Lawrence W. Sherman – författare

Lawrence W. Sherman’s Scandal and Reform reframes corruption not as the failing of individual officers but as an organizational condition rooted in culture, structure, and leadership. Drawing on fieldwork in New York, Oakland, Newburgh, and a pseudonymous “Central City,” Sherman shows how corruption flourishes in deviant organizations and how scandals erupt when breaches of public trust trigger collective outrage. He demonstrates that scandals act as both sanction and catalyst: they topple leaders, shift power balances, and create openings for reform, but they can also demoralize institutions and entrench cynicism. Through careful analysis, Sherman traces how departments negotiate the tension between external pressures for integrity and internal imperatives to defend morale and reputation.The book moves beyond description to a theory of organizational change. Sherman distinguishes between preventive strategies that restrict opportunities for misconduct and punitive strategies that detect and sanction wrongdoers, weighing the limits of each in dispersed and secretive police organizations. Reform chiefs emerge as pivotal figures, infusing their departments with moral values and asserting visibility as a form of normative control. Yet the durability of reform depends not only on leadership but also on building systems for gathering information about misconduct—an ethically fraught task in a democracy that values privacy. By linking scandal, organizational character, and the politics of reform, Scandal and Reform provides a foundational account of how trust in public institutions is violated, contested, and sometimes restored. It remains a critical resource for scholars of organizational deviance, policymakers confronting corruption, and anyone interested in how scandal reshapes the institutions meant to guard democratic life.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Lawrence W. Sherman’s Scandal and Reform reframes corruption not as the failing of individual officers but as an organizational condition rooted in culture, structure, and leadership. Drawing on fieldwork in New York, Oakland, Newburgh, and a pseudonymous “Central City,” Sherman shows how corruption flourishes in deviant organizations and how scandals erupt when breaches of public trust trigger collective outrage. He demonstrates that scandals act as both sanction and catalyst: they topple leaders, shift power balances, and create openings for reform, but they can also demoralize institutions and entrench cynicism. Through careful analysis, Sherman traces how departments negotiate the tension between external pressures for integrity and internal imperatives to defend morale and reputation.The book moves beyond description to a theory of organizational change. Sherman distinguishes between preventive strategies that restrict opportunities for misconduct and punitive strategies that detect and sanction wrongdoers, weighing the limits of each in dispersed and secretive police organizations. Reform chiefs emerge as pivotal figures, infusing their departments with moral values and asserting visibility as a form of normative control. Yet the durability of reform depends not only on leadership but also on building systems for gathering information about misconduct—an ethically fraught task in a democracy that values privacy. By linking scandal, organizational character, and the politics of reform, Scandal and Reform provides a foundational account of how trust in public institutions is violated, contested, and sometimes restored. It remains a critical resource for scholars of organizational deviance, policymakers confronting corruption, and anyone interested in how scandal reshapes the institutions meant to guard democratic life.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Research evidence can and should have an important role in shaping public policy. Just as much of the medical community has embraced the concept of "evidence-based medicine," increasing numbers of social scientists and government agencies are calling for an evidence-based approach to determine which social programs work and which ones don't. It is an irony not lost on the social scientists writing for the September volume of The Annals that the first use of experimental methods in medicine (to test the effects of Streptomycin on tuberculosis in the late 1940s) was actually conducted by an economist. But while more than one million clinical trials in medicine have been conducted since that time, only about 10,000 have been conducted to evaluate whether social programs achieve their intended effects.

Authors of the September volume argue that this level of investment in the "gold standard" of research designs is insufficient for a wide range of reasons. Randomized controlled trials, for example, are far better at controlling selection biases and chance effects than are other observational methods, while econometric and statistical techniques that seek to correct for bias fall short of their promise. The volume dramatically demonstrates that alternative methods generate different (and often substantially wrong) estimates of program effects. Some research based on nonexperimental research designs actually mislead policy makers and practitioners into supporting programs that don't work, while ignoring others that do.

Authors of this volume also directly address critiques of experimental designs, which range from questions about their practicality to their ethics. Some of these arguments are well taken, but addressable. The authors, however, reject other arguments against controlled tests as unfounded and damaging to social science..

Policymakers will find these articles invaluable in better understanding how alternative research methods can mislead as much as enlighten. Students and researchers will be confronted with powerful arguments that question the use of nonexperimental techniques to estimate program effects.

This volume throws the gauntlet down. We challenge you to pick it up.

Research evidence can and should have an important role in shaping public policy. Just as much of the medical community has embraced the concept of "evidence-based medicine," increasing numbers of social scientists and government agencies are calling for an evidence-based approach to determine which social programs work and which ones don't. It is an irony not lost on the social scientists writing for the September volume of The Annals that the first use of experimental methods in medicine (to test the effects of Streptomycin on tuberculosis in the late 1940s) was actually conducted by an economist. But while more than one million clinical trials in medicine have been conducted since that time, only about 10,000 have been conducted to evaluate whether social programs achieve their intended effects.

Authors of the September volume argue that this level of investment in the "gold standard" of research designs is insufficient for a wide range of reasons. Randomized controlled trials, for example, are far better at controlling selection biases and chance effects than are other observational methods, while econometric and statistical techniques that seek to correct for bias fall short of their promise. The volume dramatically demonstrates that alternative methods generate different (and often substantially wrong) estimates of program effects. Some research based on nonexperimental research designs actually mislead policy makers and practitioners into supporting programs that don't work, while ignoring others that do.

Authors of this volume also directly address critiques of experimental designs, which range from questions about their practicality to their ethics. Some of these arguments are well taken, but addressable. The authors, however, reject other arguments against controlled tests as unfounded and damaging to social science..

Policymakers will find these articles invaluable in better understanding how alternative research methods can mislead as much as enlighten. Students and researchers will be confronted with powerful arguments that question the use of nonexperimental techniques to estimate program effects.

This volume throws the gauntlet down. We challenge you to pick it up.

Each year, more than 1,000 Americans are killed in police-citizen encounters. Fatal police shootings have become commonplace, and their unfortunate frequency continues to shape the public’s perceptions of and individuals’ experiences with safety, legislation, and justice.  This volume of The ANNALS sheds new light on fatal police shootings, the institutional practices that perpetuate them, and the policy changes needed to stop their recurrence. Featuring contributions from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this volume offers timely insight into fatal police shootings and provides a wide range of interventions with the potential to prevent them.

How do attempts to foresee the future actually change it? For thousands of years, humans have called upon foresight to shape their own actions in order to adapt and survive; as Charles Darwin revealed in his theory of natural selection, the capacity to do just that is key to the origin of species. The uses of foresight, however, can also be applied to help us further our understanding across a variety of realms in everything from warfare, journalism and music, to ancient civilizations, space weather and science. In a thought-provoking new addition to the Darwin College Lecture Series, eight distinguished authors each present an essay from their area of expertise devoted to the theme of 'foresight'. This provocative read reveals foresight as a process that can be identified across all areas of human endeavour, an art which can not only predict the future, but make it anything but inevitable.

Publishing the 600th volume of The Annals provides the perfect opportunity to celebrate the achievements of the social sciences, review past and current challenges, and look toward future possibilities that await scholars, practitioners, and policymakers alike in using the social sciences to help improve the quality of human life and advance the public good.

Certainly, The Annals and its parent organization, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, have changed over the 115 years. So too have disciplines and fields of study within the social sciences. Yet the hope to "enlighten public opinion and inform public policy" has remained constant, even as the Academy and the social sciences have pursed both a "science project" and "national political project," occasionally in tandem and, at other times, separately.

This special issue is dedicated to reflecting on how selected disciplines and fields of study have promoted their use and usefulness in advancing and informing public policy. With an impressive array of experts in their respective fields, this volume examines how anthropology, behavioral genetics, criminology, economics, international relations, sociology, psychology, and political science have advanced or strayed from that agenda.

Much more than a historical overview, the articles here provide honest and at times, provocative assessments of the development of the social sciences and their impact on public policies and the publics they study. Social scientists, practitioners, and policymakers willing to advance the use and usefulness of the social sciences will upon the lesions of this volume for many years to come.

Each year, more than 1,000 Americans are killed in police-citizen encounters. Fatal police shootings have become commonplace, and their unfortunate frequency continues to shape the public’s perceptions of and individuals’ experiences with safety, legislation, and justice.  This volume of The ANNALS sheds new light on fatal police shootings, the institutional practices that perpetuate them, and the policy changes needed to stop their recurrence. Featuring contributions from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this volume offers timely insight into fatal police shootings and provides a wide range of interventions with the potential to prevent them.