Healing the Blind Goddess: Race and Criminal Justice

Once again, issues of race, ethnicity, and class within our criminal justice system have been thrust into the public spotlight. On both sides of the country, in our nation\u27s two largest cities, police are being called to account for acts of violence directed toward poor people of color. In New York City, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, who fired forty-one bullets at the unarmed man as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in a poor section of the Bronx. Did race influence the officers\u27 decisions to fire the fatal shots? Did the social class of Mr. Diallo or of the jury in Albany, to which the officers\u27 trials were transferred, influence the decision to acquit the officers? In Los Angeles, a former officer with the CRASH Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department\u27s Rampart Division has described, in excruciating detail, at least thirty police officers\u27 repeated misuses of their authority in an impoverished area of predominantly Latino immigrants. The scandal, which the Police Department itself conservatively estimates to implicate a staggering 120 cases, involved the shooting of unarmed people, conspiracies to put the innocent in jail, planting guns on suspects, and orchestrating the deportation of witnesses to police abuses. Could such massive and flagrant abuses of police power have festered for so long if they had instead transpired in a white, middle-class neighborhood

Commercial friendships between gay salesmen and straight female customers

Perhaps it is now sacrosanct in marketing to contemplate that many service encounters, especially those in retail settings, are social encounters in which bonds between and among customers and employees are critical drivers of consumption (Beatty et al., 1996; Rosenbaum, 2006). Indeed, within retail settings, it is often possible for salespeople and customers to form so-called “commercial friendships” (Price and Arnould, 1999). These friendships result in both salespeople and their customers having social interactions that are close to those experienced in personal friendships (Swan et al., 2001), and which are extremely satisfying for all parties. Outside of marketing, the social science literature (Grigoriou, 2004; Rumens, 2008; Russell, DelPriore, Butterfield, and Hill, 2013) and popular press (de la Cruz and Dolby, 2007; Hopcke and Rafaty, 1999; Tilmann-Healy, 2001, Whitney, 1990) is replete with knowledge regarding the “absolutely fabulous” friendships (Hopcke and Rafaty, 1999) that often form between gay men and straight women. In fact, Western culture regularly highlights the compatibility of gay men and straight women in film, television, and writing, to the extent that they have now influenced popular thinking on the topic, so that gay men and straight females are viewed as sharing common plights and interests (Rumens, 2008). Yet, thus far, marketing researchers have looked askance at the effect of friendships between gay male employees and heterosexual female customers in consumption settings, such as retail stores and boutiques. Indeed, with the exception of Peretz’s (1995) participant observation regarding how young and outwardly gay salesmen use their ambiguous gender to sell women’s clothing, in a Paris-based luxury boutique, any theoretical explorations regarding retail-based commercial friendships between gay salesmen and female customers are non-existent—until now. This research addresses this apparent chasm in the literature by putting forth an original framework that shows how the emotional closeness between gay salesmen and female customers, due to the absence of sexual interest and inter-female competition, results in an intense emotional closeness, that facilitates pleasurable retail transactions, customer satisfaction, loyalty, and positive word-of-mouth. In doing so, this work extends the commercial friendship paradigm by considering retail-based, commercial friendships between an under-researched marketplace dyad; gay men and straight females. It is worth noting here that some straight women may find the idea of commercial friendships with gay salesmen as undesirable, due to the very notion of having relationships with retail organizations or employees (Noble and Phillips, 2004), or a personal disdain for homosexuality

Identifying Unethical Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Privacy Violations Committed by IS/IT Practitioners: A Comparison to Computing Moral Exemplars

In some instances, Information Systems and Information Technology (IS/IT) practitioners have been noted to commit privacy violations to Personally Identifiable Information (PII). However, computing exemplars, due to their notable dispositional Hallmark Features of morality, understandings of ethical abstractions, and other components that comprise their virtuous makeups, are theoretically less likely to commit privacy violations to PII. This research attempted to verify if those IS/IT practitioners who identify with some of the Hallmark Features of moral and computing exemplar were less willing to commit privacy violations to PII than were those IS/IT practitioners that did not identify themselves with some of the Hallmark Features of moral and computing exemplars. In order to accomplish this, this research developed and validated two new survey instruments capable of identifying those IS/IT practitioners that were more and less willing to commit unethical privacy violations to PII, and contrast them against some of the Hallmark Features of computing exemplars. The findings of this research supported the conclusion that IS/IT practitioners that identify with some of the Hallmark Features of moral and computing exemplars were less willing to commit privacy violations to PII than were other IS/IT practitioners. Specifically, the results indicated that the most prominent predictor to indicate a lesser willingness to commit privacy violations to PII was that of those IS/IT practitioners that displayed prosocial orientations. Additionally, the predictors of age, level of education, and how ethical IS/IT practitioners assessed themselves to be, proved to be significant markers for those individuals that were less willing to commit privacy violations to PII. While the results are promising, they are also alarming, because the results also indicate that IS/IT practitioners are blatantly willing to commit privacy violations to PII. Thus, two immediate implications resonate from the results of this research. First, there are those individuals that have been given the trusted position of guardianship for society\u27s personal information that should probably not have it, and secondly, further investigations are warranted to determine what other predictors may promote a lesser willingness to commit privacy violations to PII. The contribution of this research to the fields of IS/IT, personnel selection and testing, and organizational assessment and training is unique. This is because, to date, no other discernable literatures have ever investigated the rating and rankings of the severity of PII privacy violations, nor has any other research investigated what Hallmark Features of individuality contribute to a less willing disposition to commit PII privacy violations

Public Philosophy and Philosophical Publics: Performative Publishing and the Cultivation of Community

The emergence of new platforms for public communication, public deliberation, and public action presents new possibilities for forming, organizing, and mobilizing public bodies, which invite philosophical reflection concerning the standards we currently look to for coordinating public movements and for evaluating their effects. Developing a broad understanding of public philosophy, this article begins with the view of philosophy and intellectual freedom articulated in Kant’s publicly oriented writings. We then focus on the power of philosophical discourse to form and further articulate public bodies. Drawing on Dewey’s work, we discuss the role of philosophical discourse in the articulation of publics into self-regulated, sovereign entities. We conclude with an account of how publishing itself might come to play an important role in the practice of public philosophy in a digital age

Access to comprehensive perinatal services among pregnant women enrolled in both Medi-Cal and Covered California: aligning and integrating care

Medi-Cal-enrolled women who are pregnant are entitled to coverage for enriched pregnancy-related care under Medi-Cal’s Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program (CPSP), a national landmark in the care and management of pregnant women with elevated health risks due to their low economic status. This entitlement applies to all pregnant women enrolled in Medi-Cal, including women who also are enrolled in subsidized health plans purchased through Covered California. The task that jointly faces Medi-Cal and Covered California is how best to align these two sources of pregnancy care financing in order to achieve a central goal of SB 857 – ensuring that dually enrolled pregnant women continue to have full access to CPSP-level treatment. With roots in California’s acclaimed Obstetrical Access demonstration program, the CPSP program does not simply provide additional coverage. CPSP effectively alters the standard of care available to pregnant women facing elevated health and social risks by establishing a provider network certified and overseen by the California Department of Public Health and qualified to provide CPSP-level care. This care is furnished in a fully integrated manner, through treatment teams comprised of clinicians, social workers, health educators, nutrition counselors, and other health professionals. By contrast, California’s essential health benefit regulations, which define the scope of coverage to which Covered California enrollees are entitled, do not specify either a range of maternity benefits comparable to those available through CPSP, or access to a provider network possessing the comprehensive treatment capabilities of CPSP providers. A review of health plans sold through Covered California reveals that these plans offer the standard level of maternity care expected from traditional commercial insurance. The care they offer, as described in their benefit summary materials, contains none of the special social, nutritional, enabling, or behavioral services available through CPSP, nor is there mention of special treatment standards that fully integrate a broader range of services into highly integrated care programs. The absence of this higher standard of care is not surprising, since Covered California is designed to reflect the commercial insurance market. This fact also explains the legislative intent behind SB 857 – to ensure that women enrolled in both Covered California plans and Medi-Cal and receiving pregnancyrelated care continue to have full access to the services and benefits of the CPSP program. Two options exist for aligning and integrating the CPSP program and Medi-Cal coverage with Covered California for dually eligible women. The first is to specify CPSP providers as “essential community providers” and direct health plans to extend network membership to all CPSP providers in their service areas. This approach might be combined with special payment incentives to plans that provide additional risk adjustments related to the treatment of pregnant women at higher health risk. Plans would pay CPSP providers for the standard maternity care they furnish and that are part of women’s Covered California coverage, and Medi-Cal would pay an enhancement to CPSP providers for the additional care they furnish. The California Department of Public Health would continue to maintain certification and oversight responsibilities for CPSP providers. The benefit of this model is that it would fully integrate CPSP providers into plan networks, thereby easing referral arrangements, especially for the treatment of underlying and diagnosed medical conditions. The limitation is the regulatory direction over plan network composition. A second option would be to treat CPSP providers as covered out-of-network care. Medi-Cal would pay providers as it currently does and seek repayment from Covered California plans up to the level of payment for standard maternity care. The strength of this model is the absence of greater regulation of 3 plan networks, while the limitation is the lesser level of integration of CPSP into broader health plan coverage and care through Covered California

Contrasting Evidence Within and Between Institutions that Provide Treatment in an Observational Study of Alternate Forms of Anesthesia

In a randomized trial, subjects are assigned to treatment or control by the flip of a fair coin. In many nonrandomized or observational studies, subjects find their way to treatment or control in two steps, either or both of which may lead to biased comparisons. By a vague process, perhaps affected by proximity or sociodemographic issues, subjects find their way to institutions that provide treatment. Once at such an institution, a second process, perhaps thoughtful and deliberate, assigns individuals to treatment or control. In the current article, the institutions are hospitals, and the treatment under study is the use of general anesthesia alone versus some use of regional anesthesia during surgery. For a specific operation, the use of regional anesthesia may be typical in one hospital and atypical in another. A new matched design is proposed for studies of this sort, one that creates two types of nonoverlapping matched pairs. Using a new extension of optimal matching with fine balance, pairs of the first type exactly balance treatment assignment across institutions, so each institution appears in the treated group with the same frequency that it appears in the control group; hence, differences between institutions that affect everyone in the same way cannot bias this comparison. Pairs of the second type compare institutions that assign most subjects to treatment and other institutions that assign most subjects to control, so each institution is represented in the treated group if it typically assigns subjects to treatment or, alternatively, in the control group if it typically assigns subjects to control, and no institution appears in both groups. By and large, in the second type of matched pair, subjects became treated subjects or controls by choosing an institution, not by a thoughtful and deliberate process of selecting subjects for treatment within institutions. The design provides two evidence factors, that is, two tests of the null hypothesis of no treatment effect that are independent when the null hypothesis is true, where each factor is largely unaffected by certain unmeasured biases that could readily invalidate the other factor. The two factors permit separate and combined sensitivity analyses, where the magnitude of bias affecting the two factors may differ. The case of knee surgery in the study of regional versus general anesthesia is considered in detail