Multiculturalism and the Willingness of Citizens to Defer to Law and to Legal Authorities

A key problem in trying to manage diverse societies is finding social policies that will be acceptable to all individuals and groups. Studies suggest that this problem may not be as intractable as is often believed, since people's acceptance of policies is shaped to an important degree by the fairness of the procedures used by authorities to make policy. When policies are fairly made, they gain widespread support, even among those who may feel that the consequences of the policy for them or their group are undesirable or even unfair. These findings support an optimistic view of the ability of authorities to manage diverse societies. On the other hand, research suggests that the ability of procedural justice to bridge differences among individuals and groups may not be equally strong under all conditions. People's willingness to accept policies is more influenced by procedural justice judgments when they identify with the society that the authorities represent and view them as representing a group of which they are members. They are less influenced by procedural justice judgments when they identify more strongly with subgroups than with society and/or view the authorities as representatives of a group to which they do not belong.     

Spectator Violence in Sports: A North American Perspective

Spectator violence has long been associated with professional football in Europe. This article examines the issue of spectator violence from a North American perspective. We begin by noting that there is little systematic research into the scope of spectator disorder in North America. Perhaps for this reason there is little consensus about the true scale of the problem on this side of the Atlantic. It does seem clear at least that there is less spectator violence associated with professional sports in North America. After reviewing a number of explanations for this finding, we conclude that it has less to do with criminal justice policies or practices, than the social context surrounding the 'spectatorship' of sports in North America. Perhaps the most important explanation for the variance in crowd behaviour concerns the demographic profiles of sports spectators in European football and North American sports.     

Where is public affairs going?

This paper suggests the future direction in which public affairs practice is developing and advances a number of propositions about public affairs and political systems which provide the context in which public affairs practitioners operate. The paper examines the changing nature of the political systems in which public affairs functions and argues that, by inference, public affairs practice is culturally specific. The paper explores these contextual issues from both a European and a global perspective. The paper argues that an understanding of public affairs should be recognised as an essential element on management teaching syllabi and laments the fact that this is far from the case. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

The Triumph of Loyalty Over Competence: The Bush Administration and the Exhaustion of the Politicized Presidency

The most important administrative aspect of the George W. Bush presidency was not its formal management reform agenda, but its attempt to extend the politicized presidency. Efforts to assert tighter political control of the federal bureaucracy, revived during the Ronald Reagan administration, were pursued to an extreme under Bush. Loyalty triumphed over competence in selection, and political goals displaced rationality in decision making. However, the strategy of politicization undermined the Bush administration’s own policy goals as well as its broader agenda to restore the strength of the institutional presidency. This apparent failure of strategy signals the urgent necessity for a fundamental reconsideration of the politicized presidency.     

Near‐fatal Intoxication with the “New” Synthetic Opioid U‐47700: The First Reported Case in the Czech Republic

Recreational use of the potent synthetic opioid 3,4‐ dichloro‐N‐(2‐(dimethylamino)cyclohexyl)‐N‐methylbenzamide (U‐47700) is rising, accompanied by increasingly frequent cases of serious intoxication. This article reports a case of near‐fatal U‐47700 intoxication. A man was found unconscious (with drug powder residues). After 40 h in hospital (including 12 h of supported ventilation), he recovered and was discharged. Liquid chromatography/high‐resolution mass spectrometry (LC/HRMS) or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) were used to detect and quantify substances in powders, serum and urine. Powders contained U‐47700 and two synthetic cannabinoids. Serum and urine were positive for U‐47700 (351.0 ng/mL), citalopram (<LOQ), tetrahydrocannabinol (THC: 3.3 ng/mL), midazolam (<LOQ) and a novel benzodiazepine, clonazolam (6.8 ng/mL) and their metabolites but negative for synthetic cannabinoids. If potent synthetic opioids become cheaper and more easily obtainable than their classical counterparts (e.g., heroin), they will inevitably replace them and users may be exposed to elevated risks of addiction and overdose.     

A Disruptive Influence? “Prevent‐ing” Problems and Countering Violent Extremism Policy in Practice

This article describes how disrupting the activities of suspected violent extremists has become an increasingly significant construct in the policy and practice of the Prevent strand of UK Counter‐Terrorism. Informed by empirical data collected during semi‐structured interviews with police officers involved in conducting disruptions and members of the communities where these occurred, blended with a limited amount of field observation, the analysis documents how and why a logic of disruption has assumed increasing prominence in counter terrorism work. In respect of police interventions in particular, implementing disruptions, rather than pursuing fully‐fledged prosecutions, represents a pragmatic way of reconciling increasing demand with limited resources, as well as managing some of the difficulties of translating intelligence into legal evidence. Conceptualized in this way, the analysis positions disruption as a distinctive mode of crime prevention; one premised upon logics of near‐event interdiction. As such, it is understood as rather different in its operations and functions to other forms of “early intervention” that are increasingly prominent in much contemporary crime prevention policy. By focusing upon how specific Prevent interventions are implemented and performed this analysis makes a particular contribution to our knowledge of counter terrorism work. This reflects the fact that most previous studies of Prevent and other countering violent extremism programs have provided analyses of community perceptions and reactions to policing and the policy frame, rather than the configuration of the interventions themselves.     

The ‘illegal sentences which magistrates were daily passing’: The Backstory to Governor Richard Bourke's 1832 Punishment and Summary Jurisdiction Act in Convict New South Wales

Recent literature has recast the history of the British empire as a vast project of intervention in and reordering of colonial legal administrations. Closer inspection of local moments of legal reform, however, reveals substantial complications and contradictions in that project. This article re-considers Governor Richard Bourke's Punishment and Summary Jurisdiction Act 1832, the most celebrated legal intervention in the history of the ‘convict colony’ of New South Wales by a governor whose liberalism and humanitarianism epitomized the spirit of imperial reform agendas. The nature and objectives of Bourke's so-called Fifty Lashes Act are widely misunderstood. This article shows that while Bourke positioned his Act as a matter of legal urgency, its core aim was to render convict punishment more useful and economical. Moreover, Bourke's reforms were less innovative than is commonly assumed, being mostly required to re-assert and refine existing law that was being disregarded. Nevertheless, Bourke's reforms did address long-contested legal issues surrounding the summary jurisdiction of colonial magistrates and the local application of English transportation law. The backstory to the Act reveals the remarkably complicated and truly disordered state of the law in New South Wales, but this article also shows how the implementation of legal reform was seasoned with confusion and caution.     

Online Grooming and Preventive Justice

In England and Wales, Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act (2003) criminalizes the act of meeting a child—someone under 16—after grooming. The question to be pursued in this paper is whether grooming—I confine myself to online grooming—is justly criminalized. I shall argue that it is. One line of thought will be indirect. I shall first try to rebut a general argument against the criminalization of acts that are preparatory to the commission of serious offences. Grooming is one such act, but there are others, sometimes associated with terrorism. According to me, the general argument misapplies certain considerations about autonomy that are alleged to be in force in other areas of criminal law. Contrary to that general argument, criminalization of preparatory acts does not, in general, bypass the agency of citizens. Moreover, the criminalization of preparatory acts can disrupt activity that would have led to very serious crime, and with relatively low costs to the perpetrators, costs that reflect the non-occurrence of the more serious crime. There is evidence that grooming is harmful in itself, and so another point against the general argument is its assumption that preparatory offences are often harmless or at least victimless. There are objections to some of the undercover policing techniques that lead to a Section 15 prosecution, but these objections are not all weighty.     

K9 water searches: scent and scent transport considerations

Increased use of water search dogs for detecting submerged bodies has created the need for a better understanding of scent emanating from the bodies and how it transits the water to the dog's nose. A review of recent literature identifies likely scent sources, potential scent transport processes, and research needs. Scent sources include gases in bubbles or dissolved in the water, liquids as buoyant plumes and droplets or dissolved in the water, and solids consisting of buoyant particulates with secretions, bacteria, and body fluids. Potential transport processes through the water include buoyancy, entrainment, and turbulence. Transport processes from the water surface into the air include volatilization and evaporation enhanced by bubble bursting, breaking waves, splashing, and wind spray. Implications for the use of water search dogs are examined. Observations of submerged, decomposing bodies are needed to quantify the physical and chemical characteristics of the scent and scent transport processes.