Control As Enterprise Reflections On Privatization And Criminal Justi

Control As Enterprise: Reflections On Privatization And Criminal Justice Thank you very much for the welcome, and for giving my talk. When the Fraser Institute called me last year, they rang up and said they were having a conference and we would like to invite you, and I thought I think you have the wrong person. Basically, everybody else there, except myself and one person from Nova Scotia, were in favour of privatization and very strongly in favour of it, especially with respect to prisons. It was actually very educational and interesting to engage in that debate. First of all I would like to thank you very much for the invitation and to wish you all the best with your new programme. I am glad that you have asked me to speak about privatization and criminal justice because I am sure that nobody here needs me to remind you that privatization is one of the issues of our time. We see this in Canada in the context of budget cuts and trying to reduce the deficit, where privatization is often posed as a solution to problems we are faced with fiscally. We also see it in the West generally. You only look at the labour party in Britain, the new government, to see that they are far more open now to at least some aspects of privatization then would have been the case twenty years ago. I think if we look around the globe in general we see that privatization is an issue in many other places also, and I am thinking here in particular of Russia and other Central and Eastern European countries where there has been massive privatization in the 1990s. I spent 1 993\94 in Lithuania and saw what was going on there, and the scale was phenomenal. I think that made me sensitive to just how big the changes are that can take place, and also sensitized me to how once privatization is set in motion, it can take on an impotice of its own, one that might surprise even the very people that initiated it. That is one reason why even with private prisons, that right now are very minuscule proportionately to prisons in general, that we should take this issue very seriously because it can accelerate and develop in the future. I am also glad that you have invited me to speak about privatization here because although we are surrounded by privatization, including in criminal justice, this phenomenon is relatively little researched. The one exception here might be private police, there has been a fair bit written on private police. But beyond that there is many aspects of privatization in criminal justice that have not received adequate attention. So on the one hand we are surrounded by the phenomenon and on the other hand we don't know as much about it as we should. Even my own work, I might add, privatization is more or less a tangent for me as I do other areas of research. I think it is indication that very few people in Canada, criminologists, are systematically focussing on this but I keep getting roped back into this. I just wish I had three lives at once so that I could pursue it the way I really want to. Privatization is an area that really needs attention, and lets hope that students here at St. Thomas are going to take this up. Let me just mention one or two topics that need attention. Many people talk about privatization in criminal justice, including myself, mention that it is likely that private companies will try and influence criminal justice policy in various places. Yet when you look for the empirical support for this there is very little factual information there. Or we talk a bit about the decline of the military in industrial conflicts, the end of the Cold War, and new markets opening up for these companies internationally and we see some of the companies moving from the United States into Britain, Australia and now also Canada, and we hear things about them moving into Latin American countries and East European countries, but again this international dimension is one that there has been very

Understanding Stratified Samples and How to Make Them

Understanding Stratified Samples and How to Make Them A stratified sample is one that ensures that subgroups (strata) of a given population are each adequately represented within the whole sample population of a research study. For example, one might divide a sample of adults into subgroups by age, like 18-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60 and above. To stratify this sample, the researcher would then randomly select proportional amounts of people from each age group. This is an effective sampling technique for studying how a trend or issue might differ across subgroups. Importantly, strata used in this technique must not overlap, because if they did, some individuals would have a higher chance of being selected than others. This would create a skewed sample that would bias the research and render the results invalid. Some of the most common strata used in stratified random sampling include age, gender, religion, race, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, and nationality. When to Use Stratified Sampling There are many situations in which researchers would choose stratified random sampling over other types of sampling. First, it is used when the researcher wants to examine subgroups within a population.  Researchers also use this technique when they want to observe relationships between two or more subgroups, or when they want to examine the rare extremes of a population. With this type of sampling, the researcher is guaranteed that subjects from each subgroup are included in the final sample, whereas simple random sampling does not ensure that subgroups are represented equally or proportionately within the sample. Proportionate Stratified Random Sample In proportional stratified random sampling, the size of each stratum is proportionate to the population size of the strata when examined across the entire population. This means that each stratum has the same sampling fraction. For example, let’s say you have four strata with population sizes of 200, 400, 600, and 800. If you choose a sampling fraction of  ½, this means you must randomly sample 100, 200, 300, and 400 subjects from each stratum respectively. The same sampling fraction is used for each stratum regardless of the differences in population size of the strata. Disproportionate Stratified Random Sample In disproportionate stratified random sampling, the different strata do not have the same sampling fractions as each other. For instance, if your four strata contain 200, 400, 600, and 800 people, you may choose to have different sampling fractions for each stratum. Perhaps the first stratum with 200 people has a sampling fraction of  ½, resulting in 100 people selected for the sample, while the last stratum  with 800 people has a sampling fraction of  ¼, resulting in 200 people selected for the sample. The precision of using disproportionate stratified random sampling is highly dependent on the sampling fractions chosen and used by the researcher. Here, the researcher must be very careful and know exactly what he or she is doing. Mistakes made in choosing and using sampling fractions could result in a stratum that is overrepresented or underrepresented, resulting in skewed results. Advantages of Stratified Sampling Using a stratified sample will always achieve greater precision than a simple random sample, provided that the strata have been chosen so that members of the same stratum are as similar as possible in terms of the characteristic of interest. The greater the differences between the strata, the greater the gain in precision. Administratively, it is often more convenient to stratify a sample than to select a simple random sample. For instance, interviewers can be trained on how to best deal with one particular age or ethnic group, while others are trained on the best way to deal with a different age or ethnic group. This way the interviewers can concentrate on and refine a small set of skills and it is less timely and costly for the researcher. A stratified sample can also be smaller in size than simple random samples, which can save a lot of time, money, and effort for the researchers. This is because this type of sampling technique has a high statistical precision compared to simple random sampling. A final advantage is that a stratified sample guarantees better coverage of the population. The researcher has control over the subgroups that are included in the sample, whereas simple random sampling does not guarantee that any one type of person will be included in the final sample. Disadvantages of Stratified Sampling One main disadvantage of stratified sampling is that it can be difficult to identify appropriate strata for a study. A second disadvantage is that it is more complex to organize and analyze the results compared to simple random sampling. Updated by  Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.

Policies and practice in health Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Policies and practice in health - Essay Example Diabetes could cause several harmful and long term impacts upon the human health due to which the importance of combating this problem with the help of adequate health policy has been widely realized. The healthcare professionals and healthcare policy makers widely agree that it is very imperative to formulate and implement sound policies and health plan to address the issues and concerns associated with the human health and diabetes effects (Ekoke et al, 2001, p98). In United Kingdom the prevalence of diabetes has considerable increased over the last few decades and every passing year is adding thousands of people in the list of diabetic patients in the country. The situation is becoming worst with each passing day because the problems of obesity and overweighting have also become problem due to which the type2 diabetes is also becoming very common among the people. Since the ratio of diabetes has been continuously increasing with alarming rate, the situation demands the wakeup call by the health campaigners so that this ratio could be reduced and the main factors behind the increase in diabetes cases could be worked out (Diabetes UK, 2001, p83). ... sing numbers of diabetic patients in the country has built pressure upon NHS because it has the responsibility of formulating policies to prevent the accordance of such diseases with such a high rate. While responding to this critical need NHS has worked on several strategic healthcare plans to assure the safety of the citizens from diabetes and other health problems that could evolve from diabetes (Hoffman R et al, 2002, p1748). NHS has demonstrated that the main objective of its health plan related with diabetes is based upon the objective of reducing the number of diabetes patient and improving the care for the people suffering from this disease. NHS diabetes policy aims to develop partnership with the healthcare staff so that these people could also be motivated and properly trained to deal with the people having diabetes (Department of Health, 2010, p23). The National Health Service plan for diabetes instructs the healthcare staff to offer structures and proactive care to the pe ople so that they could be able to manage their own health conditions at their own by taking adequate care of their disease through proper awareness and information about diabetes. NHS has also set up several local diabetes networks to robust the mechanism and policies implemented at the national level so that the benefits of the policies could be spread at local level as well. In this regard, NHS has worked for joint working relations between the Local Health Boards and the Local Diabetes Service Advisory Groups. The place register and clinical management system are also assured within the healthcare centres to allow systematic management and monitoring of the healthcare policies and their outcomes (Department of Health, 2010, p23). There have been several important plans and policies