Reducing Aboriginal Over-representation in Prison

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody attributed the high rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody to the over-representation of Aboriginal people in prison. Most analyses of this over-representation focus on the issue of systemic bias in policing, the law or the operation of the criminal justice system. The present article contends that, while discriminatory treatment of Aboriginal people by police and the court system is an historical fact, the leading current cause of Aboriginal over-representation in prison is not systemic bias but high rates of Aboriginal involvement in serious crime. We argue that efforts to reduce Aboriginal imprisonment rates through policing or criminal justice system policy have failed and will continue to fail until they succeed in reducing crime in Aboriginal communities. Future efforts to bring down Aboriginal imprisonment rates should focus on this issue.     

Territorial Justice and Devolution

The concept of territorial justice has a long history in studies of the spatial distribution of welfare state services in the UK. Since the inception of the devolution process, territorial justice has maintained support as a principle to guide policy and has been promoted recently as an objective for the reform of the financial arrangements for the devolved administrations. The first part of the article argues that the standard version of territorial justice is premised on the UK as a unitary state and is unworkable as a political principle of justice after devolution. An alternative version of territorial justice is developed to accommodate a union state. The final part discusses several policy issues post-devolution in terms of different versions of territorial justice: intergovernmental fiscal relations; health care policy including access to medicines; and free community care for the elderly.     

Commentary on “Studying Eyewitness Investigations in the Field”: A Look Forward

Schacter et al. (2007, this issue) address the controversy surrounding an Illinois pilot project that attempted to compare sequential versus simultaneous police lineup formats. The statement by these experts will guide the design and execution of future field lineup experiments. This commentary discusses three aspects of field studies that pose challenges as lineup experiments are interpreted: the imprecise meaning of the dependent measure (eyewitness decisions), the limitations of single studies, and the necessity to devise public policy from incomplete knowledge. A combination of laboratory and field information provides the means to determine best practices in eyewitness identification procedures.     

Bureaucratic locus of control

To what extent do public officials feel they have control over their lives in public service? We develop a new measure of perceived control in the bureaucracy based on the locus of control scale. The “bureaucratic locus of control” (BLOC) scale extends standard measures to a bureaucratic context as well as introduces an extension to these measures that focuses on the power of systemic forces in officials' lives. Field tests among a representative sample of Ethiopian public officials suggest that the BLOC scale has good internal reliability and that it is positively associated with promotion opportunities, rewards and motivation. We showcase its use by investigating the extent to which inequality in control impacts the general perception of control. Potential uses of the scale to study bureaucratic dynamics are discussed.