Spirituality and punitiveness: An exploration of Christian,Buddhist, and non-religious attitudes towards crime

Studies measuring religious views towards crime and punishment have mainly focused on Christianity and its denominations in a western setting. They have also used measures that are exclusive to the Christian faith. Other major religions have largely been ignored. This study attempts to rectify this by exploring the attitudes of Christians, Buddhists and those identifying themselves as non-religious towards crime. The results indicate some apparent contradictory findings as the more spiritual Buddhists are, the more they attribute crime to both individual and environmental causes as well as greater support for both coercive and social intervention measures. When compared to the Buddhists, Christians and the non-religious are more supportive of assistance towards the treatment of offenders in this study.     

Muslim communities attitudes towards and recruitment into the British police service

Recent UK media reports have often portrayed Muslim communities in a negative light (Allen, 2010). Indeed, the frequent media focus of Muslim's being arrested for counter-terrorism offences have been reported in great length. Yet the Muslim community remains diverse and is one of the longest established UK communities within Britain. However, previous studies show that there remains a tense relationship with the police and Muslim communities (Awan, 2011) with negative attitudes held by many young British Muslims towards the police (Kundnani, 2009), and indeed negativity remains stronger from young people from minority ethnic communities. The focus and aim of this research was to gather perceptions from the Muslim community in Birmingham as regards whether they would choose or recommend a career within the police service. Thus the objective for the study was to try and get a better understanding of Muslim perceptions about police recruitment.This article reports on the findings and implications of a small-scale study conducted in 2011 comprising of interviews with two Muslim groups namely the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities from Birmingham (in the UK), where 20 people were interviewed in four groups consisting of (5) participants. The categories included Young People (aged between 15 years and 18 years); Community Leaders; Mosque Representatives and Female Groups (aged between 18 years and 30 years) which aimed to identify and gather the views of Muslim communities in respect to their views about choosing a career with the police service. Analysis revealed that the Muslim community responded in a fairly homogeneous way: they had a lack of trust towards the police and also issues were raised about the legality of counter-terrorism policing operations; a perception that the police service were a racist organisation and that the police had failed to engage with the Muslim community in Birmingham which had left a negative experience of Muslim communities and the police.³ Recommendations to improve the image and recruitment into the police service include more pro-active work with local communities and the use of community policing as a means to reach out to otherwise ‘hard to reach groups’.     

The Swansea Bureau: A model of diversion from the Youth Justice System

The Swansea Bureau is an innovative initiative designed to divert young people out of the formal processes of the Youth Justice System. The Swansea Bureau extends beyond simple diversion grounded in minimal or non-intervention and into tackling the underlying causes of youth crime through mechanisms that normalise youth offending and promote prosocial behaviour, children's rights, youth participation and the engagement of both parents/carers and the local community. Inter-agency working is pursued in a political, strategic and operational context of viewing young people as ‘children first, offenders second’. This article discusses the development of the Bureau and explores how this child-orientated model is beginning to yield positive results in terms of decreases in first time entrants into the Youth Justice System and reductions in reconviction. The Bureau process has also elicited widespread positive qualitative feedback from key stakeholders regarding its engagement with Welsh national policy, parents/carers and the children's rights agenda.     

From the horse's mouth: Luftwaffe POWs as sources for air ministry intelligence during the battle of Britain

British military intelligence as derived from the interrogation of prisoners‐of‐war (POWs) during the Second World War has been under‐valued by historians, whose attention has focused primarily on signals intelligence. While Sigint, in particular Ultra, was of undoubted value, Britain's armed services nevertheless attached much credence to POW‐derived intelligence, and by the war's end an abundance of information had been gleaned from the half a million plus Axis prisoners by then held in Britain. This article will examine the work of the Air Ministry Intelligence section known as AI1(K), which was responsible for POW interrogation, during the Battle of Britain, and attempt to illustrate both the wealth and value of such intelligence at a time when Ultra was still in its infancy.     

Medicalisation,pharmaceutical promotion and the Internet: a critical multimodal discourse analysis of hair loss websites

This study conducts a critical multimodal discourse analysis of commercial hair loss websites. Specifically, I focus on eight sites which provide information about and promote the pharmaceutical hair loss treatment Propecia, a widely available medication marketed to treat male pattern baldness. I identify four salient discursive strategies through which the websites depict male hair loss and the Propecia treatment, namely (1) representing the balding man as type and outcast, (2) promoting the attractiveness and self-assurance of the hirsute man, (3) situating male hair loss in a scientific discourse and (4) encouraging consumers to self-evaluate their hair loss. By inducing insecurities in men experiencing hair loss and encouraging them to embrace pharmaceutical remedies as a viable response to male pattern balding, these discursive-semiotic strategies help to reproduce the contemporary sociocultural practice of medicalisation, the phenomenon whereby the natural processes of life are treated as medical problems. The findings of this study suggest that these promotional discourses play a role in transforming ordinary, benign ailments into illnesses, reconfiguring them as treatable disorders for commercial gain.     

Transit supportive home loans: Theory,application, and prospects for smart growth

Abstract

This article discusses mortgage lending programs aimed at lower‐income buyers looking to purchase homes in compact, transit‐accessible neighborhoods. Unlike traditional lending formulas, the transit supportive home loans consider the transportation cost savings from living in transit‐friendly neighborhoods and applies these savings to a larger mortgage calculation. However, little has been published positioning the concept against the broader goals of smart growth, describing the application of the product, or commenting on its prospects.

The first part of this article therefore draws heavily from the literature on smart growth to present the theoretical foundations of the transit supportive home loans and how they address growth management program goals. The second part describes the application of the concept, and the third examines the prospects for this tool and briefly comments on circumstances likely to bedevil its widespread adoption or overall impact.     

Cold War Reconnaissance Flights along the Berlin Corridors and in the Berlin Control Zone 1960–90: Risk,Coordination and Sharing

During the Cold War, Soviet and East German military units, equipment and activities around Berlin were high priority targets for Western military intelligence agencies. This article examines the imagery gathering undertaken by British, French and US reconnaissance flights along the Berlin Air Corridors and inside the Berlin Control Zone. The quantity of information was effectively multiplied because of the close cooperation between the Western allies and coordination with Allied Military Liaison Mission ‘ground tours’. This cooperation generally went further than has been publicly acknowledged by individual governments. This paper contends that the collaboration provided the most comprehensive and regular collection of imagery on Soviet and East German military units for the duration of the Cold War. It contributed to a multi-dimensional picture of Soviet and German Democratic Republic capabilities and intentions. Soviet motives for generally not interfering with those missions on a regular basis are considered.     

The Emperor Has No Clothes! Power and Resources within the Greek Core Executive

International attention has focused recently on the reform “failures” of Greece in the context of its European Union membership. Systemic constraints are increasingly recognized. The present article argues that attention ought also to be given to the inner workings of government at the center and their undermining of reform capacity. It explores the nature of the Greek core executive across five premierships and argues the supposed supremacy of the prime minister is something of a fallacy. In reality, the structure is one of a “solitary centre” amid a “segmented government.” As such, the closest parallels are with Central, rather than Southern, Europe. In developing its empirical analysis, the article makes a methodological contribution to the examination of core executive relations and resources.     

The Physiology of Political Participation

Political involvement varies markedly across people. Traditional explanations for this variation tend to rely on demographic variables and self-reported, overtly political concepts. In this article, we expand the range of possible explanatory variables by hypothesizing that a correlation exists between political involvement and physiological predispositions. We measure physiology by computing the degree to which electrodermal activity changes on average when a participant sequentially views a full range of differentially valenced stimuli. Our findings indicate that individuals with higher electrodermal responsiveness are also more likely to participate actively in politics. This relationship holds even after the effects of traditional demographic variables are taken into account, suggesting that physiological responsiveness independently contributes to a fuller understanding of the underlying sources of variation in political involvement.     

Reviews and notes

Liberal legality and class struggle: A review essay * My thanks to Steve Fisher and Mary Harnish for their constructive comments on this essay.

Political Opposition in Poland, 1954–1977 by Peter Raina, Poets’ and Painters’ Press, 146 Bridge Arch, Sutton Walk, London Sel 8XU, 1978, 584 pages.

Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx's Method. By Roslyn Wallach Bologh. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Pp. xiii + 287.

Fox vs Brown: Academic Freedom and the State