Shared services: An outline of key contractual issues

In the wake of the Gershon Report, commissioned to find ways of saving £20 billion in the UK public sector, and the growing strain on the public purse following the credit crunch and the global financial recession, procuring bodies are increasingly looking to the “shared services” procurement model to take advantage of economies of scale and best practice. This article examines the legal issues thrown up by the shared services model and ways of managing them.     

Predictors of dating violence among Chinese adolescents: the role of gender-role beliefs and justification of violence

In Chinese societies, violence among adolescent dating partners remains a largely ignored and invisible phenomenon. The goal of this study is to examine the relationships among gender-role beliefs, attitudes justifying dating violence, and the experiences of dating-violence perpetration and victimization among Chinese adolescents. This study has used self-reporting measures to collect data from a probability sample of 976 adolescents (mean age = 15.9) in three Chinese societies: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Research results reveal a high prevalence of dating violence (including physical violence, sexual violence, and controlling behavior) among Chinese adolescents with dating experience: the perpetration rate is 27.3% and the victimization rate is 39%. Study results demonstrate that adolescents who endorse traditional gender-role beliefs tend to view dating violence as acceptable behavior. Boys' endorsement of traditional gender roles, boys' attitudes justifying boy-on-girl violence, and boys' attitudes against girl-on-boy violence predict boys' actual sexual-violence behavior. Moreover, boys' attitudes justifying boy-on-girl dating violence is the strongest predictor of boys' perpetration of physical and sexual dating violence. This study also shows that boys' hostility is a significant predictor of boys' controlling behavior. Programs for preventing dating violence should include components designed to challenge traditional gender-role beliefs and attitudes justifying dating violence.     

We are meeting on Microsoft Teams: Forensic analysis in Windows,Android, and iOS operating systems

Microsoft released a new communication platform, Microsoft Teams, in 2017. Due in part to COVID-19, the popularity of communication platforms, like Microsoft Teams, increased exponentially. Given its user base and increased popularity, it seems likely that digital forensic investigators will encounter cases where Microsoft Teams is a relevant component. However, because Microsoft Teams is a relatively new application, there is limited forensic research on the application particularly focusing on mobile operating systems. To address this gap, an analysis of data stored at rest by Microsoft Teams was conducted on the Windows 10 operating system as well as on Android and Apple iOS mobile operating systems. Basic functionalities, such as messaging, sharing files, participating in video conferences, and other functionalities that Teams provides, were performed in an isolated testing environment. Cellebrite UFED Physical Analyzer and Magnet AXIOM Examine tools were used to analyze the mobile devices and the Windows device, respectively. Manual or non-automated investigation recovered, at least partially, the majority of artifacts across all three operating systems. In this study, a total of 77.6% of the populated artifacts were partially or fully recovered in the manual investigation. On the other hand, forensic tools used did not automatically recover many of the artifacts found with the manual investigation. Only 13.8% of artifacts were partially or fully recovered by the forensic tools across all three devices. These discovered artifacts and the results of the investigations are presented in order to aid digital forensic investigations.     

Promoting Muslims’ Willingness to Report Terror Threats to Police: Testing Competing Theories of Procedural Justice

The heightened threat of terrorism in the West has resulted in more power being granted to police. However, new anti-terror laws and heavy-handed policing practices can stigmatize Muslim communities. Using survey data from 800 Australian Muslims this paper examines whether procedural justice policing in counter-terrorism enhances Muslims’ feelings of social inclusion, and promotes their intentions to report terror threats to police. Of interest is how procedural justice influences Muslims who feel less socially included. Three competing theoretical frameworks differ in the predictions they make about when and why procedural justice influences excluded groups. This paper considers each framework and discusses how each explains the relationships between our variables of interest. Our findings show that procedural justice is positively associated with social inclusion and intentions to report terror threats to police. Findings also show that social inclusion both moderates and partially mediates the effect of procedural justice on reporting intentions.