Using Social Media to Measure Temporal Ambient Population: Does it Help Explain Local Crime Rates?

A challenge for studies assessing routine activities theory is accounting for the spatial and temporal confluence of offenders and targets given that people move about during the daytime and nighttime. We propose exploiting social media (Twitter) data to construct estimates of the population at various locations at different times of day, and assess whether these estimates help predict the amount of crime during two-hour time periods over the course of the day. We address these questions using crime data for 97,428 blocks in the Southern California region, along with geocoded information on tweets in the region over an eight month period. The results show that this measure of the temporal ambient population helps explain the level of crime in blocks during particular time periods. The use of social media data appear promising for testing various implications of routine activities and crime pattern theories, given their explicit spatial and temporal nature.     

Diverting young offenders from crime in Ireland: the need for more checks and balances on the exercise of police discretion

The Irish police (the Garda Síochána) have been exercising their law enforcement discretion to pursue a diversionary strategy for young offenders since at least 1953. Working in a street environment of low visibility they have managed to expand their traditional law enforcement function into territory more appropriately reserved for courts, social workers and probation officers. This article charts the development of this expansion and examines its current manifestation in the juvenile diversion programme. It argues that the welfare benefits for the young offenders are being purchased at the cost of due process rights, and that there is a need for more custom built accountability checks and balances to strike a better balance in the programme.     

The Recovery and Persistence of Salivary DNA on Human Skin

Abstract: Salivary DNA is encountered in many crimes, such as sexual assaults and murders. In this study, saliva from three male donors was deposited on the skin of three female recipients. The amount of male salivary DNA remaining on the female skin was measured over a 96‐h period using the Quantifiler? Y Human Male DNA Quantification Kit. In eight of the nine experiments, a full male DNA profile matching the donor was obtained even after 96 h. In addition, the study showed that the concentration of salivary DNA varied from donor to donor and from day to day. The efficiency of two recovery methods, wet and dry swabbing and minitaping, was compared. The results indicate the tapelift method gave higher DNA recovery. This study also examined the secondary transfer of salivary DNA from skin to fabrics. Cotton and polyester give higher DNA transfer than leather.     

Consumption and Happiness

We examine the relationship between (relative) consumption and happiness using panel data for China, an important developing country. We find that consumption has a positive effect on happiness. An increase in the average consumption of those of the same age, education and gender at the community level has a positive effect on happiness, consistent with a signalling effect, while an increase in the consumption of the highest spenders in this group engenders a jealousy effect. There is mixed evidence that conspicuous consumption and consumption that increases social connectedness increases happiness, while relative deprivation in visible consumption has strong negative effects on happiness. Our findings add to the literature on the effect of relativities in influencing individual happiness.     

The Dublin Regulation,mutual trust and fundamental rights: No exceptionality for children?

Mutual trust in the Dublin III Regulation is justified by the assumption that all Member States respect the fundamental rights of asylum seekers and that it is therefore immaterial which Member State processes any given claim. This justification has been questioned in light of the treatment of asylum seekers in some Member States. Nonetheless, in order to circumvent a Dublin transfer on fundamental rights grounds, the Court of Justice of the EU has held that the risked violation must meet the threshold for inhuman or degrading treatment in Article 4 of the Charter. Recently, the Court rejected the proposition that another Charter right—the principle of the best interests of the child—could block Dublin transfers of families with children. Through a child-rights analysis of the jurisprudence, this article explores the idea of exceptionality for children, concluding that there is potential for the best interests principle to trump mutual trust.     

THE PROCESS OF DEMILITARIZATION AND THE REVERSIBILITY OF THE PEACE PROCESS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The process of militarization has permeated Northern Ireland society both overtly and in more subtle and pervasive ways. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, reductions in state military personnel and infrastructure have been made and several acts of paramilitary decommissioning of weapons carried out. However, the political culture and discourse remains combative and bifurcated as the democratic institutions and processes struggle to achieve viability. Support for the Agreement has faltered as the raised expectations of improvements in quality of life, particularly in communities worst affected by the Troubles, have not been met. Vacuums such as the rolelessness amongst former combatants and gaps in policing have contributed to internecine conflict. As in South Africa, there has been a transition from political to criminal violence in local communities. A formal process of demobilization, demilitarization and reintegration of former paramilitary actors, combined with training in political skills would resolve some of these issues and ensure the irreversibility of the peace process itself.     

Queers and Provocateurs: Hegemony, Ideology, and the "Homosexual Advance" Defense

This exploratory article relies upon a historical-interpretive approach to understanding the relationship between legal narrative and popular consciousness in particular historical moments, focusing especially on "troubled times," in which the legitimacy of a hegemonic worldview embodied in law comes under challenge from a newly ascendant ideology in the popular domain. To discern the nature of that relationship and its implications, I offer a three-pronged analysis, drawing on two original data sets. Initially, each data set is analyzed individually to elaborate the nature of, and changes in, (1) representations of homosexuals circulating in popular culture, and (2) constructions of homosexuals in defendants' narratives in "homosexual advance" homicide cases between 1946 and 2003. Findings from these two analyses are thereafter combined to explore the relationship between the two constructions of homosexuals across that time period. In combination, these three analyses provide empirical evidence that, rather than mirroring changes in popular discourse about homosexuality, the changes revealed in the defense narratives actually opposed them. I use these findings to argue that, in what Swidler (1986) has called "unsettled times," ideological pluralism is pronounced and may be discerned in the complex and sometimes counterintuitive relationships that exist within and between legal narrative and popular discourse.     

Escalation and Mindfulness

Escalation of conflict, the use of progressively more contentious tactics, is not always intended. It may occur when parties become preoccupied with ideas or feelings that impair their ability to comprehend the situation and focus on the conflict issues. Action springing from such preoccupation can initiate a set of feedback loops that are self-amplifying. In this article, I suggest that by raising their present moment awareness through formal meditation and informal day-to-day mindfulness practice, parties may reduce preoccupation and thereby amplification. Drawing on Friedrich Glasl's stages of escalation and Magorah Maruyama's work on change-amplifying feedback loops, this article examines how mindfulness might contribute to a greater awareness of psychological and systemic factors that predispose disputants to escalation of their conflict.