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With budgets squeezed at every level of government, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) holds outstanding potential for assessing the efficiency of many programs. In this first book to address the application of CBA to social policy, experts examine ten of the most important policy domains: early childhood development, elementary and secondary schools, health care for the disadvantaged, mental illness, substance abuse and addiction, juvenile crime, prisoner reentry programs, housing assistance, work-incentive programs for the unemployed and employers, and welfare-to-work interventions. Each contributor discusses the applicability of CBA to actual programs, describing both proven and promising examples. The editors provide an introduction to cost-benefit analysis, assess the programs described, and propose a research agenda for promoting its more widespread application in social policy. Investing in the Disadvantaged considers how to face America’s most urgent social needs with shrinking resources, showing how CBA can be used to inform policy choices that produce social value.
The iron law of imprisonment is that “they all come back”. In 2002, more than 630,000 individuals left U.S. federal and state prisons. Thirty years ago, only 150,000 did. In this study, Travis decribes the new realities of imprisonment, and explores the impact of returning prisoners on seven policy domains: public safety, families and children, work, housing, public health, civic identity, and community capacity. Travis proposes a new architecture for the criminal justice system, organized around five principles of reentry, to encourage change and spur innovation.
Have the nations of the world begun to converge with respect to drug policy? Which countries have remained apart from the international dialogue? Which have taken steps to forge new, more liberal policies stressing education, treatment, and alternative community-based intervention? Focusing specifically on cannabis, cocaine, and heroin, Illicit Drug Policies, Trafficking, and Use the World Over presents a brief history and analysis of the current laws and policies regarding illicit drugs_widely considered to be a growing international health threat_in twenty five different countries. With its wide breadth of data and analysis, this volume will be valuable for both scholars and students of this seemingly intractable social, legal, and political problem.
Neighborhoods, Schools, and Violence furthers the evolution of the merger of social disorganization theories and opportunity theories in explaining the crime potential of place, particularly in Prince George's County, Maryland. Author Caterina Roman cogently utilizes the criminal opportunity framework to examine the influence of schools on neighborhood variations in the rates of violence.
"This book fills longstanding gaps in negotiation, a field that too often assumes everyone in diverse societies navigates the same realities. Elite solutions do not trickle down easily to those breaking cycles of poverty and disempowerment. Asking your boss for a raise at a tech company, for example, requires a different negotiation strategy than asking Social Services to help you get your kids back from the court. Context matters. This book makes central how heritage, ethnicity, wealth, gender, age, education, and other factors influence what we ask for, how people respond to our requests, as well as what is at stake when we negotiate. The same strategies used in the boardroom--if deployed in the streets--can lead to dangerous altercations. Based on the wisdom of over 100 individuals who negotiate successfully from the margins, the book provides tools for those who need them most and a guide for instructors and managers wishing to support them"--
Computerized crime mapping or GIS in law enforcement agencies has experienced rapid growth, particularly since the mid 1990s. There has also been increasing interests in GIS analysis of crime from various academic fields including criminology, geography, urban planning, information science and others. This book features a diverse array of GIS applications in crime analysis, from general issues such as GIS as a communication process and inter-jurisdictional data sharing to specific applications in tracking serial killers and predicting juvenile violence. Geographic Information Systems and Crime Analysis showcases a broad range of methods and techniques from typical GIS tasks such as geocoding and hotspot analysis to advanced technologies such as geographic profiling, agent-based modeling and web GIS. Contributors range from university professors, criminologists in research institutes to police chiefs, GIS analysts in police departments and consultants in criminal justice.
"James Densley collects articles from non-profit, independent news organization, The Conversation, to present an important primer on how the U.S. became so saturated with guns and its impact on American life"--
Researchers examined past U.S. countering violent extremism and terrorism prevention efforts and explored policy options to strengthen terrorism prevention in the future. They found that current terrorism prevention capabilities are relatively limited and that there is a perceived need for federal efforts to help strengthen local capacity. However, any federal efforts will need to focus on building community trust to be successful.
Written at an introductory level, and featuring engaging case examples, this book reviews the theory and practice of personal and egocentric network research. This approach offers powerful tools for capturing the impact of overlapping, changing social relationships and contexts on individuals' attitudes and behavior. The authors provide solid guidance on the formulation of research questions; research design; data collection, including decisions about survey modes and sampling frames; the measurement of network composition and structure, including the use of name generators; and statistical modeling, from basic regression techniques to more advanced multilevel and dynamic models. Ethical issues in personal network research are addressed. User-friendly features include boxes on major published studies, end-of-chapter suggestions for further reading, and an appendix describing the main software programs used in the field.
With distressing statistics about rising cost burdens, increasing foreclosure rates, rising unemployment, falling wages, and widespread homelessness, building affordable housing is one of our most pressing social policy problems. Affordable Housing and Public-Private Partnerships focuses attention on this critical need, as leading experts on affordable housing law and policy come together to address key issues of concern and to suggest appropriate responses for future action. Focusing in particular on how best to understand and implement the joint work of public and private actors in housing, this book considers the real estate aspects of affordable housing law and policy, access to housing, housing finance and affordability, land use, housing regulation and housing issues in a post-Katrina context. Filling a critical gap in the scholarly literature available, this book will be of particular interest to policy-makers, academics, lawyers and students of housing, land use, real estate, property, community development and urban planning