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.     

Three Sorries and You’re In? Does the Prime Minister’s Statement in the Australian Federal Parliament Presage Federal Constitutional Recognition and Reparations?

Then newly elected Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a historic statement of “Sorry” for past injustices to Australian Indigenous peoples at the opening of the 2008 federal parliament. In the long-standing absence of a constitutional ‘foundational principle’ to shape positive federal initiatives in this context, there has been speculation that the emphatic Sorry Statement may presage formal constitutional recognition. The debate is long overdue in a nation that only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and recognised native title to lan with the High Court’s decision in Mabo in 1992. This article explores the implications of the Sorry Statement in the context of reparations for the generations removed from their families under assimilation policies (known since the Bringing Them Home Inquiry as the Stolen Generations). We draw out the utility of recent human rights statutes—such as the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT)—as a mechanism for facilitating justice, including compensation for past wrongs. Our primary concern here is whether existing legal processes in Australia hold further capacity to provide reparation for Australian Indigenous peoples or whether their potential in that regard is already exhausted. We compare common law and statutory developments in other international jurisdictions, such as Canada, as an indication of what can be achieved by the law to facilitate better legal, economic and social outcomes for Indigenous peoples. The year 2008 also saw Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper express his apology to residential school victims in the Canadian Parliament, providing thematic and symbolic echoes across these two former colonies, which, despite remaining under the British monarchy, both forge their own path into the future, while confronting their own unique colonial past. We suggest that the momentum provided by the recent public apology and statement of “Sorry” by the newly elected Australian Prime Minister must not be lost. This symbolic utterance as a first act of the 2008 parliamentary year stood in stark contrast to the long-standing recalcitrance of the former Prime Minister John Howard on the matter of a formal apology. Rather than a return to a law enforcement-inspired “three strikes and you’re out” approach, Australia stands poised for an overdue constitutional and human rights-inspired “three ‘sorries’ and you’re in”.     

Enhancing Data-Driven Law Enforcement Efforts: Exploring how Risk Terrain Modeling and Conjunctive Analysis Fit in a Crime and Traffic Safety Framework

Law enforcement’s examination of vehicle crashes is often nested in the Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS) framework which highlights the importance of hot spot analysis. To assist law enforcement efforts, this study explores how two additional spatial techniques, namely risk terrain modeling (RTM) and conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC), could be incorporated within the DDACTS framework. RTM was utilized to identify how the built, physical environment contributed to the risk of traffic incidents. RTM identified 6 risk factors related to the occurrence of vehicle crashes, and high-risk places were compared to hot spots on predictive accuracy. CACC was used to explore configurations likely to result in traffic incidents for the priority places. Our findings support the Theory of Risky Places and fit within a vulnerability-exposure framework, providing law enforcement with guidance for identifying places where vehicle crashes are likely to occur in the future. In addition to providing insight for law enforcement, we discuss how law enforcement can develop working partnerships with stakeholders capable of preventing and/or reducing traffic incidents, which is in line with the general DDACTS framework.

     

The Second AIF and the End of Empires: Soldiers' Attitudes Toward a “Free Asia”

Largely neglected within studies of Australian attitudes — and changing Australian attitudes — toward Asia throughout the twentieth century are the diverse views expressed by the single major group of Australians to encounter the region, namely the servicemen and women of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) who served the nation during the Pacific War 1941–1945. Within forums offered by soldier publications such as Salt, Australian troops were engaged in discussions about why the war had been fought (often with reference to the merits and ideals outlined within the Atlantic Charter, Declaration by United Nations and United Nations Charter). Central to such discussions were attitudes toward race, colonialism and Australia's role and future role in regional and world affairs. Importantly, well‐informed understandings of Asian affairs were crucial to discussions.     

Is cyberstalking different?

Abstract

Very little empirical work exists on cyberstalking. The current study analysed detailed questionnaires completed by 1051 self-defined stalking victims. Almost half (47.5%) reported harassment via the Internet, but only 7.2% of the sample was judged to have been cyberstalked. Ordinal regression analyses of four groups of victims, categorized according to degree of cyber involvement in their victimization, revealed a general picture of similarity between the groups in terms of the stalking process, responses to being stalked, and the effects on victims and third parties. It was concluded that cyberstalking does not fundamentally differ from traditional, proximal stalking, that online harassment does not necessarily hold broad appeal to stalkers, and that those who target ex-intimates remain the most populous stalker type.     

Ideas, innovations, and networks: a new policy model based on the evolution of knowledge

In this paper, we argue that a new policy model for science and technology is needed and must be evolutionary in nature. The paper proposes utilizing the idea innovation network theory as a framework for assessing sectoral innovation patterns and identifies six types, or “arenas,” of research that are linked to innovation within these networks. Following the idea innovation network theory, the paper argues that two societal trends, the fragmentation of markets and the growth of knowledge, are driving organizations toward greater functional differentiation. Successful innovation will occur when these differentiated organizations become closely linked within innovation networks that integrate the arenas of research. The paper argues that this framework has predictive power, in that it allows the identification of path-dependent blockages or gaps within idea innovation chains that prevent the emergence of effective innovation networks in different countries. Policy makers can play an important role by fostering the development of tightly coupled networks that include organizations involved in each of the types of research. The paper provides empirical support for the framework using a cross-national European study of the telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries.     

How does the economy shape policy preferences?

How do changes in the economy translate into shifts in aggregate preferences for a more or less activist government in the U.S.—a construct referred to as “policy mood”? Existing theories pose alternative explanations based on either a Maslow Hierarchy of Needs model, where citizens prefer an activist federal government to expand the social safety net when the economic future looks bright (Durr, 1993), or a Phillips Curve model (Erikson et al., 2002), in which the objective economic maladies of inflation and unemployment drive policy mood. We show that neither of these explanations withstands empirical scrutiny when analysis is extended beyond the time period of the original authors' work, suggest the existing wisdom tying the economy to policy mood is wrong, and offer some alternative avenues to pursue in search of an answer to the question: What moves policy mood?