The Preventive Effects of Arrest on Intimate Partner Violence: Research, Policy and Theory

This research addresses the limitations of prior analyses and reviews of five experiments testing for the specific deterrent effect of arrest on intimate partner violence by applying to individual level data consistent eligibility criteria, common independent and outcome measures, and appropriate statistical tests. Based on 4,032 cases involving adult males who assaulted their female intimate partners, multivariate regression analyses show consistent but modest reductions in subsequent offenses targeting the original victim that is attributable to arresting the suspect. Although the reductions attributable to arrest are similar across all five studies, other factors, such as the suspect\u27s prior arrest record, are stronger predictors of subsequent offenses. The effect of arrest is also modest compared with the general decline in offenses toward the same victim during the follow-up period

Progress Toward National Estimates of Police Use of Force

This research builds on three decades of effort to produce national estimates of the amount and rate of force used by law enforcement officers in the United States. Prior efforts to produce national estimates have suffered from poor and inconsistent measurements of force, small and unrepresentative samples, low survey and/or item response rates, and disparate reporting of rates of force. The present study employs data from a nationally representative survey of state and local law enforcement agencies that has a high survey response rate as well as a relatively high rate of reporting uses of force. Using data on arrests for violent offenses and the number of sworn officers to impute missing data on uses of force, we estimate a total of 337,590 use of physical force incidents among State and local law enforcement agencies during 2012 with a 95 percent confidence interval of +/- 10,470 incidents or +/- 3.1 percent. This article reports the extent to which the number and rate of force incidents vary by the type and size of law enforcement agencies. Our findings demonstrate the willingness of a large proportion of law enforcement agencies to voluntarily report the amount of force used by their officers and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) program to produce nationally representative information about police behavior

Progress toward national estimates of police use of force

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This research builds on three decades of effort to produce national estimates of the amount and rate of force used by law enforcement officers in the United States. Prior efforts to produce national estimates have suffered from poor and inconsistent measurements of force, small and unrepresentative samples, low survey and/or item response rates, and disparate reporting of rates of force. The present study employs data from a nationally representative survey of state and local law enforcement agencies that has a high survey response rate as well as a relatively high rate of reporting uses of force. Using data on arrests for violent offenses and the number of sworn officers to impute missing data on uses of force, we estimate a total of 337,590 use of physical force incidents among State and local law enforcement agencies during 2012 with a 95 percent confidence interval of +/- 10,470 incidents or +/- 3.1 percent. This article reports the extent to which the number and rate of force incidents vary by the type and size of law enforcement agencies. Our findings demonstrate the willingness of a large proportion of law enforcement agencies to voluntarily report the amount of force used by their officers and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) program to produce nationally representative information about police behavior

An Analysis on the Detection of Biological Contaminants Aboard Aircraft

The spread of infectious disease via commercial airliner travel is a significant and realistic threat. To shed some light on the feasibility of detecting airborne pathogens, a sensor integration study has been conducted and computational investigations of contaminant transport in an aircraft cabin have been performed. Our study took into consideration sensor sensitivity as well as the time-to-answer, size, weight and the power of best available commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices. We conducted computational fluid dynamics simulations to investigate three types of scenarios: (1) nominal breathing (up to 20 breaths per minute) and coughing (20 times per hour); (2) nominal breathing and sneezing (4 times per hour); and (3) nominal breathing only. Each scenario was implemented with one or seven infectious passengers expelling air and sneezes or coughs at the stated frequencies. Scenario 2 was implemented with two additional cases in which one infectious passenger expelled 20 and 50 sneezes per hour, respectively. All computations were based on 90 minutes of sampling using specifications from a COTS aerosol collector and biosensor. Only biosensors that could provide an answer in under 20 minutes without any manual preparation steps were included. The principal finding was that the steady-state bacteria concentrations in aircraft would be high enough to be detected in the case where seven infectious passengers are exhaling under scenarios 1 and 2 and where one infectious passenger is actively exhaling in scenario 2. Breathing alone failed to generate sufficient bacterial particles for detection, and none of the scenarios generated sufficient viral particles for detection to be feasible. These results suggest that more sensitive sensors than the COTS devices currently available and/or sampling of individual passengers would be needed for the detection of bacteria and viruses in aircraft

Published findings from the spouse assault replication program: A critical review

Published reports from seven jointly developed experiments have addressed whether or not arrest is an effective deterrent to misdemeanor spouse assault. Findings supporting a deterrent effect, no effect, and an escalation effect have been reported by the original authors and in interpretations of the published findings by other authors. This review found many methodologically defensible approaches used in these reports but not one of these approaches was used consistently in all published reports. Tables reporting the raw data on the prevalence and incidence of repeat incidents are presented to provide a more consistent comparison across all seven experiments. This review concludes that the available information is incomplete and inadequate for a definitive statement about the results of these experiments. Researchers and policy makers are urged to use caution in interpreting the findings available to date.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45108/1/10940_2005_Article_BF02221298.pd

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Prospective, and Randomized Study

The increasing trend toward outpatient surgery has stim-ulated the development of a variety of techniques focused on decreasing postoperative pain. The perception of pain is a complex process involving peripheral and central sensi-tization to nociceptive stimuli. Catheters to deliver local anesthetic or narcotic agents to surgical sites have been used extensively in nonorthopaedic applications. Pain control infusion pumps (PCIP), which are spring-loaded or bladder-controlled devices delivering constant rates of local anesthetic to the operative site through a catheter, are gaining in popularity in orthopaedic procedures to control postoperative pain.18 These pump

Collective Efficacy and Violence in Chicago Neighborhoods: A Reproduction

This research tests the reproducibility of the neighborhood-level effects of social composition and collective efficacy on community violence that Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls reported in a Science article entitled “Neighborhood and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Based upon data from a resident survey, the U.S. Census, and official homicide reports from Chicago, Sampson et al. found that neighborhood collective efficacy directly affects perceived neighborhood violence, household victimization, and homicide rates. In addition, they reported that the relationship between residential stability and concentrated disadvantage with each measure of violence is mediated after adding their collective efficacy measure to the regression models. This article uses Earls, Brooks-Gunn, Raudenbush, and Sampson’s archived data collection and other archived data collections to assess the extent to which Sampson et al.’s core substantive findings are independently reproducible. While the reanalysis identified some differences between the archived data and the information provided in Sampson et al., the reanalysis produced findings in the same reported direction and statistical significance for virtually all of Sampson et al.’s core substantive outcomes. This confirmation of their key conclusions provides added confidence in their collective efficacy thesis and enhances the prospects for extending it by assessing the degree to which it also affects other crime types and whether these effects persist over time