Can you use community policing for counter terrorism? Evidence from NSW,Australia

A contested question in the international policing literature is whether it is possible to undertake effective anti-terrorism community policing. The NSW Police Force’s Counter Radicalisation Strategy involved a community engagement initiative that used community liaison officers, mostly working with Sydney Muslim communities. This study reviews the success of this initiative, drawing on data from a survey of Sydney Muslims. The community engagement initiative was found to have direct contact with the community, it was public, and it involved aspects of partnership and relations of depth. For these reasons, the initiative was within the community policing paradigm. There was strong community awareness of the programme, and a majority saw it as successful. There remained pockets of community suspicion and critique, which require attention. The respondents recommended an enhancement of the community policing aspects: more (and wider) contact, visibility and partnership. The findings affirm the utility of community policing for counter-terror work.     

Asia pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

Asia Pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

Perceptions of psychological well-being in UK law academics

This study provides evidence that changing and increasing expectations of university, of students, and of academics of themselves have had an impact upon the perceptions of well-being in the law teachers who responded to this survey. A total of 185 UK law teachers completed a large survey which included demographic questions (age, academic qualifications, and experience), four questionnaires and a series of open-ended questions. Although most reported depression, anxiety and stress levels within the normal range, those who reported high stress levels were significantly more likely to report lower hope scores and higher obstruction of values scores as well as significantly less environmental mastery and self-acceptance. The results reported here indicate the importance of autonomy to law teachers. It is suggested that this is an issue that requires further investigation because of the potential for levels of psychological distress to increase.     

Facilitators and Impediments to Designing,Implementing, and Evaluating Risk-Based Policing Strategies Using Risk Terrain Modeling: Insights from a Multi-City Evaluation in the United States

The contemporary policing literature contains numerous examples of partnerships between academic researchers and police agencies. Such efforts have greatly contributed to evidence-based policing by increasing the knowledge base on effective strategies. However, research has demonstrated that successful collaboration between researchers and practitioners can be a challenge, with various organizational and inter-agency factors presenting difficulties at various stages of the process. Additionally, applied research can oftentimes face implementation challenges when the time comes to convert research into practice. The current study contributes to the literature by discussing researcher/practitioner partnerships and program implementation in the context of a multi-city risk-based policing project in the United States. We conceptualize police interventions as contingent on four distinct phases: 1) problem analysis, 2) project design, 3) project implementation, and 4) project evaluation. In this project, the research partners were able to successfully complete each phase in certain cities while the project experienced difficulty at one or more phases in other cities. We discuss these disparate experiences, identifying factors that facilitate or impede successful completion of each step. Policy implications and recommendations for future risk-based policing interventions are discussed.     

Prescribing engagement in environmental risk assessment for gene drive technology

Gene drive technology is a nascent biotechnology with the potential to purposefully alter or eliminate a species. There have been broad calls for engagement to inform gene drive governance. Over the past seven years, the gene drive community has been developing risk assessment guidelines to determine what form future gene drive risk assessments take, including whether and how they involve engagement. To explore who is developing these guidelines and how engagement in risk assessment is being prescribed, we conduct a document analysis of gene drive risk assessment guideline documents from 2014 to 2020. We found that a narrow set of organizations have developed 10 key guideline documents and that with only one exception the documents prescribe a narrow, vague, or completely absent role for engagement in gene drive risk assessment. Without substantively prescribed engagement in guidelines, the relevance, rigor, and trustworthiness of gene drive risk assessment and governance will suffer.