Behavioral Indicators of Drug Carrying in Open Spaces

This article identifies and describes a set of behavioral indicators associated with illegal drug carrying in public spaces. Through the use of focus group data, our research documents and translates the visual search techniques that veteran law enforcement and drugs experts report using in their work. Here, we catalogue these findings into 10 overarching categories, and discuss how each indicator may be incorporated into an officer's visual search. Knowledge of these indicators, when combined with proper training and an understanding of a public space, can help law enforcement identify persons who may be carrying drugs. The ability to identify drug-carrying individuals facilitates the interdiction and apprehension of offenders, and also protects the civil rights and liberties of the law-abiding public.

Does Public Assistance Reduce Recidivism?

Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, individuals convicted of drug-related felonies were permanently banned from receiving welfare and food stamps. Since then, over 30 states have opted out of the federal ban. In this paper, I estimate the impact of public assistance eligibility on recidivism by exploiting both the adoption of the federal ban and subsequent passage of state laws that lifted the ban. Using administrative prison records on five million offenders and a triple-differences research design, I find that public assistance eligibility for drug offenders reduces one-year recidivism rates by 10 percent.

Coverage Gaps for Medicaid-Eligible Children in the Wake of Federal Welfare Reform

Using data from the National Survey of America's Families, this paper examines insurance coverage changes for Medicaid-eligible citizen children between 1997 and 1999, early in the implementation of federal welfare reform. More than 20 million children qualified for Medicaid, but many were uninsured. Insurance coverage deteriorated for eligible children between 1997 and 1999, particularly for those who also qualified for cash assistance; this deterioration in coverage was largely due to dramatic declines in cash assistance participation. This paper shows that following federal welfare reform, states have faced new challenges reaching and enrolling the growing numbers of eligible children who are not connected with the welfare system.

Is Abstinence Education Theory Based? The Underlying Logic of Abstinence Education Programs in Texas

Authors examined the logic (or the implicit theory) underlying 16 abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in Texas (50% of all programs funded under the federal welfare reform legislation during 2001 and 2002). Defined as a set of propositions regarding the relationship between program activities and their intended outcomes, program staff's implicit theories were summarized and compared to (a) data from studies on adolescent sexual behavior, (b) a theory-based model of youth abstinent behavior, and (c) preliminary findings from the national evaluation of Title V programs. Authors interviewed 62 program directors and instructors and employed selected principles of grounded theory to analyze interview data. Findings indicated that abstinence education staff could clearly articulate the logic guiding program activity choices. Comparisons between interviewdata and a theory-based model of adolescent sexual behavior revealed striking similarities. Implications of these findings for conceptualizing and evaluating abstinence-only-until-marriage (or similar) programs are examined.

Welfare Reform and Children's Health

This study investigates the effect of the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program on children's health outcomes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation over the period 1994 to 2005. The TANF policies have been credited with increased employment for single mothers and a dramatic drop in welfare caseload. Our results show that these policies also had a significant effect on various measures of children's medical utilization among low-income families. These health measures include a rating of the child's health status reported by the parents, the number of times that parents consulted a doctor, and the number of nights that the child stayed in a hospital. We compare the overall changes of health status and medical utilization for children with working and nonworking mothers. We find that the child's health status as reported by the parents is affected by the maternal employment status.

State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP). Interim final rule

This rule implements a provision enacted by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 and reflects the transfer of the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Administration for Community Living (ACL) in HHS. The previous regulations were issued by CMS under the authority granted by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA `90), Section 4360.

Global justice, capabilities approach and commercial surrogacy in India

Inequalities, ineffective governance, unclear surrogacy regulations and unethical practices make India an ideal environment for global injustice in the process of commercial surrogacy. This article aims to apply the 'capabilities approach' to find possibilities of global justice through human fellowship in the context of commercial surrogacy. I draw primarily on my research findings supplemented by other relevant empirical research and documentary films on surrogacy. The paper reveals inequalities and inadequate basic entitlements among surrogate mothers as a consequence of which they are engaged in unjust contracts. Their limited entitlements also limit their opportunities to engage in enriching goals. It is the role of the state to provide all its citizens with basic entitlements and protect their basic human rights. Individuals in India evading their basic duty also contribute to the existing inequalities. Individual responsibilities of the medical practitioners and the intended parents are in question here as they are more inclined towards self-interest rather than commitment towards human fellowship. At the global level, the injustice in transnational commercial surrogacy practices in developing countries calls for an international declaration of women and child rights in third party reproduction with a normative vision of mutual fellowship and human dignity.

Perceived welfare caseworker support and psychological distress among low-income urban women with children

Although some research suggests that the relationship between Child Protective Services workers and their clients may influence client outcomes, little is known about the function of the relationship between welfare or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families caseworkers and their clients. Building on previous research, the authors use 1999 survey data from the Welfare, Children, and Families Project--a probability sample of 853 low-income women with children living in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, Texas--to examine the association between perceived welfare caseworker support and psychological distress. Results revealed that women who perceive their welfare caseworker to be interested, caring, and helpful also tend to exhibit lower levels of psychological distress.

Devolution and welfare reform: re-evaluating "success"

The passage of welfare reform shifted significant authority for welfare provision from the federal government to state and local governments. Proponents of devolution point to drastic caseload declines as evidence that state-run programs are decreasing dependency among families. However, welfare rolls in many states have remained stagnant or decreased since the start of the recession in late 2007. The uneven responsiveness of the welfare system to growing economic needs prompts the question of whether the safety net is functioning as intended. This article evaluates the literature on the state and local implementation of welfare to assess whether devolution has yielded the positive outcomes promised by proponents. Findings suggest that, under welfare reform, state and local governments are enacting diverse programs and do not appear to be limiting welfare provision in new ways to avoid becoming "welfare magnets." However, the type of program they adopt is systematically related to the racial and ethnic composition of the caseloads and the local political climate, leading to a fragmentary system in which some states and localities are more responsive than others. Social workers can help poor families in critical need of assistance by voicing these concerns at the local, state, and national levels.

Welfare policymaking and intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender in U.S. state legislatures

Welfare policy in the American states has been shaped profoundly by race, ethnicity, and representation. Does gender matter as well? Focusing on state welfare reform in the mid-1990s, we test hypotheses derived from two alternative approaches to incorporating gender into the study of representation and welfare policymaking. An additive approach, which assumes gender and race/ethnicity are distinct and independent, suggests that female state legislators—regardless of race/ethnicity—will mitigate the more restrictive and punitive aspects of welfare reform, much like their African American and Latino counterparts do. In contrast, an intersectional approach, which highlights the overlapping and interdependent nature of gender and race/ethnicity, suggests that legislative women of color will have the strongest countervailing effect on state welfare reform—stronger than that of other women or men of color. Our empirical analyses suggest an intersectional approach yields a more accurate understanding of gender, race/ethnicity, and welfare politics in the states.

Belonging and community: understandings of "home" and "friends" among the English poor, 1750-1850

This article is based on unique ‘narratives of the poor’, that is, letters from poor people to their parishes of settlement, petitions to the London Refuge of the Destitute, and letters from mothers to the London Foundling Hospital, with supportive evidence from newspapers. These display fundamental concepts among the English poor, who were often poorly literate, and who comprised the majority of the population. Discussion focuses upon their understandings of ‘home’, ‘belonging’, ‘friends’, and ‘community’. These key concepts are related here to modern discussions, to set important concerns into historical perspective. ‘Friends’, valuably studied by sociologists such as Pahl, had a wide meaning in the past. ‘Home’ meant (alongside abode) one's parish of legal settlement, where one was entitled to poor relief under the settlement/poor laws. This was where one ‘belonged’. Ideas of ‘community’ were held and displayed even at a distance, among frequently migrant poor, who wrote to their parishes showing strong ties of attachment, right, and local obligation. This discussion explores these issues in connection with belonging and identity. It elucidates the meaning and working of poor law settlement, and is also an exploration of popular mentalities and the semi-literate ways in which these were expressed.

Rural income transfer programs and rural household food security in Ethiopia

Based on household food security surveys conducted in Ethiopia, this study seeks to understand the roles and limitations of income transfer projects as determinants of households’ food security. By covering the Food-For-Work Programs (FFWPs) and the Productive Safety Net Programs (PSNPs), the study shows that these programs served as temporary safety nets for food availability, but they were limited in boosting the dietary diversity of households and their coping strategies. Households which participated in the programs increased their supply of food as a temporary buffer to seasonal asset depletion. However, participation in the programs was marred by inclusion error (food-secure households were included) and exclusion error (food-insecure households were excluded). Income transfer projects alone were not robust determinants of household food security. Rather, socio-demographic variables of education and family size as well as agricultural input of land size were found to be significant in accounting for changes in households’ food security. The programs in the research sites were funded through foreign aid, and the findings of the study imply the need to reexamine the approaches adopted by bilateral donors in allocating aid to Ethiopia. At the same time the study underscores the need to improve domestic policy framework in terms of engendering rural local institutional participation in project management.

Perception of insecurity in French poor neighbourhoods: racial proxy or pure discrimination hypotheses?

Many poor neighbourhoods, home to both socially disadvantaged populations and to foreigners, are characterised by a strong perception of insecurity. The purpose of this article is determine the origin of this perception. To do so, two possible causes are dissociated: racial prejudice and racial proxy (the ethnic minorities are perceived in terms of the negative social characteristics that are often associated with them). More specifically, it is shown that the ‘ethnic’ variable captures the effects of an overconcentration of poverty, approximated here by the concentration of unemployment, but that these two variables act separately. This result should be taken into account in the policies implemented by public authorities and local actors. In this study, an original methodology is applied based simultaneously on individual geocoded data, the proportion of foreigners, the unemployment rate at the neighbourhood level and an indirect indicator of perceived insecurity.

Social welfare as small-scale help: evolutionary psychology and the deservingness heuristic

Public opinion concerning social welfare is largely driven by perceptions of recipient deservingness. Extant research has argued that this heuristic is learned from a variety of cultural, institutional, and ideological sources. The present article provides evidence supporting a different view: that the deservingness heuristic is rooted in psychological categories that evolved over the course of human evolution to regulate small-scale exchanges of help. To test predictions made on the basis of this view, a method designed to measure social categorization is embedded in nationally representative surveys conducted in different countries. Across the national- and individual-level differences that extant research has used to explain the heuristic, people categorize welfare recipients on the basis of whether they are lazy or unlucky. This mode of categorization furthermore induces people to think about large-scale welfare politics as its presumed ancestral equivalent: small-scale help giving. The general implications for research on heuristics are discussed.

Welfare policies and adolescents: exploring the roles of sibling care, maternal work schedules, and economic resources

This study uses data from three longitudinal experimental evaluations of US state welfare reform programs to examine whether program-induced changes in families' reliance on sibling care are linked with the effects of welfare programs on selected schooling outcomes of high risk, low-income adolescents. The findings from two of the welfare programs indicate that increased reliance on sibling care was concomitant with unfavorable effects of the programs on adolescent schooling outcomes. In the third welfare program examined, the program did not yield any increases in the use of sibling care or unfavorable effects on adolescent schooling outcomes, suggesting that sibling care is one likely contributor to the negative effects of welfare programs on adolescent schooling outcomes. These findings are discussed in terms of the pattern of the programs' effects on families' income, as well as maternal work on nonstandard schedules, aside from the programs' effects on maternal employment, which play contributory roles in shaping the extent to which welfare programs led to less favorable effects on the schooling outcomes of adolescents with younger siblings.

Cooperation in USDA studies and evaluations, and full use of federal funds in nutrition assistance programs nondiscretionary provisions of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, Public Law 111-296. Final Rule

This final rule incorporates into the regulations governing the Programs authorized under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (NSLA) and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (CNA) two nondiscretionary provisions of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFK Act). The HHFK Act requires State and local cooperation in Department of Agriculture studies and evaluations related to Programs authorized under the NSLA and the CNA. The HHFK Act also amends the NSLA to stipulate that Federal funds must not be subject to State budget restrictions or limitations, including hiring freezes, work furloughs, and travel restrictions. This final rule amends regulations for the National School Lunch Program; the Special Milk Program for Children; the School Breakfast Program; the Summer Food Service Program; the Child and Adult Care Food Program; State Administrative Expense Funds ; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children; and the WIC Farmers' Market Nutrition Program. These provisions will strengthen program integrity by ensuring that sufficient data is made available for studies and evaluations. Additionally, exempting Federal funds from State budgetary restrictions or limitations is intended to increase the ability of State agencies to administer USDA's nutrition assistance programs effectively.