firms from competition under the rationale that these networks are “natural monopolies”.

Today's digital networks have been built on the wealth and market dominance that was made possible by protection from competition and the guaranteed rates of return that regulation permitted. Consequently, the property rights that have been afforded to network owners should be accompanied by responsibilities, namely, in the form of public service obligations.