Translational criminology and its importance in policing: a review

ABSTRACT

Translational criminology is a decision-making perspective that emphasizes the dynamic coproduction of evidence by researchers and practitioners, focusing on obstacles to and facilitators of evidence generation and utilization. It incorporates several other data-driven decision-making models, including evidence-based policy making. This review suggests that the availability of empirical research is no longer the most significant impediment to evidence-based policing. Rather, translating and implementing knowledge about ‘what works‘ in policing has arisen as the field’s primary barrier to securing the effectiveness and efficiency improvements of research and data utilization. This article orients readers to translational criminology’s various components and explores their applications. Focusing on four central considerations, this review explores the roles of researcher practitioner partnerships, policy, technology, and government in developing and sustaining translational efforts in policing. The review concludes by acknowledging challenges to fostering a translational perspective in policing, and offers examples of where it has been applied with success.     

The utility of sex offender registration: a research note†

ABSTRACT

Sex offender registries are one of the more hotly debated and polarising topics in criminology. Registries are generally perceived as valuable by the public, legislators, and law enforcement. However, academics and treatment providers have largely remained critical, arguing registries are costly and ineffective. Continued support despite these claims has led some scholars to suggest that proponents are unaware of evidence, indifferent to science, and perhaps driven by emotions. Yet this conclusion denies important facts. First, statistical evidence shows that registrants are at far higher risk of committing a sex crime than the general public. Second, high-quality empirical research suggests that enacting registries is associated with significant decreases in sex offences. Third, there is prima facie evidence that registration has assisted in police investigations and prevented sexual crimes. Recognising these arguments is likely an important step towards improving the quality of debate, science, and policy on registration.     

Public policy and criminology: An historical and philosophical reassessment

This article briefly reviews the history of the relationship between criminological research and public policy in order to explore more fully the nature of the links between social science and policy. A postpostivist critique leads to the conclusion that the distinction between science and policy, fact and value has been overdrawn. This article presents a methodology for accommodating postpostivist thought, thereby linking policy with criminology more effectively. Viewing criminology as part of a policy hermeneutic provides a way of managing the tension involved in a science/policy link that moves beyond the debate among policy pragmatists (Wilson), scientific purists (Cressey), and methodological incrementalists (Gottfredson).     

Understanding the Potential Long-term Physical and Mental Health Consequences of Early Experiences of Victimization

Victimization in the USA is a substantial concern, despite a trend of decreasing crime rates. Victims of crime face a number of short-term consequences such as physical injury, fear and anxiety, and/or loss of property. Long-term consequences of victimization, however, may often be overlooked. Using the first six waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, the current study examines the relationship between early experiences of victimization and long-term physical and mental health outcomes, including general health, access to and use of health care, and health risk behaviors. Results find that individuals who are victimized before the age of 12, especially those who experienced repeated bullying, are more susceptible to a number of physical and mental health issues such as negative perceptions of physical and mental health, smoking, subsequent victimization experiences, and homelessness. Public health concerns and policy implications of these findings are also discussed.     

Removal of Dyes using Wheat Husk Waste as a Low-Cost Adsorbent

Abstract

Color removal from wastewater has been a matter of concern, both in the esthetic sense and health point of view. Color removal from textile effluents on a continuous industrial scale has been given much attention in the last few years, not only because of its potential toxicity, but also due to its visibility problem. The ability of wheat husk to act as biosorption medium in the removal of dyes from aqueous solution was successfylly investigated. The analysis of dye remaining in the solution was done colourimetrically using a spectrophotometer. It may be concluded that easy availability and suitability for production of bioadsorbent from wheat husk makes it one of the materials that can be used for removal of RB 19 and RB 195 from waste water.     

In silico toxicity as a tool for harm reduction: A study of new psychoactive amphetamines and cathinones in the context of criminal science

The emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) has raised many issues in the context of law enforcement and public drug policies. In this scenario, interdisciplinary studies are crucial to the decision-making process in the field of criminal science. Unfortunately, information about how NPS affect people's health is lacking even though knowledge about the toxic potential of these substances is essential: the more information about these drugs, the greater the possibility of avoiding damage within the scope of a harm reduction policy. Traditional analytical methods may be inaccessible in the field of forensic science because they are relatively expensive and time-consuming. In this sense, less costly and faster in silico methodologies can be useful strategies. In this work, we submitted computer-calculated toxicity values of various amphetamines and cathinones to an unsupervised multivariate analysis, namely Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and to the supervised techniques Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy and Partial Least Square-Discriminant Analysis (SIMCA and PLS-DA) to evaluate how these two NPS groups behave. We studied how theoretical and experimental values are correlated by PLS regression. Although experimental data was available for a small amount of molecules, correlation values reproduced literature values. The in silico method efficiently provided information about the drugs. On the basis of our findings, the technical information presented here can be used in decision-making regarding harm reduction policies and help to fulfill the objectives of criminal science.     

Ethical aspects of scientific progress

Ethics and science are much more closely connected than some people assume. Erroneous perceptions of the nature of ethics are the probable cause of this. Ethics is an intrinsic and productive component of scientific work, not some external or retrospective obstruction of “real” scientific research. The ethical component is positively influenced by a thorough knowledge of the discipline it belongs to. Science thrives in a climate of freedom, but this must not be used as an alibi to circumvent social responsibility and ethical concern. Ethical science has a direct bearing on science policy. Giving due attention to the ethical aspect of scientific work leads to several tangible results. It increases interdisciplinary openness, it promotes the communicability of science, and, ideally, it demonstrates the difference between knowledge and wisdom. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Can Labelling Policies Do More Harm Than Good? An Analysis Applied to Environmental Labelling Schemes

In certain plausible circumstances, the introduction of labelling schemes can lead to adverse effects. In the case of ecolabelling, the adverse effects are an environmental degradation rather than an environmental improvement. To take into account the environmental sensitiveness or responsiveness of consumers, we introduce the concept of environmental elasticity which enables us to classify goods. In a basic analytical model, we describe the conditions under which different outcomes—overall impacts of change in environmental quality due to environmental labelling—arise after the introduction of an ecolabelling scheme. We show that an ecolabelling scheme can lead to an increase in purchases of environmentally sustainable products. The net effect on the environment can be worse than the initial situation without ecolabelling, because the environmental unit improvement is compensated by an over-consumption. We suggest several tests to detect this potential perverse effect, some policy implications to avoid it and stress the need for further research.JEL Classification: D11, L15, Q28     

Public criminologies

Research Summary Public scholarship aspires to bring social science home to the individuals, communities, and institutions that are its focus of study. In particular, it seeks to narrow the yawning gap between public perceptions and the best available scientific evidence on issues of public concern. Yet nowhere is the gap between perceptions and evidence greater than in the study of crime. Here, we outline the prospects for a public criminology, conducting and disseminating research on crime, law, and deviance in dialogue with affected communities. We present historical data on the media discussion of criminology and sociology, and we outline the distinctive features of criminology—interdisciplinary, a subject matter that incites moral panics, and a practitioner base actively engaged in knowledge production—that push the boundaries of public scholarship. Policy Implications Discussions of public sociology have drawn a bright line separating policy work from professional, critical, and public scholarship. As the research and policy essays published in Criminology & Public Policy make clear, however, the best criminology often is conducted at the intersection of these domains. A vibrant public criminology will help to bring new voices to policy discussions while addressing common myths and misconceptions about crime.     

Distributional Conflicts and the Timing of Environmental Policy

This paper examines the timing of adopting a policy for tackling an environmental issue such as climate change from a viewpoint of distributional conflicts. A dynamic game of providing public goods (Alesina and Drazen, American Economic Review 81(5), 1170–1118 (1991)) is applied to the argument, modified by including abatement costs as well as the loss in the environment. In this framework, even if the immediate adoption of environmental policy is socially optimal, a disproportionate burden of pollution reduction leads to a delay in policy adoption. This is because the disproportionate burden increases the gain from waiting for each individual hoping that the other will agree to bear the heavier burden. The impact of income distribution on the timing is also examined. The level of averting behavior is assumed to depend on the level of income. If the distribution of income is more dispersed, the regional disparities in environmental degradation become larger because the poor tend to avert less and get more loss than the rich due to their tighter budget constraints. Under asymmetric information on damages, as the disparities in income become more dispersed, each individual expects that his/her opponent’s damage becomes severe; then, he/she gives in first. Thus, each individual holds out longer so that the timing of policy implementation is delayed further. Finally, the theoretical result is empirically tested by both probit and discriminant analyses to examine whether income distribution has an impact on the timing of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol in practice.     

刑事政策学范畴研究——考量因素与技术路线

针对刑事政策学范畴研究的基础性理论创作工作主要涉及两个重大问题:一是遴选确定刑事政策学的基本范畴及其系统,二是恰当选择刑事政策学范畴研究的技术路线。遴选确定刑事政策学的基本范畴及其系统,应当考量三个重要因素:一是刑事政策学必然以刑事政策作为自己的基本研究对象;二是刑事政策学必然以现代化命题作为学科建设的历史使命;三是刑事政策学的基本范畴必然以公共政策学的基本范畴作为参照物。刑事政策学基本范畴研究的技术路线,应当是从研究公共政策原理、分析公共政策基本范畴入手,总结刑事政策本身的特殊性,以准确概括出刑事政策的范畴体系,并通过对刑事政策基本范畴展开研究,探讨刑事政策的基本理论问题。     

European air pollution assessments: co-production of science and policy

This paper examines the question whether the scientific knowledge framework produced in the context of the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) can keep its credibility, legitimacy and relevance when used in a different policy arena, e.g. the European Commission (EC) of the European Union. The paper combines a conceptual framework for considering effective assessments with the notion of boundary work and co-production of science and policy to examine differences between the roles and division of tasks between scientists and policy makers in the two different policy contexts. The paper concludes that, despite the differences between the two policy settings, user characteristics and the historical context are to a certain extent similar in LRTAP and the EU Clean Air for Europe Programme (CAFE), and that participants in the two processes partially overlap and tackle the same policy problem. The scientific knowledge framework as developed within LRTAP can maintain credibility, legitimacy and relevance when it is used in CAFE if certain conditions are fulfilled. One condition is the effective functioning of LRTAP, because the CAFE assessment process remains also dependent on the LRTAP process. Data collection and mapping efforts in the context of LRTAP form also the basis for the analyses within CAFE. Furthermore, a broadly embedded scientific basis is needed in the countries to enable each country to follow or relate to the analyses commissioned by the EU. The conceptual framework and concept of boundary work used in this paper turned out to be helpful in focusing on the dynamic relationship between science and policy.

Renewal Acute Toxicity of Broad-Spectrum Herbicide,Paraquat Dichloride in Channa punctatus (Bloch)

Abstract

Paraquat dichloride (PD) is a major contaminant in aquatic environment and is a cause of concern to different organisms, especially to fishes, as it causes different changes in behavioral and morphological to aquatic creatures. Hence, the objectives of the study are to examine the acute toxicity, behavioral and morphological alterations in air-breathing teleost fish, Channa punctatus (CP) (Bloch). Renewal acute toxicity was performed to calculate the lethal concentration (LC₅₀) by Finney’s probit analysis to CP by exposure to wide range of PD concentrations (30, 60, 90, 120, 150?mg/L) for 24, 48, 72 and 96?h. The LC₅₀ values determined are 93.36, 82.22, 67.93 and 65.87?mg/L for 24, 48, 72 and 96?h, respectively. Maximum allowable toxicant concentrations (MATC) defined by LC₅₀ value is found to be 0.6587?mg/L. The upper and lower 95 percent confidence limit (Fiducial limit) are in narrow range for 24, 48, 72 and 96?h, respectively, and thus results of the experiments are considered good. Fiducial limit calculated helps us to state that the LC50 falls within the specified limit and helps in constructing of toxicity curve. LC50 value gradually decreases with increase in time. Mortality rate was dose-time dependent and increased with increase in concentration. The behavioral changes provide biologically relevant endpoints in evaluating toxicity testing. Deviation from baseline behavior was noticed. Morphological deformities were also seen. The present study provides a clear indication of the toxicity of PD, and is highly toxic even at low level. Hence, it is recommended that appropriate eco-toxicological risk assessment should be made and indiscriminate use of PD by farmers should be discouraged particularly in areas close to aquatic environment.     

公共政策效益的概说与评析

公共政策效益在政策活动中具有十分重要的地位和作用。作为反映政策质量高低的公共政策效益 ,是贯穿于政策活动各环节、各阶段和各方面的一根主线 ,是衡量政策运行是否科学、成功的重要标准。遗憾的是学术界对公共政策效益相关的理论研究成果甚少。就政策效益评价来说 ,针对政策评价的不同内容 ,可以选取不同的评价方法。评价方法的不断发展是政策评价领域中最富有创造性的内容。     

政策变迁的理论与实践浅析

政策变迁通过对政策目标、政策内容、政策手段等某一方面或几个方面的调整,使政策合理化。任何政策都不可能一成不变。可以说,政策变迁贯穿于每个政策过程;并且政策变迁本身就是政策过程的一个子循环。所以,政策变迁是对现行政策进行的变革活动。可能引起政策变迁的原因是多方面的,如:政策主体主观认识的变化、政策自身缺陷的显现等。针对中国政策实践和相关理论研究的实际,既要加强对政策变迁问题的探讨,又要为合理的、必须的政策变迁创造条件。     

The inhibiting factors that principal investigators experience in leading publicly funded research

Securing public funding to conduct research and leading it by being a principal investigator (PI) is seen as significant career development step. Such a role brings professional prestige but also new responsibilities beyond research leadership to research management. If public funding brings financial and infrastructure support, little is understood about the inhibiting factors that publicly funded PIs face given the research autonomy offered by publicly funded research. Our study finds that there are three key PI inhibiting factors (1) political and environmental, (2) institutional and (3) project based. Traditional knowledge, skills and technical know-how of publicly funded PIs are insufficient to deal with the increasing managerial demands and expectations i.e. growing external bureaucracy of public funding agencies. Public funding is no longer the ‘freest form of support’ as suggested by Chubin and Hackett (Peerless science: peer review and US science policy. Suny Press, New York, 1990) and the inhibiting factors experienced by publicly funded PIs limits their research autonomy. We also argue that PIs have little influence in overcoming these inhibiting factors despite their central role in conducting publicly funded research.     

A human rights-based approach to sex offender management: The key to effective public protection?

Abstract

This paper outlines recent ‘public protection’ legislation in the United States of America as a basis for considering possible outcomes when public concern and political pressures combine without due regard for efficacy and appropriate balance. It highlights concerns about the implications of policy measures developing in this way and questions whether a human-rights based approach should be applied in terms of public protection policy in order to develop more effective public protection.     

中国政策科学发展的历程与成就分析

中国政策科学走过了20多年的发展历程,大致分为两个阶段,即20世纪80年代的蕴育开创阶段和20世纪90年代后的快速发展阶段.取得了四大成就:围绕构建具有中国特色的政策科学理论体系发表了大量的学术论文,出版了许多学术著作;学科建设初具规模,研究队伍不断扩大;国内外学术交流日益频繁,学术气氛活跃;不少政策研究组织已经走向市场,产业化步伐加快,对推进决策科学化民主化起了重要的作用.     

Medicalization and social justice

Most social justice critiques of medical care focus upon the allocation of extant, but scarce, resources. In contrast to that focus, this article explores the preallocative arena of factors which shape the supply and availability of medical care. We identify four such factors: (1)medicalization — the tendency to regard as biologically caused various human problems which were in earlier eras ignored or attributed to other causes; (2)social inclusion — the bringing of economically deprived and socially marginal groups into participation in the medical care system; (3)biomedical transcendence — the elevation of biomedically derived concepts of human function into a social and personal world view; and (4)health absolutism — the ideology which holds individuals accountable for their own health and which, contrary to the thrust of the other factors, deemphasizes access and social equity for professionally provided medical care. While these forces all enhance the place of health as a social value, it is by no means certain that they will lead to a society which is more medically just. The article concludes with an appeal for critical analysis of the processes which shape both the medical care system and the broad social concern with medical care.     

To What Extent are Cost Savings Passed on to Consumers? An Oligopoly Approach

Competition policy often asks whether a “fair share” of the benefits from cost savings obtained through mergers or agreements is passed on to the consumers. We assess the factorsthat determine cost pass-on in some partial-equilibrium oligopoly models, and show that, although the strength of the pass-on varies from one situation to another, there are some rules of thumb that give a first approximation of the pass-on rate. We also show that, contrary to common belief and to what is written about the subject in the European Commission's guidelines on the application of Article 81(3), in most circumstances cost pass-on does not depend on the price elasticity of demand nor on the market share of the cost saver, and that with competition the pass-on of firm-specific cost savings is weaker than without. JEL Classification: C72 (non-cooperative games), D43 (oligopoly), L40 (antitrust policy)