Remedies for Breach of Trust

The decision of the Supreme Court in AIB Group (UK) Plc v Mark Redler & Co confirms the approach taken by Lord Browne‐Wilkinson in Target Holdings Ltd v Redferns: where a trustee misapplies trust assets, a beneficiary is limited to a claim for equitable compensation for losses caused by the trustee's breach of duty. This seems to be a departure from traditional equitable doctrine, which held that the beneficiary could falsify the trustee's unauthorised disbursement and bring a claim for an ‘equitable debt’. This note considers the impact of the decision of the Supreme Court, and how the law regarding ‘equitable compensation’ might continue to develop.     

Intelligence,Iraq and the limits of legislative accountability during political crisis

This article argues that there is an inherent tension in legislative intelligence oversight bodies between their responsibility to the voters who elect them and their political parties who select them to run for office. At a time of acute political crisis, the partisan interests of the legislators who sit on oversight bodies may override their other responsibilities. This can result in distorted and misleading investigations and reports. This hypothesis is examined against the evidence of precisely such a mode of failure in both the British and American legislative inquiries into intelligence on Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The authors conclude that any effective oversight must include a range of parallel legislative, judicial, executive and independent mechanisms to try and minimize the inherent weaknesses in each oversight model.     

From special operations to special political action: The ‘rump SOE’ and SIS post‐war covert action capability 1945–1977

This article examines the post‐war dismantling of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and amalgamation with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). It is argued that the existing literature has been unclear on this matter, confusing two very different SIS departments, the Special Operations Branch and the Special Political Action Section. The article then examines how the assets and personnel of SOE were dispersed to three different divisions of the SIS; the Directorates of Production, Training and Development and War Planning, and then examines the separate origins and function of the Special Political Action Section.     

Book notes

Housing Year Book 1983, Longman Community Information Guides, Longman, 1983, pp. 440, £22.00.

Public Expenditure and Leisure: A Study of Central‐Local Relations, W.D. Hamilton, Polytechnic of North London, Papers in Leisure Studies No. 8 1983, pp. 35 £1.50.

Local Authorities and Land Supply, Susan Barrett and Gill Whitting, School for Advanced Urban Studies, Occasional Paper No. 10, University of Bristol, 1983, pp. 87, £5.35.

Speed, Economy and Effectiveness in Local Plan Preparation and Adoption, C. Fudge, C. Lambert, J. Underwood and P. Healey, School for Advanced Urban Studies, Occasional Paper No. 11, University of Bristol, 1983, pp. 150, £7.40.

The Capitalist State, Bob Jessop, Martin Robertson, 1982, pp. 296, £17.00 hardback, £5.95 paperback.

Homes Fit for People, Family Services Unit Discussion Paper, 1983, pp. 48, £1.00.     

Terrorism Risk, Resilience and Volatility: A Comparison of Terrorism Patterns in Three Southeast Asian Countries

Objective

This article explores patterns of terrorist activity over the period from 2000 through 2010 across three target countries: Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Methods

We use self-exciting point process models to create interpretable and replicable metrics for three key terrorism concepts: risk, resilience and volatility, as defined in the context of terrorist activity.

Results

Analysis of the data shows significant and important differences in the risk, volatility and resilience metrics over time across the three countries. For the three countries analysed, we show that risk varied on a scale from 0.005 to 1.61 “expected terrorist attacks per day”, volatility ranged from 0.820 to 0.994 “additional attacks caused by each attack”, and resilience, as measured by the number of days until risk subsides to a pre-attack level, ranged from 19 to 39 days. We find that of the three countries, Indonesia had the lowest average risk and volatility, and the highest level of resilience, indicative of the relatively sporadic nature of terrorist activity in Indonesia. The high terrorism risk and low resilience in the Philippines was a function of the more intense, less clustered pattern of terrorism than what was evident in Indonesia.

Conclusions

Mathematical models hold great promise for creating replicable, reliable and interpretable “metrics” to key terrorism concepts such as risk, resilience and volatility.     

Providing eyewitnesses with initial retrieval support: what works at immediate and subsequent recall?

The effect of retrieval support on eyewitness recall was investigated in two experiments. Based on the outshining hypothesis, Experiment 1 tested whether retrieval support enhances witness performance (compared to free recall) especially when witnessing conditions are suboptimal (e.g., because witnesses were distracted during the crime). Eighty-eight participants watched a videotaped crime with either full or divided attention and subsequently received retrieval support with the Self-Administered Interview© (SAI) or completed a free recall (FR). One week later (Time 2 – T2) all participants completed a second FR. Unexpectedly, retrieval support did not lead to better memory performance than FR under divided attention conditions, suggesting that retrieval support is not effective to overcome adverse effects of divided attention. Moreover, presence of retrieval support at Time 1 (T1) had no effect on memory performance at T2. Experiment 2 (N = 81) tested the hypothesis that these T2-results were due to a reporting issue undermining the memory-preserving effect of T1-retrieval support by manipulating retrieval support (SAI vs. FR) at T1 and T2. As expected, T1-retrieval support led to increased accuracy at T2. Thus, the beneficial value of T1-retrieval support seems greatest with high-quality T2-interviews. Interviewers should consider this when planning a subsequent interview.     

Estimating the speed of vehicles: the influence of stereotypes

Abstract

Davies and Patel (2005, Legal and Criminological Psychology, 10, 45–62) demonstrated that stereotypes associated with particular types of car influenced judgements of culpability in a road accident report. This study explores whether stereotypes influence judgements of the speed of different vehicles. In Experiment 1, participants observed films of a BMW 3 Series and VW Polo being driven at 20, 40 and 60 mph. Accuracy of speed estimates was high and no effect of stereotyping was observed. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2 when the stereotype of a ‘typical’ BMW or Polo driver was instantiated prior to viewing the films and despite participants predicting that the speed of the BMW would be substantially higher than the Polo. In Experiment 3, speed estimates were made unexpectedly a day after viewing the films. In accordance with the stereotype, the BMW was now judged as being driven significantly faster than the Polo at the same actual speed. Consistent with findings from person perception, these results suggest that when unambiguous countervailing information is present, stereotypical influences are minimised or overwhelmed, but much stronger effects occur when access to critical information is impaired or ambiguous. The implications of these findings for witness estimates of vehicle speed are discussed.