Tag Archives: governance

Apr 20 2011
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politics, power

“No child left unmedicated?”

I borrow the title of this post, and the link, from the indomitable Tyler Cowen. The reference is to this study by Bokhari and Schneider in the Journal of Health Economics titled “School accountability laws and the consumption of psychostimulants“.

Here is the abstract, written in that cool academic chill (emphasis mine):

Over the past decade, several states introduced varying degrees of accountability systems for schools, which became federal law with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The intent of these accountability laws was to improve academic performance and to make school quality more observable. Nonetheless, schools have reacted to these pressures in several different ways, some of which were not intended. We make use of the variation across states and over time in specific provisions of these accountability laws and find that accountability pressures effect medical diagnoses and subsequent treatment options of school aged children. Specifically, children in states with more stringent accountability laws are more likely to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and consequently prescribed psychostimulant drugs for controlling the symptoms. However, conditional on diagnosis, accountability laws do not further change the probability of receiving medication therapy.

Foucault is relevant here. The state’s biopolitical power to regulate and control life itself is brutally manifested in the overmedication of children, driven by bureaucratic and federal incentives. This is a powerful argument against the acceptance of federal dollars or incentives to regulate America’s education system.
My generation grew up in a world where medication became, transparently, a mechanism for social control. It will be interesting how our politics shape the future.
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Dec 23 2010
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Economics, law

Fit to print, or fit to cover-up? Against Karl Miller

Karl Miller writes in his Missourian editorial that he is “siding with Chief Burton” on the manner in which the Dresner affair was handled. Miller has many things to say, but I wish to focus on the mistake Miller makes in describing this situation is as “a purely personal matter”.

It is clear to me that the only “purely personal” part of the story is the love story between Columbia Deputy police chief Tom Dresner and Columbia Police Public Information Officer Jessie Haden. Karl Miller is right to say that this is a personal matter. But official misconduct is not, and unfortunately Tom Dresner is guilty not only of the offense of conducting a secret affair with a direct surbordinate, he is guilty of compromising his integrity as a public servant, and that is a far more public issue that deserves to be addressed. We might ask the following follow-up questions:

  • Did Tom Dresner and Jessie Haden use a motel for their rendezvous, or city facilities?
  • Did Tom Dresner and Jessie Haden conduct their affair on the city’s clock, or did they manage to keep everything for after work?
  • Did other officers know about this affair, which was conducted over a period of at least 7 years?
  • If other officers knew, why did they choose to keep the misconduct of a superior officer under wraps?
  • If other officers knew about the affair, were they ever in a position to put the screw on Dresner to cover up misconduct or to obtain promotions and other favors?

Karl Miller might retort that there is no reason to believe that Tom Dresner and Jessie Haden ever did more than conduct a totally secret affair on their own time and property and that Dresner’s integrity is otherwise intact. Unfortunately, this is not the case either. We have known for years that the police department was structurally dysfunctional; it was only in the last two years that the police had a functional Internal Affairs division, and the only external check on internal misconduct is a toothless and ineffective Citizens’ Police Review Board.

This is the important point. It is the structure of the police department that is our true enemy here, not the individual officers. There are individual officers in Columbia’s police department who deserve prosecution and public shaming, but without reforming the structure of the police department, Columbia will continue to see lawsuits over the conduct of its police officers and the protocols that guide them.

 

 

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