The Relationship between Human Needs and Criminogenic Needs

Abstract

Precipitators are personal attributes enhancing a person's likelihood of becoming criminally victimized. The present experiment focuses on walking style synchrony as a nonverbal determinant of differential perceptions. Findings suggest that walking styles associated with a lack of interactional synchrony - a lack of organized movement, a lack of ‘wholeness’, a lack of flowing motion - result in higher ratings of robbery potential and in lower ratings of perceived self-confidence of a target relative to more synchronous walking styles. Analyses also suggest that high criminal involvement is associated with more easily construing situations as ‘opportunistic’. Some implications for assertiveness and self-defense training programs are discussed.     

Automatic Gait Recognition and its Potential Role in Counterterrorism

ABSTRACT

Closed-circuit television footage can be used to assemble an often-complex picture of an incident and aid in the identification of suspects after a crime or terrorist attack has occurred. For example, such footage allowed the police to not only identify the 7/7 London bombers but also to piece together the details of the bombers' movements prior to the attack. In the case of the London bombers little attempt was made to disguise their identities but where such identities are concealed it is possible to identify suspects based on other unique biometric characteristics such as the style of walk, referred to as gait. Gait feature–based individual identification has received increased attention from biometrics researchers. In this article, we propose a novel gait biometric methodology that could contribute to the counterterrorism effort and the identification of individuals involved in crime.     

Squatting for Survival: Precarious Housing in a Declining U.S. City

Despite severely depressed property markets, housing in declining U.S. cities can be surprisingly unaffordable for poor residents. Yet the characteristics of decline, such as abundant vacant property and constrained economic/political conditions, also provide opportunity for squatting. This article explores survival squatting—illegal occupation of property as a means for procuring suitable housing by marginalized residents. Drawing on a 4.5-year ethnography in Detroit, I examine the mechanisms by which people strategically choose squatting as a method of sheltering in the context of local conditions, and the experiences and conditions of this practice. I situate these empirical findings within a broader discussion comparing squatting and other forms of housing that have received considerable attention by researchers (e.g., shelter use, sleeping rough, doubling up). Squatting is particularly risky and unstable, and often very hidden. Substandard housing conditions prevail, and substance abuse is common. Squatting may have negative implications for child welfare, but may also provide measures of independence, self-determination, and comfort for illegal occupiers. There is a critical need for further research in this area, both to inform comprehensive housing policies and to anticipate how squatters’ well-being is impacted by other urban initiatives, such as blight demolition.     

Regulating lobbying activities in the European Union: A voluntary club perspective

This article offers a systematic exploration of why interest groups sign up to the European Union Transparency Register, a non‐binding lobby regulation system. We distinguish between instrumental and normative perspectives to explain voluntary compliance, and find that concern for one's reputation represents the most important motivational driver. Based on this, we suggest that the Transparency Register can be understood as a “voluntary club” sponsored by European institutions. This theoretical perspective captures the appeal of the instrument among lobbyists, but also a number of inconsistencies in its current design, which make it unviable in the long term. We outline implications for the ongoing reform of the Transparency Register, and more generally for the regulation of lobbying activities. The analysis draws on semi‐structured interviews with various types of lobbyists active in Brussels, and on data from public consultations organized by the European Commission.     

Beyond the Policy-Implementation Gap: How the City of Johannesburg Manufactured the Ungovernability of Street Trading

Abstract

Contemporary cities are said to have become ‘ungovernable’, especially in the Global South. They are certainly more difficult to govern due to the complexification of states’ apparatus (under the double dynamics of neoliberalisation and decentralisation), cities’ larger size, massive poverty, and informality. Yet, the ungovernability thesis arguably stems from a theoretical shift, from local government to urban governance, that has rendered the questions of steering, political choices, and accountability almost impossible to conceptualise. Unpacking the policy instruments used to govern street trading in Johannesburg, the paper shows that its so-called ‘ungovernability’ was largely manufactured by municipal choices.     

Ethics in Government: No Matter How Long and Dark the Night

This work examines attitudes about ethics in American government during the turbulent time from the end of the past century to the beginning of the new. Using data from a national survey, the authors explore views toward ethics in society and integrity in public agencies, with an emphasis on the code of ethics of the American Society for Public Administration. The results not only reveal considerable continuity over the years but also suggest that individual managers are increasingly empowered, that agencies are affecting positive change, and that the ASPA code may be influencing management practices. The implications of the findings for ASPA ethics initiatives are considered.