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Research into indigent defense issues has shown that the growth in the use of public defenders has been accompanied by increased bureaucratization and has paralleled the expansion of the right to counsel and the "due process revolution." The goal of this research is the development and testing of a model of organization adaptation which explains for public defender offices in Virginia the evolution of multiple and contradictory organizational goals, the means by which they balance conflicting values and goals, and the effect of resulting decision making processes on organizational output. The basic research question addressed is the relationship between values, goals, and organizational processes. Due process goals protect the organizations' ideologically based "core technology." Production goals allow organizations to adapt to the environment through emphasis on caseloads and efficiency. The possibility that over time normative goals are eclipsed by production goals as the demands of rising caseload increase with an increase in the routinization of decision making processes is also explored. The results on organizational output of the contradiction between due process and production values and goals are examined. Data were collected through a survey of public defenders in Virginia in 1992 (N=118 with a response rate of 73%). Caseload data were also collected. Analysis of the data revealed that due process values and goals are particularly strong throughout the Virginia system. Production values and goals, while not as strong as due process ones, were also important. The oldest offices showed stronger production values and goals even while due process values and goals remained relatively constant. Higher workload pressures were also found in offices where production values were strongest. Stronger production values and goals were associated with more routinized decision making in the forms of increased pressure to plea bargain and more frequent accepting of routine offers of prosecutors; there were also higher caseloads and lower rates of increase in several measures of costs in offices with stronger production values and goals. Higher due process values and goals were associated with increased trial rates and longer case processing times.

This study identifies and validates variables which are significant predictors of work release success on 439 Virginia work release participants. The variables were selected on the basis of whether they would exert internal or external control over the inmate, with a view toward offering empirical support to control theory. A retrospective longitudinal research design was employed by randomly selecting inmates who had participated in either of three work release centers from 1987 to 1991. Two of the programs housed male inmates while the other housed female inmates. Data were collected from inmate files on thirty-one variables over a six month period. Analysis employed logistic regression using work release success or failure as a dichotomous dependent variable. A prediction model was developed using a construction sample of 416 cases. The resultant model was then used to predict and classify inmates using a randomly selected validation sample of 226 cases. Of the thirty-one variables under study, four individual factors (previous commitments, age of offense, time on the street, and prior misdemeanor convictions), two program factors (time in work release and year of work release), and one institutional adjustment factor (no institutional drug or alcohol violations), emerged as significant predictors. The study revealed that the work release staff has been successful in identifying low risk inmates, with a success rate of 86% and a failure rate of 14%. Of the failures, only six had new charges (1.4% of the total population), and three escaped or absconded (0.7% of the total population). The remaining forty-nine failures (11.1% of the total population) failed urine screens or failed due to poor work performance. The prediction model was able to classify 88% of the validation sample correctly which is a minimal improvement over the department of corrections selection procedures.

Because of increasing costs and demand for nursing home care, studies are needed that can better describe the population of users and improve prediction of clinical outcomes and program requirements. The major purpose of this study was to explore the incremental and seven month outcomes of nursing home patients using the Andersen model. The design was longitudinal. Patients from one Veterans Administration (VA) hospital-based nursing home and six freestanding. VA contract community nursing homes were studied. Functional and cognitive ability were analyzed along with socioeconomic and demographic data. and utilization patterns. A second purpose was to assess associations among variables and their interaction effects in predicting outcome. A third purpose was to assess the contribution of such independent variables as case-mix and rehospitalization rates to possible cost differences evidenced by the two nursing home types. The results of this study suggest avenues for planning and allocation of resources in the two program alternatives. The Barthel Index (BI) (Mahoney & Barthel. 1965) was used to measure functional status and the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) (Pfeiffer. 1975) for cognitive ability. In addition to standardized measures. sociodemographic and utilization data. perceptions of health and outcomes of care were collected on all subjects. Analytical techniques included descriptive and inferential statistics. The major hypothesis was that veterans in the hospital-based versus contract statistically significant differences in characteristics and on measures of service use and clinical outcome. Findings were evaluated for policy adequacy. adherence to program intent. federal and state cost complement and other qualitative implications. Statistically significant differences were found between patients in the two settings on predisposing, enabling and need characteristics. The hospital-based NHCU patients were more likely to be married and living with someone. They also had higher incomes, more Medicare A coverage, a greater percentage of service-connected veterans and demonstrated greater limitation in functional ability than did those in contract. The predominant outcome for both groups was continued nursing home care. Statistically significant differences were also found for outcome measures. Higher income and being 76 years or older were predictive of continued nursing home residence. The type of nursing home was not significant in explaining continued care. The total number of diagnoses. age group and type of nursing home were predictive of death as an outcome. There were significantly more deaths among those 75 years or younger. among those with lower incomes and among NHCU patients. Health service utilization did not differ significantly by nursing home type. Neither group of nursing home patients demonstrated any significant improvement in functional or mental status and self-perceived health. The only differences of note were among those 75 years or less who did improve in functional ability from the third to the sixth month. The findings suggest that the two nursing home types do have different patient population profiles. However. the continued use of nursing home care by both groups indicates some lack of fit between legislative intent and actual clinical utilization.

The diversity visa (DV) lottery was created as part of a larger immigration bill in 1990 in order to diversify an immigrant pool that has favored Asian and Hispanic immigrants since the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Traditional research on the national security ramifications of immigration policy has focused on highly publicized issues, such as illegal immigration and asylum and amnesty programs, to the exclusion of the risks of fraud and terrorism inherent in the DV lottery. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the national security vulnerabilities of the DV lottery. Open-ended interviews were conducted with a snowball sample of 10 foreign service officers who adjudicate lottery visas for U.S. immigration from nations designated as state sponsors of terror. Guided by the framework of systems theory and the theory of constraints, content analysis was employed to reveal patterns and themes in the data. The findings were consonant with the framework, revealing the barriers and vulnerabilities of the DV lottery. Other findings showed both that the DV lottery has a negative impact on U.S. national security and fraud remains a serious concern, and yet there was no consensus on the scope and origin of potential terrorist threats. Recommendations include increasing collaboration and integration among agencies implementing the DV lottery, developing information-sharing agreements with other countries, and taking measures to eliminate fraud. The implications for social change include informing the public, immigration agencies, academics, and policy makers about the vulnerability of the DV lottery to fraud and misrepresentation; enhancing the debate about balancing immigration policies and national security; and possibly ending the DV lottery.

This dissertation examines the dynamic of metropolitan governance in terms of interlocal contractual arrangements that govern the delivery of collective goods by local government. It views a metropolitan area as buzzing with contractual activities and observes that these activities are nested at different levels in a web of interlocal relations in an action arena. That is, local governments involved in contractual activities are connected through their contractual arrangements--forming what we refer to as institutional ties. An interconnected network of institutional ties represents a pattern of relations between local governments. Such a network structure is not static but evolves over time. These changes can be purely structural--explained by an endogenous mechanism such as a transitivity form of network structure, or exogenous, explained by such factors as a local government's political institutions (form of government or levels of government), geographical proximity, and demographic characteristics. In order to understand the different forms of formal and informal institutional arrangements that directly influence the formation of institutional ties, and indirectly, the formation of metropolitan governance, this dissertation is guided by four research questions: (1) what are the many forms of institutional arrangements used by local governments to govern their transactions? (2) through what process do institutional arrangements become acceptable by involved parties? (3) how and why could the stability of institutional arrangements in governing interlocal relations be undermined? and (4) how would a new form of institutional arrangement be established? While the first two sets of questions attempt to identify and examine the many types of interlocal contractual arrangements, the last two sets explain how the established institutional arrangements might be changed. The substantive focus of this dissertation is in the realm of public safety which, once produced, will be consumed by others at no additional marginal cost. There are a range of interlocal contractual arrangements found in the area of public safety, and Florida provides a research opportunity to examine the extent by which these arrangements have been used by local governments. To capture the multiple types of interlocal contractual arrangements used by local governments to govern their transactions, we classify them into two general forms: restrictive and adaptive contractual arrangements. The first analysis of this dissertation explores factors that explain local governments' institutional choice. The empirical results show that vertical intergovernmental relations involving municipal and county governments generally employed a restrictive rather than adaptive form of interlocal contracting. The analysis also shows that the characteristics of goods and services as the product of transaction costs influenced the forms of interlocal contractual arrangements in the provision of public safety. Functional service area and the number of collaborators involved also play an important role in explaining a local government's decisions to enter into particular forms of interlocal contractual arrangements. We then focused on the adaptive and restrictive forms of contractual arrangements as distinctive action arenas in the provision of public safety. Each form of contractual arrangement is treated as a distinctive form of metropolitan governance; and we seek to analyze their formation over a period of time using the network software for longtidudinal data sets called SIENA. For this particular analysis, four major metropolitan areas in Florida were selected: Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach MSA, Tampa-St Petersburg-Clearwater MSA, Orlando-Kissimmee MSA, and Duval-Jacksonville MSA. The analysis is designed to test two general propositions: the credibility-clustering and the information bridging hypotheses. The empirical results suggest that localities generally prefer to form a set of densely-connected institutional ties in the provision of public safety presumably for their ability to enforce credible commitment in the implementation of contractual activities. When outcomes of goods and services are difficult to measure requiring local governments to establish institutional ties based on the adaptive form of contractual arrangements, the empirical evidence supports the prediction of the credibility-clustering hypothesis that such metropolitan governance structures would be influenced by a dense network structure. On the other hand, the evidence seems to refute the information-bridging hypothesis that a sparse network structure exists in metropolitan governance that is based on a restrictive form of contractual arrangements. A set of institutional ties that consists of a restrictive form of contractual arrangements generally would display a densely-connected network structure rather than a sparse network structure. Other findings include the importance of multilateral agreements in influencing the dynamic process of institutional ties. That is, the transaction costs of multilateral agreement can lead to a crowding-out of bilateral agreements. The political institutions and local community characteristics also have an impact on the dynamic development of metropolitan governance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: August 1, 2006. / Regional Governance, Interlocal Agreement, Network Analysis, Institutional Collective Action / Includes bibliographical references. / Richard C. Feiock, Professor Directing Dissertation; John T. Scholz, Outside Committee Member; Frances S. Berry, Committee Member; Ralph S. Brower, Committee Member.