Chapter 2: Pay Now So You Won't Pay Later: The Effectiveness of Prevention Programming in the Fight to Reduce Delinquency

Community-based delinquency prevention programs, designed to work with youth and families before they become involved with the official court process, are relatively rare. Likewise, few studies have been published concerninge valuative research on such programs. This article reviews some background on program concepts, describes the operations of the Oakland County Probate Court Youth Assistance casework services program, and reports the results of a comprehensive program evaluation project. The findings suggest that prevention programming is one effective strategy to aid in reducing the likelihood of more costly court interventions. Recommendations for program development are offered.     

Co-creation of Linking Social Capital in ‘Municipality 3.0’

There is great interest in co-creation of welfare production between municipalities and the civil society in the Nordic countries. Using linking social capital as a theoretical point of departure and examining a qualitative case study in Norway, I critically assess the concepts of co-creation and ‘Municipality 3.0’. It is suggested that even in countries with high trust in the authorities, building linking social capital in the shape of interorganizational networks is a complex process fraught with potential barriers related to trust, network building, municipal resources, and statutory laws and regulations. And while outcomes are promising, they are far from certain.     

‘Into the custody of the Serjeant at Arms’: inducing parliamentary attendance in Dublin and Westminster, 1690–1859

Parliamentary attendance could be quite problematic before the advent of modern political parties. For more than a century after the Glorious Revolution both the English/British and Irish Houses of Commons sought to address this challenge by ordering the Serjeant at Arms to take into custody hundreds of absent Members of Parliament (MPs). The extraordinary expedient of turning parliament into a prison, albeit of the softest variety imaginable, did not solve the attendance problem. On the contrary, it became considerably worse after both Houses adopted new rules for adjudicating controverted elections in the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the willingness to employ this distasteful and rather ineffective weapon quickly dwindled. The last arrest order for unauthorized absence came in 1859, 112 years before the final occasion on which Westminster was forced to adjourn business for want of MPs.     

Recruitment and selection practices among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ghana

Taking into consideration the eugenic nature and perspective of high-performance human resource management functions on organizational effectiveness, the authors examined managerial and employee level of recruitment and selection on operational performance with emphasis on human capital and three indicators of organizational commitment (affective, normative, and continuous) as mediators. Questionnaires totaling 282, 122 for managerial level and 160 for employee level, were administered. A multilevel analysis of data were conducted on a selected number of Ghanaian NGOs using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study revealed that recruitment and selection ideally leads to improved operational performance, however, this affiliation can be enhanced through the inescapable role of human capital and the three commitment indicators (affective, normative, and continuous). It was also exposed that effective recruitment and selection leads to a desirable employee’s level of affective, normative and continuous commitment, which also have greater influence on the operational performance. The study is thus considered very significant contextual support to existing literature and practitioners since not much of such work has been done in the Ghanaian context. Therefore, the current study implicates recruitment and selection, human capital, and the three commitment levels as a core value-creating ability that drives non-governmental organizations performance.