Police Empathy and Victim PTSD as Potential Factors in Rape Case Attrition

This exploratory study investigated whether rape victims’ subjective perceptions of whether to proceed with legal action were associated with their experience of disclosing to the police during their initial interview. Specifically, the study investigated associations between symptoms of PTSD, shame and self-blame post-rape, subjective perceptions of police empathy and subjective perception of victims’ intentions to take the case to court. Participants (N = 22) were found to have elevated levels of PTSD severity, shame and self-blame. Police empathy was positively correlated with victims’ ratings of likelihood of taking the case to court, and negatively correlated with PTSD severity and shame. These preliminary findings suggest that training police officers how to respond more empathically to psychologically distressed rape victims may potentially help reduce victim attrition rates.     

Techniques of Knowing in Administration: Co‐production,Models, and Conservation Law

Law frequently demands the production, sometimes effortful, of adequate knowledge for decision making. This article explores the challenging epistemic demands made by nature conservation law during planning law approval processes for major offshore wind farms. It explores this area through the prism of co‐production: not only are ‘science’ and ‘facts’ socially and legally constructed, but in addition, scientific and factual findings shape society, and law and governance. Models are used in planning law to assess whether bird deaths associated with a proposed wind farm will have an adverse effect on the integrity of a protected site. As much as providing an accurate factual representation of the impact of a wind farm on biodiversity, the models contribute to the very possibility of governing the impact of these novel infrastructure developments on biodiversity.     

Higher Education and the Referendum on Scottish Independence

During the course of the referendum campaign, the Scottish government argued that free tuition for Scottish and EU students symbolised Scotland's preference for universal services and was intrinsically fairer than the ‘marketised’ systems operating in the rest of the UK. Invoking principles of both social justice and pragmatism, three distinct critiques of the Scottish government's higher education policy were mounted and adopted by different policy actors for different political purposes. Following a discussion of these arguments, this article concludes that a more nuanced discussion of higher education policy in Scotland is required, focusing not just on the absence of tuition fees but also on the distribution of debt and allocation of funds across the entire education system. We also note that the focus on tuition fees policy suggests that higher education systems across the UK are set on a process of divergence, whereas there are strong pressures towards policy convergence in areas such as research policy and internationalisation.     

Providing an Integrated Response to Family Violence: Governance Attributes of Local Networks in Victoria

The establishment of integrated responses to family violence represents a significant implementation challenge for locally‐based networks. This research reports on the experiences of integrated family violence committees in Victoria, and the features of their governance associated with perceived effectiveness in committee functioning. There were consistent regional differences in the perceived effectiveness of committees. The main challenge for effective service integration was establishing and maintaining effective partnerships. There were substantial differences in the capacities of the committees to meet the challenges of integration, and the research points to the need for a stronger guidance and support role by central agencies.     

Protective Factors Interrupting the Continuity From School Bullying to Later Internalizing and Externalizing Problems: A Systematic Review of Prospective Longitudinal Studies

A systematic review is presented, based on prospective longitudinal studies, on protective factors that interrupt the continuity from bullying perpetration at school to externalizing problem behaviors later in life; and from bullying victimization to later internalizing problems. Some common factors were established, which seem to interrupt the continuity from school bullying perpetration and victimization to later maladjustment problems. These included having a good performance at school and good social skills, coming from a stable (undisrupted) family, being attached to parents, and having prosocial friends. Findings are consistent with the wider resilience literature on factors that confer emotional and behavioral adjustment to school youth. This is not surprising given the interconnectedness and common pathways between bullying and other risk behaviors. Effective antibullying and other multicomponent programs may successfully interrupt this long-term continuity. Future intervention research should be informed by the resilience literature and incorporate existing findings in future program planning.     

How the ‘entry’ defines the ‘exit’: contradictions between the political and military strategies adopted in 2001 and how they have deleteriously affected the longer-term possibilities for stabilisation in Afghanistan

Focusing on the period 2001–2003, the paper discusses how the Western military intervention in Afghanistan changed power structures early on, undermining the political settlement in the long term and culminating in the present electoral crisis. Key concepts, a theoretical framework and the initial military approach (including how the initial military strategy undermined an indigenous solution for toppling the Taliban) are outlined and literature focused on hybrid governance and ‘legitimacy’ as an important but overlooked facet of peace-building is presented. Examples of ‘lessons learned’ in relation to the failure to engage with traditional forms of governance–early on in the Afghan conflict—are set out. The objective is to show that the military strategy adopted in 2001–2002 had adverse long-term consequences that were hard to reverse later on (e.g. by shifting the goalposts of military activity to, for example, a counter-insurgency strategy from 2005 onwards). This paper does not aim to resolve these paradoxes in the Afghan context going forward but offers implicit recommendations based on ‘lessons learned’.