BACKGROUND Data from the Chinese police service suggest substantial reductions in road traffic injuries since 2002, but critics have questioned the accuracy of those data, especially considering conflicting data reported by the health department. METHODS To address the gap between police and health department data and to determine which may be more accurate, we conducted a simulation study ba...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study is to describe the pattern of ill health after personal incapacitant spray (PIS) exposures reported to the National Poisons Information Service-London (NPIS-L) and the Chemical Incident Response Service and to evaluate the relation between sub-categories of PIS exposure and adverse health effects. METHODS Case series study of patients reported to the NPIS-L, b...

Multilinguality need not be textual only, but will take on spoken form, when information services are to extend beyond national boundaries, or across language groups. Database access by speech will need to handle multiple languages to service customers from different language groups within a country or travelers from abroad. Public service operators (emergency, police, department of transportat...

BACKGROUND There has been an increased drive towards Evidence Based Policing in recent years. Unlike in other public sector services, such as health and education, randomised controlled trials in the police setting are relatively rare. This paper discusses some of the methodological and practical challenges of conducting a randomised controlled trial in the police setting in the UK, based on ou...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to measure the relative efficiency of the fourteen police precincts in Taipei city, Taiwan. Our results indicate how DEA may be used to measure these police precincts from commonly available police statistical data for the years 1994, 1995, and 1996. To sharpen our efficiency estimates, we use window analysis, slack variable analysis, and output-oriented ...

Institutions in developing countries, particularly those inherited from the colonial period, are often thought to be subject to strong inertia. This study presents the results of a unique randomized trial testing whether these institutions can be reformed through incremental administrative change. The police department of the state of Rajasthan, India collaborated with researchers at US and Ind...

In response to publicized shootings of minority civilians, several police agencies across the county have announced that they will hire more minority police officers. However, there is a dearth of quantitative research examining real-life consequences of police diversity. Between 1969 and 2000, a number of police departments were sued for racial and gender discrimination, and many responded by ...

This study was based on a larger survey on the socioeconomic, quality-of-life, occupational, and health characteristics of military and civil police in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The study triangulated quantitative methods (an anonymous questionnaire in a random sample of clusters involving 46 police units and 2,678 police force members) and qualitative ones (18 focus groups with 143 ...