The Australian Cross-border Justice Scheme: an evaluation of a unique policing experiment

Abstract

Spanning the three jurisdictions of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, the central Australian cross-border region is sparsely populated, with an estimated 7000 people living in some 26 communities. In 2009 a new initiative was introduced to the region – the Cross-border Justice Scheme. Its creation was driven primarily by a need to deliver a more people-centred system. The new arrangements were designed to promote high quality trans-jurisdictional practice by all key criminal justice institutions, namely police, prosecutions, courts and corrections, but especially police. This paper looks at the impetus of the Scheme from its political roots. It describes its implementation, and the evaluative process completed in 2013. Finally, it takes readers through the pivotal role played by police services, both in changing the environment in which the Scheme operated and in contributing to some positive but limited changes in cross-jurisdictional co-operation     

Assessment of Stress and Resiliency in Emergency Dispatchers

Although they are technically the first responders on most critical incidents, emergency dispatchers have received a modicum of attention from researchers and clinicians. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate job-related stress, psychological distress, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), stress resiliency, and posttraumatic growth in this high-risk group. These areas were evaluated via an assessment battery administered to 90 emergency dispatchers working in a law enforcement agency. Results showed that dispatchers experienced an average amount of occupational stress, with 24% of the current sample reporting significant job stress. Between 13.34 and 15.56% reported symptoms consistent with a PTSD diagnosis, and 16.67% indicated sub-threshold PTSD symptomatology. The findings revealed that, overall, dispatchers experience occupational stress, psychological distress, and sub-threshold PTSD at similar or higher rates compared to police officers. Further, dispatchers reported posttraumatic growth at an average rate, also similar to that reported by police officers. Clinical implications of the results are discussed. Suggestions for directions that future research might take are offered.     

The relationship between domestic violence and animal abuse: an Australian study

Several North American studies have found a connection between domestic violence and animal abuse. This article reports on the first Australian research to examine this connection. A group of 102 women recruited through 24 domestic violence services in the state of Victoria and a nondomestic violence comparison group (102 women) recruited from the community took part in the study. Significantly higher rates of partner pet abuse, partner threats of pet abuse, and pet abuse by other family members were found in the violent families compared with the nondomestic violence group. As hypothesized, children from the violent families were reported by their mothers to have witnessed and committed significantly more animal abuse than children from the nonviolent families. Logistic regression analyses revealed, for the group as a whole, that a woman whose partner had threatened the pets was 5 times more likely to belong to the intimate partner violence group.     

Rationalizing pay inequity: women engineers,pervasive patriarchy and the neoliberal chimera

This article argues that neoliberalism with its pervasive patriarchy and co-option of feminism, renders women tacitly complicit in gendered pay inequalities. We show that in New Zealand, one of the world’s most neoliberal nations, women who might precisely be best equipped to argue for equal pay – engineers – do not do so because neoliberalism makes many feel responsible for, and accepting of, their lower salaries. In interviews and focus groups, many women engineers talk of deserving less pay than men because of their ‘choices’, their ‘personality’ and their lack of ‘responsibility’. In a disempowering environment, some women show agency by disavowing gender as a reason for the pay gap. Such narratives of individualized shortcomings reduce hope of collective action that might uncover and dismantle the systemic causes of pay inequity, which are not due to a woman’s choice or personality but rather what we frame as the neoliberal chimera.     

Comparative Journal Ratings: A Survey Report

The expert survey and bibliometric methods of assessing the quality of work in political science are complementary. This project builds on previous surveys of academic political science journals conducted among US political scientists. The current wave extends the survey to political scientists in Canada and the UK. Preliminary results suggest both similarities and differences across the three countries. These results matter for policy debate in any country that is considering channelling flows of funds to universities in proportion to the quality of their research, and in helping to supply objective evidence about the research quality of work submitted by candidates for academic appointments and promotions.     

Parent-Child Conflict during Elementary School as a Longitudinal Predictor of Sense of Purpose in Emerging Adulthood

Having a sense of purpose is viewed as a benchmark of adaptive development. Though adolescence and emerging adulthood are viewed as central periods for the development of a purpose, work still is needed to understand the childhood factors that influence this developmental process. The current study provides an initial investigation into whether parent-child conflict during elementary school predicts later sense of purpose, assessed during emerging adulthood (mean age: 21.01 years; range: 19.97–23.53). The sample included 1074 students (50% female), and their parents, who both reported on their levels of parent-child conflict during grades 1–5. Higher levels of parent-child conflict were associated with lower levels of purpose in emerging adulthood. Moreover, the study examined whether these effects remained when predicting the variance unique to purpose while accounting for other indicators of well-being in emerging adulthood. Bi-factor models demonstrated that the child’s perception of mother-child conflict has a unique prospective effect on purpose in emerging adulthood, above and beyond its negative association with general well-being. The findings are discussed with respect to how positive parent-child relationships may prove important for starting youth on the path to purpose.

     

Propaganda,effect, and the cold war: Gauging the status of america's “war of words”

The article examines the interrelationship among propaganda, effect, and the Cold War during congressional debates over America's first peacetime propaganda program. Although the rise of the communication research paradigm affected the production of statistical evidence to measure the effectiveness of America's Cold War propaganda, this case study argues that the “war of words” metaphor further heightened the need for empirical proof of America's status in that conflict, Just as with any physical battle that relies on body counts and land measurements to determine the success of America's war efforts, the criteria for measuring the status of America's “war of words” were driven by a similar demand for “objective” proof. The longevity of the Cold War helped ensure the institutionalization of the communication research paradigm, which rejected the use of anecdotal evidence as support for the program's impact.     

Motivating the uninvolved worker: some conceptual and empirical observations

This paper focuses on the issue of whether less involved workers are affected by conventional management practices such as group involvement, merit pay, and participative management. The findings suggest that while these management practices have some influence on the performance of uninvolved employees, that uninvolved employees are behaviorally distinct from more actively involved workers. As a consequence, it may be prudent for managers in the public sector to develop management practices and approaches specifically designed to stimulate low involvement employees.