Transparency and Law Enforcement

I'm in the early stages of designing a database for keeping track of
public records requests made in different cities and counties in
Florida.   I've asked the alternatives-indymedia group to help me on
this and there are others in different states who are interested and
will be helpful.

As most of you know, the InterAmerican Court for Human Rights (The
Court for the Organization of American States), last week gave their
opinion that they are in agreement with the European Commission on
Human Rights that access to information is a fundamental human right.
 So, the timing is good.

One of the obvious
relationships to examine, once adequate sample sizes are obtained, are
the different relationships that exist between quality of law
enforcement and the level of openness or transparency of a community.
 The intuitive assumption is that healthier communities are going to
be those with high levels of transparency in all government
departments, not just law enforcement.  It is going to be fascinating
to see how the relationships are most likely going to be different for
different communities.

If anyone has any suggestions at this time on what database software
might be best to use, and that includes easiest, cheapest, and most
mergeable with other databases, such as socioeconomic indices, housing
(http://www.dataplace.org/), etc.

My  current bias is toward Open Office
(http://www.openoffice.org/index.html ) because it is free, runs on
all platforms, and there is a support group of thousands.  The problem
is that the database component is in development.  But, I believe it
would be ok to go ahead with Open Office using their spreadsheet
program, then just exporting what data we do have into the database
when it is up and running.  What is good is that people can update the
database from all over the country, and even outside of the country.

I hope everyone has had a chance to see what the FCC is requiring of
the media they license, with respect to economic impact measures. What
they are doing is absolutely wonderful.  There are ten studies that
will be conducted as part of the media ownership rules review and the
studies will be peer reviewed.  Rebecca Fisher and Rosemary Harold at
http://www.fcc.gov are the media contacts on this.

Given that the media are typically blamed for being a part of the
problem and that the recent results on the quit smoking campaigns
show, according to the New York Times this morning, that the
anti-smoking programs, like many law enforcement programs, are not
effective, as found by:
============
"The American Journal of Public Health by respected academic
researchers who were supported by the National Cancer Institute, the
National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation. Using sophisticated analytical techniques, the researchers
concluded that the ads aimed directly at young people had no
beneficial effect, while those aimed at parents were actually harmful
to young people apt to see them, especially older teenagers. The
greater the teenagers' potential exposure to the ads, the stronger
their intention to smoke and the greater their likelihood of having
smoked in the past 30 days."
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It is crucial that we collect good solid data on the relationship of
transparency to effective and honorable local law enforcement within
and across different communities.

Please let me know if you are interested in being an observer  or
participant in the transparency project.

Dwight Hines, Ph.D.
St. Augustine, Florida