A review of the CDM literature: from fine-tuning to critical scrutiny?

As negotiations on the post-2012 climate regime are now taking off, it is time to look back and assess the experiences of the clean development mechanism (CDM) to this date. The CDM has been subject to extensive discussion in academic literature during the last few years, and this article reviews that literature in order to sum up its main themes. A common assessment is that the current structure of the CDM leads to a focus on cheap emissions reductions at the expense of sustainable development benefits for the host countries. Recently, the questionable additionality of many CDM projects has become a central issue. The article further argues that whereas a substantial body of work exists on the CDM, this work is mainly preoccupied with a ‘fine-tuning’ of the mechanism. As the CDM now becomes increasingly institutionalized, scholars should also take a step back and study the CDM in a more theoretically oriented way.

What can we do to reduce disciplinary school exclusion? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Journal of Experimental Criminology - To systematically review and quantitatively synthesise the evidence for the impact of different types of school-based interventions on the reduction of school...     

What does a digital forensics opinion look like? A comparative study of digital forensics and forensic science reporting practices

This study explores digital forensics (DF) reporting practices and compares the results with other forensic science disciplines. Forty reports were obtained from a quasi-experiment involving DF examiners, and a quantitative content analysis was performed to determine which conclusion types they applied and which content they included with relevance to the credibility of the reported results. A qualitative analysis was performed to examine the certainty expressions used in the conclusions. The results were compared to a study of eight forensic science disciplines performed by Bali et al. [24,26]. The results show that the DF examiners tend to present their conclusions either as Categorical conclusion or Strength of support (SoS) conclusion types and that they address source, activity, and offence level issues in their conclusions. The content analysis indicates deficiencies in DF reporting practices, and several of the challenges seem to be shared with other FS disciplines. The analysis of certainty expressions showed that a plethora of expressions was used, and that they lacked reference to an established framework. The results indicate that more research on DF evaluation and reporting practices is necessary and justifies a need for enhanced focus on quality control and peer review within the DF discipline.     

Mother–infant separations in prison. A systematic attachment-focused review of the academic and grey literature

This review systematically searched UK academic and grey literature in relation to mother and child separation in prison. Attachment theory is referred to in current prison policy for mothers and could provide a framework linking policy and practice. Reviewing grey literature provided an opportunity to explore practice-based literature. Twenty-four academic papers and 51 grey documents were reviewed. Use of attachment theory in the academic literature varied according to discipline, ranging from extensive use to no use. There was greater use of attachment theory in the grey literature. Despite linguistic differences, all documents highlighted the detrimental impact of separation on imprisoned mothers. However, specificity was lacking regarding support for mothers, and staff needs were overlooked. Given its use across the sparse research and practice literature, and its basis for policy, attachment theory could underpin theoretically informed support for imprisoned mothers separated from their infants and staff who support them.     

A review of quality procedures in the UK forensic sciences: What can the field of digital forensics learn?

With a reliance on the various forms of forensic science evidence in complex criminal investigations, the measures for ensuring its quality are facing increasing scrutiny. Improvements to quality management systems, to ensure both the robust application of scientific principles and the accurate interpretation and reporting of results, have arisen as a consequence of high-profile rebuttals of forensic science evidence, combined with process improvements driven by evaluation of current practice. These improvements are crucial to ensure validity of results as well as providing assurance for all those involved in the Criminal Justice System. This work first examines the quality management systems utilised for the examination and analysis of fingerprint, body fluid and DNA evidence. It then proceeds to highlight an apparent lack of comparable quality assurance mechanisms within the field of digital forensics, one of the newest branches of forensic science. Proposals are provided for the improvement of quality assurance for the digital forensics arena, drawing on the experiences of, and more well-established practices within, other forensic disciplines.     

What is the goal of access to health care?

This article first examines the justifications for the goal of access to health care and the variations between health systems in their endorsement of individuals' rights to health care irrespective of income, ethnicity, age and other characteristics. It then examines the meanings of the goal of "access" to health care and considers four key dimensions--service availability ("having" access), service utilisation ("gaining" access), the relevance and effectiveness of services and equity of access. These dimensions provide a common framework that can be applied across countries and health systems and employed to assess the extent to which access to health care is actually achieved.     

The use of telepsychiatry within forensic practice: a literature review on the use of videolink – a ten-year follow-up

In the last decade, telepsychiatry – the use of telecommunications technologies to deliver psychiatric services from a distance – has been increasingly utilised in many areas of mental health care. Since the review by Khalifa and colleagues in 2007 the body of literature relevant to the forensic applications of telepsychiatry has grown substantially, albeit not by much in the United Kingdom. In the current review, we aim to provide an update summary of the literature published since 2007 to determine the effectiveness and feasibility of increasing telepsychiatry utilisation in forensic practice. The literature reviewed provides some encouraging evidence that telepsychiatry is a reliable, effective and highly acceptable method for delivering mental health care in forensic settings. There are also a number of papers that indicate the use of telepsychiatry may be cost effective for health providers in the longer term. Further research is required to consider the potential legal and ethical implications of using telepsychiatry in forensic settings.     

What does cost-benefit analysis add to decision making? Evidence from the criminal justice literature

This paper asks whether undertaking a cost-benefit analysis provides additional information to policy makers as compared to an analysis solely of the effect of an intervention. A literature review identified 106 evaluations of criminal justice interventions that reported both an effect size and measures of net benefit. Data on net benefit and effect size were extracted from these studies. We found that effect size is only weakly related to net benefits. The rank order of net benefits and effect size are minimally correlated. Furthermore, we found that the two analytic methods would yield opposing policy recommendations for more than one in four interventions. These bi-variate findings are supported by the results of multivariate models. However, further research is needed to verify the accuracy of the standard errors on net benefit estimates, so these models must be interpreted with caution.

Universities and the teaching of forensic sciences to lawyers—a note *

This article presents the findings of the survey conducted among business and accountancy students of the Nanyang Business School, Singapore, on the teaching of business law. The article is organised in three main sections. Section 1 formulates the framework for the research by outlining the three basic approaches adopted across many jurisdictions for the legal education of business students—the traditionalist ("black‐letter law"), the environmentalist and mixed approaches. Section 2 briefly describes the survey questions drawn up in the light of four principal objectives that, according to legal educators, the teaching of business law should achieve. Section 3 presents and examines the findings. The article concludes that law teaching at the Nanyang Business School conforms to the traditional approach. The author accordingly makes recommendations for the transformation of current teaching and assessment medthods: an injection of a great deal of “environmental” content and context‐based education; more use of actual and current cases, practical examples and a link to the business environment.     

Mission impossible? Assessing the veracity of a mental health problem as result of a road traffic accident: a preliminary review of UK experts’ practices

The number of people claiming for personal injury after being involved in a road traffic accident (RTA) in the UK continues to soar. In April 2015, the UK Government intervened to implement measures aimed at reducing the prevalence of fraud within such personal injury claims. However, these reforms did not include claims for mental disorder that arise because of a RTA despite being responsible for substantially larger payouts in comparison with claims for whiplash. The present study examines the assessment practice for detecting fraudulent claims of this nature using a mixed methods survey analysing UK medico-legal professionals’ assessment methodologies (N = 37). The findings suggest comprehensively that assessment practices in this field are idiosyncratic. The findings evidence limitations in all aspects of the assessment process from medico-legal assessors being asked to undertake examinations without the presence of medical records to 44% of examiners being unaware of the three types of malingering. The article concludes with recommendations for improving both assessments and the assessment process for assessing RTA claimants in the UK.     

Are older deafblind people being left behind? A narrative review of literature on deafblindness through the lens of the United Nations Principles for Older People

Underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRDP), Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the international goal to ‘leave no one behind’. However, the World Federation of the Deafblind have argued that deafblind people have been excluded from international welfare and disability development programmes. Despite making up the majority of the deafblind population, it appears that older deafblind people are particularly invisible. The paper builds on the earlier work of others, which translated the UN Principles for Older Persons into the language of older visually impaired adults, by using them here as the lens for a narrative review of the literature on older deafblind people. It argues that existing research demonstrates that older deafblind people are not only being ‘left behind’ in benefitting from implementation of the UN Principles, but also that the focus of the UN Principles themselves risks maintaining or enhancing their exclusion. Further research and policy development with older deafblind people is required to ensure that international and national social welfare policies and provision are not nugatory to the older deafblind population.     

Of guns and geese: a meta-analytic review of the ‘weapon focus’ literature

Abstract

Weapon focus is frequently cited as a factor in eyewitness testimony, and is broadly defined as a weapon-related decrease in performance on subsequent tests of memory for those elements of an event or visual scene concurrent to the weapon. This effect has been attributed to either (a) physiological or emotional arousal that narrows the attentional beam (arousal/threat hypothesis), or (b) the cognitive demands inherent in processing an unusual object (e.g. weapon) that is incongruent with the schema representing the visual scene (unusual item hypothesis). Meta-analytical techniques were applied to test these theories as well as to evaluate the prospect of weapon focus in real-world criminal investigations. Our findings indicated an effect of weapon presence overall (g= 0.53) that was significantly influenced by retention interval, exposure duration, and threat but unaffected by whether the event occurred in a laboratory, simulation, or real-world environment.