Field, capital and the policing habitus: nderstanding Bourdieu through The NYPD’s post-9/11 counterterrorism practices

This article extends existing Bourdieusian theory in criminology and security literature through examining the practices of the New York City Police Department in the post-9/11 counterterrorism field. This article makes several original contributions. First, it explores the resilient nature of the policing habitus, extending Bourdieusian criminological findings that habitus are entrenched and difficult to change. Second, this article examines the way the resilient habitus drives subordinate factions to displace dominant factions in a field’s established social hierarchy through boundary-pushing practices, a concept previously unexamined in Bourdieusian criminology. Drawing on original documentary analysis, this article uses the illustrative example of the NYPD’s post-9/11 counterterrorism practices, exploring how it sought to displace the existing social structure by using its aggressive policing habitus and an infusion of ‘War on Terror’ capital to challenge the dominant position of the FBI in the post-9/11 counterterrorism field. The NYPD’s habitus driven counterterrorism practices were novel and unprecedented, creating strain with both the FBI and local communities

The Effects of Evacuation on Nursing Home Residents With Dementia

BACKGROUND: In response to the hurricane-related deaths of nursing home residents, there has been a steady increase in the number of facilities that evacuate under storm threat. This study examined the effects of evacuation during Hurricane Gustav on residents who were cognitively impaired. METHODS: Nursing homes in counties located in the path of Hurricane Gustav were identified. The Minimum Data Set resident assessment files were merged with the Centers for Medicare enrollment file to determine date of death for residents in identified facilities. Difference-in-differences analyses were conducted adjusting for residents’ demographic characteristics and acuity. RESULTS: The dataset included 21,255 residents living in 119 at risk nursing homes over three years of observation. Relative to the two years before the storm, there was a 2.8 percent increase in death at 30 days and a 3.9 percent increase in death at 90 days for residents with severe dementia who evacuated for Hurricane Gustav, controlling for resident demographics and acuity. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this research reveal the deleterious effects of evacuation on residents with severe dementia. Interventions need to be developed and tested to determine the best methods for protecting this at risk population when there are no other options than to evacuate the facility

Disasters, Catastrophes, and Policy Failure in the Homeland Security Era -super-1

The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency management in the United States, even though these attacks did not suggest a need for a wholesale restructuring of federal policy in emergency management. Instead, for several reasons, federal policy's emphasis on terrorism and emergency management significantly degraded the nation's ability to address natural disasters. The federal government sought to create a top-down, command and control model of emergency management that never fully accounted for, positively or normatively, the way local emergency management works in practice. The Obama administration will have to address the questions raised by the reorganization of federal emergency management responsibilities. While the context in which these changes have occurred is unique to the U.S. federal system, there are interesting implications for emergency management in nonfederal systems. Copyright 2009 by The Policy Studies Organization.

Making Matters Worse

Catastrophic disasters require additional leadership capabilities because extreme events overwhelm local capabilities and damage emergency response systems themselves. Therefore, leaders at all levels must adapt and rebuild the response system, even while they are addressing the pressing needs of the disaster itself. Leaders can minimize or maximize the effects of the trigger event(s) by their actions and competence in dealing with this especially difficult set of overlapping and, frequently, even inconsistent tasks. This case studies the effects of the Katrina-Rita hurricanes on New Orleans and systematically examines how poor leadership-lacking a series of critical competencies required in extreme conditions-can maximize catastrophic events. © 2008 Sage Publications