An Open Letter to Those Who Condemn Looting

I am blessed with friends who send me things to read I might not otherwise see..

 This time it's the author of Socialism and/or Barbarism and a piece on the rioting in London.  My cognitive dissonance is screaming like a bad clutch.  His streets are not mine.  His views are not mine.  His anger is foreign to me.  But I can choose to attempt to look at his community from his vantage point.  I may not understand how it is, but perhaps I can feel how it is.  And in that alien disjoint place I might sense the measure of the differences between us.

"A Soul as Black as Snow White's Hair"

Finally a podcast worthy of of the sobriquet ROTFLMAO...

The LogicallyCritical podcast is both down home sensible and laugh out loud hilarious.  The author skewers a variety of topics with charm, simple production touches, and a wicked sense of humor.  Look for it at iTunes or at the website.  

There is only one problem.  The anonymous philosopher comic produced 27 episodes off and on over the space of a couple years and then quit.  Check them out if you need a blast of thoughtful irreverence.

But Does Anyone Have Any Numbers?

Our peer Barry Nixon asks "Can anyone refer me to a good source or research that has been conducted on measuring the impact of workplace violence prevention programs?"

Barry is the founder of the National Institute for the Prevention of Workplace Violence and he and I have discussed the latest numbers in great detail recently so he knows the basic stats.  The question I suspect Barry is trying to answer is, “Are there any data that demonstrate that having an organized WPV program creates a detectable reduction in deaths, injuries, threats, or *cases?” (*Of course, a very successful program might easily increase the number of reported cases while reducing their severity). While we all strive to reduce fatalities, with the exception of homicides during robberies, they are relatively rare and a single severe incident can throw off the numbers. Tracking injuries, assaults, and threats may prove a more useful measure.

The FBI is certainly a promising resource.  Some correspondents referred Barry to the January 2011 FBI Bulletin.  As good as it is it presents best practices offered by eminent practitioners in the field that most everyone agrees makes good sense and which ought to reduce the severity of workplace violence cases (at least those involving other than Type I offenders).

With regard to workplace homicides, since ~75% occur during robberies at the hands of Type I offenders, a reduction in homicides and injuries during robberies represent a reduction in workplace violence (assaults and threats, by definition, not so much). Likewise reducing the number of robberies can reduce the number of persons harmed even if the rate of homicide and injury during the crime do not change.  JAMA has as paper testing a medical prevention model to the issue.  The effect of CPTED principles on robbery have been written up.  I have not touched the law enforcement literature on this topic.  So, Question 1:

What can our public administrators tell us about the impact of robbery risk reduction efforts on homicide rates? 

When it comes to Type II, III, and IV offenders - clients and patients, coworkers and ex-coworkers, and family and friends, respectively - an effective workplace violence prevention and response program should be able to track successful interventions, cases of which the company/client was aware but did not result in violence, changes in corrective actions and terminations for behaviors that are workplace violence risk factors, a reduction in assaults and threats reported by employees, a reduction in harassment and toxic manager cases, a reduction in some sorts of worker's comp claims, and increased employee job satisfaction and retention metrics. Question 2 is: 

Do our peers in Human Resources have any statistical methods that demonstrate that sexual harassment training actually reduces the severity and rate of incidents? Can their methods be applied to our question? 

In the very worst case of workplace mass murder at the hands of an active shooter, do those who apply best practices survival strategies survive, or suffer fewer or less severe injuries, than those who do not? Who offers routine instructions for low probability high impact events?  The airline industry.  Passengers who report paying close attention to the pre-flight safety briefings on commercial airlines are better prepared than those who do not. Finally, Question 3: 

How can post incident analyses be applied to after action reports of mass shootings? 

Other studies seem few and far between.  Most close by recommending further research.  There are some recent and not so recent doctoral dissertations that have been nibbling on this topic, but has anyone got a source for scientifically assembled hard numbers? Is the apparent decline in workplace homicides the result of education, prevention, and mitigation plans or is it part of the overall decline in violent crime?  Is it possible that so many organizations have been so busy implementing their workplace violence prevention programs that have not had time to measure the contribution they make to the security, safety, and well-being of our employees?  Those of us who have managed cases to their conclusion are happy that our anecdotes are usually about potential harms successfully disarmed, but these are not statistics.  Will workplace violence prevention programs become a pro forma best practice without regard to their actual effectiveness?

Updated 10 August 2011: The deeper I dig the clearer it seems that only the healthcare sector has even attempted to assemble any statistics regarding the effectiveness of violence reduction programs.  As I play with search terms in the academic journal databases I'm finding more doctoral dissertations on the subject.  Two look especially good (in a security nerd sort of way), Developing a grounded theory for successful workplace violence prevention programs by Linda F. Florence, and A critical review of the prevalence and effectiveness of workplace violence prevention programs by Debra Deane.  I've sent away for copies of both.

Good news and bad news:  The good news, in 2008 James T. Wassell published a paper titled Workplace violence intervention effectiveness: A systematic literature review.  The bad news, he didn't find much high quality evidence either.  Of 100 studies half dealt with Type II offenders in the healthcare setting.  Ten percent discussed homicide prevention in retail establishments (Type I offenders).  He recommended more research...

More bad news: Developing a grounded theory for successful workplace violence prevention programs by Linda F. Florence "is not available at any academic or public libraries in the United States."  I have no budget for this research so I will not be spending $33.00 for a copy.

"How Many of You Expect to Die?"

"How many of you want to be old when you do?"

A recent edition of On Being titled The Far Shore of Aging is a fine example of why I am a regular listener to Krista Tippett's podcast.

In the July 21st 2011 episode Tippett interviews Jane Gross, journalist, author of A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents--and Ourselves, and founder of The New Old Age blog at The New York Times website.

My sister-in-law and her husband, my wife, and our family are caring for the woman who was once my mother-in-law as she descends into her Alzheimer's.  My feelings about this sort of death are not kind.  This is a horrible process.  My own mother is not well in dozens of small ways, but she has her wits.  She is aware of her decades of pain but she is still the person who was my mother.  Which is better, mindless comfort or mindful suffering?  Which is harder on the family?  What choice do we have?

In the course of her interview Gross said, "We live too long and we die too slow."  I almost cried.  On my way home from some errands I turned the car toward the local Barnes & Noble and bought my wife a copy of Gross's book.  I may read it myself.

Cultural Cognition of Risk

Also known as the Conservative White Male effect...

The debate surrounding certain risks which mark the boundaries of the Culture War - abortion, tobacco, free trade, gun control, global warming, war on drugs, fundamentalist religion, global war on terror, debt limits, NASCAR - are highly polarized. Cultural Cognition of Risk helps explain why.

Chris Mooney has reposted a couple very interesting articles at his Discover magazine Intersection blog.  They lead us to posts from his Desmogblog.

The Bias Trap: Are We All Just A Bunch of Motivated Reasoners?

Alpha Males, Hierarchy Endorsers, System Justifiers…and Climate Deniers?

What’s Up With Conservative White Men and Climate Change Denial?

From there we are led into the world of familiar terms like, "Denialism," "Alarmism," "Confirmation Bias," "Cognitive Dissonance," and then on to less familiar terms such as "Motivated Reasoning," "Cultural Cognition of Risk," "Identity Protective Cognition," "Social Dominance Orientation," "System Justification," "Biased Assimilation," "Belief Perseverance," "Attitude Polarization," and "Covariation Detection."  Whew!  It'll take me a while to unpack this all but so far the explanatory power of the theory seems compelling.

One of the eminent scholars in the field is Dan Kahan of the Yale Law School where he runs the Cultural Cognition Project.  Another was the late Mary Douglas.

Of course there are blogs about this field; The Situationist, Four Cultures, Big Think, even Bruce Schneier wrote on it last fall.  There are instruments that assess how cultural cognition of risk affects you.

I keep thinking there ought to be an undegrad, if not high school, course on "Critical Thinking, Scientific Method, and the Psychology of Belief," but where to begin?