Simultaneous,Sequential, Elimination,and Wildcard: A Comparison of Lineup Procedures

This study compared four lineup procedures: the simultaneous, sequential, elimination, and wildcard. Two hundred and sixty-nine university students (M = 20.17 years) watched a mock, videotaped crime. Then, following a brief delay, they viewed a 6-person target-present or -absent lineup using one of the four lineup procedures. For target-present lineups, correct identification rates for the four lineup procedures were comparable. In contrast, for target-absent lineups, the correct rejection rate was higher using the elimination lineup procedure compared to the wildcard and simultaneous lineup procedures. Remaining comparisons between lineup procedures found no significant differences. Also diagnosticity ratios were similar across the four procedures.     

Working Through Work Release: An Analysis of Factors Associated with the Successful Completion of Work Release

In line with reentry and life course research that has shown increases in desistance for individuals connected with employment, work release programming attempts to achieve desistance from crime by linking criminal offenders to the labor market while in the correctional system. Recent research has speculated that the completion of rigorous employment programming may serve as a signal to employers that criminal careers have ceased and the offenders are employable. Therefore, it is important to understand factors associated with successful program completion. This study utilizes a sample of jail-based work release participants to explore factors correlated with program completion. Consistent with prior research, we find that offenders who are older, Caucasian, and employed at time of arrest are more likely to complete the program and that minority participants and those with prior mental health treatment are less likely to complete the program.     

The changing landscape of policing: the Metro-LEC approach

Profound changes are being made in the way police organize and collaborate. Many of these changes are due to economic times, as well as changes that occurred after September 11th. Small- and medium-size agencies are finding new and innovative ways to mobilize for critical events and large-scale operations. The mechanisms for collaboration vary and few studies have examined the effectiveness of these different types of interagency cooperative ventures. The Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council is a non-profit organization and pools resources from 43 law enforcement agencies. This study found the approach to be successful in accomplishing its primary mission of providing needed services to the member agencies. Lastly, this type of collaborative approach is changing the landscape of policing through the use of multijurisdictional special operational units available to respond to a host of situations from public and private requests.     

Automatic Encoding of Ambiguous Child Behavior in High and Low Risk for Child Physical Abuse Parents

Recent theory and research suggest that physically abusive parenting behavior might be understood as originating from: 1) greater accessibility of hostile/negative schema, and/or 2) lower accessibility of benign/positive schema. This study examined whether parents at high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed in the extent to which they spontaneously encoded ambiguous caregiving contexts in negative versus positive terms. Twenty-five high and forty-one low risk for CPA parents were asked to memorize a set of sentences that described ambiguous caregiving situations. After a brief delay, participants were asked to recall the sentences. During recall, cues were given (e.g., negative and positive words) to facilitate recall. According to the cued-recall paradigm, to the extent that recall was facilitated by negative/positive cues, it was inferred that negative/positive meaning was activated when the ambiguous sentences were encoded. Although all parents tended to recall more information in response to negative relative to positive cues, the influence of cue type on recall was greater for high CPA risk parents. That is, high, compared to low, CPA risk parents obtained significantly higher recall difference scores (M = 4.6 versus M = 2.3); with higher recall difference scores indicating greater recall in response to negative relative to positive cues. Present findings are consistent with the proposition that high and low CPA risk parents differ in how they spontaneously encode information in ambiguous caregiving contexts.     

Ethnic Profiling: A Rising Challenge for European Human Rights Law

Ethnic profiling, defined as the use of racial, ethnic or religious background as a determining criterion for the adoption of law enforcement decisions, has been rising significantly in Europe, in particular in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. This article examines whether European human rights law is well equipped to deal with this challenge, and if not, how it should be reformed. Against the widely held assumption that personal data protection legislation is insufficiently protective of 'sensitive' data relating to race or ethnicity, it explains instead why combating ethnic profiling has been made more difficult, rather than less, by an overly protective reading of the requirements of data protection laws. It then discusses the additional measures that European states could take to address more effectively the human rights concerns prompted by the development of ethnic profiling.     

More of the Same? A Dual Case Study Approach to Examining Change Momentum in the Public Sector

Despite the significant amount of change experienced by the public sector, there has been relatively limited empirical examination of how change agendas affect public sector employees in Australia. This article presents a comparative analysis of two Australian public sector organisations that implemented the same positive work change agenda, but experienced very different outcomes. Using a critical realist approach, we draw on a mix of qualitative techniques to suggest that textbook notions of ‘successful change’, which are often derived from large private sector expectations, may fail to capture the complex nature of how public sector change initiatives may unfold. In particular, we demonstrate how political, temporal, contextual, and process factors interact to shift change momentum. Illustrative examples are provided throughout and the findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory building, for change facilitation, and for future research.     

Counter-mythologising “media freedom”: including the audience in media freedom discourses and a new normative position for the global south

This article argues for a conscious counter-mythologisation of the popularly utilised term “media freedom” within media political and policy discourses. It further argues for a diversion from understanding this term to refer exclusively to the sphere of media production involving the ability or freedoms of media producers to do their work without hindrances to their independence – whether these stem from state actors, media owners or other external forces. The article contends that a free media should theoretically, and in addition, be considered from the perspective of the audience(s) and its respective prospects of access and accessibility to the entirety of the media landscape. Since challenges of meaningful access and accessibility to media communications persist in much of the Global South, the article concludes by suggesting a newly theorised normative approach to the role of the media in a democracy, which is in keeping with socio-political conditions in historically “Othered” regions of the world. Utilising the example of a counter-mythologisation of media freedom, and adopting an audience-centred approach, the article additionally contends that any attempt at formulating new media theory ought to be contextualised within the global crisis of inequality in order for it to be relevant to the majority audience.     

The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists: Understanding the Pathways

While much research has been conducted on the radicalization of Muslim militants from Jemaah Islamiyah, its spinoffs, and splinter factions; the historical roots of Indonesian radical movements; and their ideological underpinnings, far less analysis has centered on how and why individual militants may come to disengage from violence. Disengagement is defined as a gradual process through which a member of a terror group, radical movement, gang, or cult comes to reject the use of terror methods in pursuit of their goals. Utilizing original fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2014, with fifty current and former members of Islamist extremist groups in Indonesia, this article will unpack the patterns, pathways, religious considerations, and psychological processes that propel individual militants to turn away from violence.