Trauma Resilience Training for Police: Psychophysiological and Performance Effects

The objective of this study is to test the effects of police trauma resilience training on stress and performance during a critical incident police work simulation. Rookie police officers (N = 18) participated in a randomized trial of a 10-week imagery and skills training program versus training as usual. Twelve months later, psychophysiological stress and police work performance were assessed during a live critical incident simulation. Training resulted in significantly less negative mood, less heart rate reactivity, a larger increase in antithrombin, and better police performance compared to controls. Trends for cortisol and self-reported stress also suggested benefits of training. This novel training program is a promising paradigm for improving police well-being, stress resiliency, and optimizing job performance.     

Women's human rights in a changing climate: highlighting the distributive effects of climate policies

A women's rights perspective can inform and structure research on climate policy impacts on women. To date, climate policy analysis has mostly considered women as agents of climate protection, that is, objects of mitigation policies, rather than subjects in their own right. However, climate change mitigation involves direct and indirect distributive effects depending on which sectors are involved, which instruments are chosen and how funds are obtained and allocated. Since gender roles impact on individual livelihoods and activities, distributive effects are likely to be gendered. This paper suggests that women's human rights can be used as a framework for research aiming to fill this gap. They provide a well-developed, tested range of criteria for gender justice. Such assessments would allow for a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the gendered distributive effects of climate policies, notably with regard to the particularly understudied situation in the industrialized world.     

One Size Does Not Fit All: Traditional Lockdown Versus Multioption Responses to School Shootings

ABSTRACT

Two paradigms inform responses to active shooting situations: a traditional lockdown approach where individuals find cover in a classroom and lock the door, and a multi-option approach where individuals evacuate the area, create barricades, and, in last resort situations, actively resist the gunman. While a majority of schools conduct active shooter drills, typically using a traditional lockdown approach, little is known about their effectiveness. Through simulations, this study sought to determine which of the two paradigms that inform active shooter drills is the most effective. Drills informed by the multi-option response paradigm were found to end more quickly and result in fewer people being shot.     

The three dimensions of online child pornography offending

Abstract

The internet has opened up opportunities for non-contact sex offending, such as the viewing of child pornography. This paper proposes a model for the classification of child pornography offenders as an aid for their assessment and treatment, deducted from empirical studies and existing typologies for child pornography offenders. Different subgroups of child pornography offenders may be described according to three dimensions: (1) type of offending, (2) the motivation behind child pornography offending and (3) the situational and social engagement in the offending behaviour. Distinct pathways of child pornography offending can be identified, related to differing criminogenic needs, severity of offending, and appropriate assessment and treatment strategies for the offenders.     

Radicalization in Adolescence: the Identification of Vulnerable Groups

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research - Given that the normative search for identity and belonging, as well as political socialization, plays an important role during adolescence, this...     

Mapping the black box of intraministerial organization: An analytical approach to explore structural diversity below the portfolio level

This article explores the structural diversity of intraministerial organization over time. Based on organization theory, it proposes a generic typology for intraministerial units applicable to any hierarchically structured government organization. We empirically investigate the critical case of the German federal bureaucracy. By classifying its subunits, we analyze the longitudinal development of structural differentiation and its correspondence to denominational variety. The data stem from a novel international dataset, covering all ministries between 1980 and 2015. We find that intraministerial structure differentiates over time, across and within ministries. A stable core of traditional Weberian structure is complemented by structurally innovative intraministerial units. We conclude that the German federal bureaucracy is more diverse than suggested in previous literature. Our findings indicate that less Weberian bureaucracies are at least as structurally diverse and that more reform‐driven bureaucracies will have experienced at least as many changes in structural diversity.     

Youth bulges,insurrections and labor-market restrictions

This paper analyzes the link between large youth cohorts and violent conflicts when labor-market restrictions are present. Such restrictions are expected to limit the youth cohort’s access to income opportunities in the formal economy, and thus lower the youth-specific opportunity cost of insurrection activities. We develop a theoretical model of insurrection markets and integrate the youth cohort’s relative size. In equilibrium, a binding labor-market constraint interacts with the youth bulge in determining the level of insurrection activities within the society. We test the implications of our model on a sample of 135 non-OECD countries in the post-Cold War period and find the effect of the youth cohort’s relative size on conflict onsets to be moderated by changes in the labor-market conditions as measured by unemployment rates. Generally, the results provide evidence that the underlying institutional setting shapes the conflict potential inherent in a given demographic structure.     

A tale of firsts: the 2019 Austrian snap election

Abstract

The 2019 Austrian snap election, held on 29 September 2019, was preceded by a series of scandals. Most prominent among them was the so-called ‘Ibizagate’ involving the former Vice-Chancellor and FPÖ party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. The scandal eventually led to the collapse of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition in May 2019 and the formation of a caretaker government. The election day in September brought a clear victory for the ÖVP with an increase of almost six percentage points, compared to its vote share in the 2017 election. The second big winner was the Green party which scored the best result in the party history with 13.9 per cent of the vote. Amid scandals, the FPÖ saw its support fall to only 16.2 per cent; the election also resulted in an all-time low for the SPÖ achieving only 21.2 per cent. The article presents the background, the election campaign and the results of the 2019 Austrian election, discussing the wide range of ‘firsts’ that characterized them, including the formation of the first ÖVP-Green coalition government in Austria.