Custom,contestation and co-operation: peace and justice promotion in Somaliland

This article explores alternatives to prevailing state-centric and legalistic approaches to supporting local security and access to justice. It does so through a case study of an initiative developed by an international NGO in partnership with a group of traditional authorities in Somaliland. The initiative aimed at enhancing local security and access to justice, drawing on customary conflict resolution mechanisms and everyday strategies of self-securing. At the same time, the initiative was shaped by international input and liberal notions of human rights and human security. This approach entailed a renegotiation of both local ordering and international discourse. Drawing on our fieldwork, we examine the initiative as it has evolved since 2003, and discuss what it suggests in terms of prospects for international support to ‘non-state’ actors. In particular, the article draws attention to the potential of working with everyday local practices to enable social change rather than focusing narrowly on reforming legal systems (whether state or customary).     

Making the Case: Using a Living and Historic Cultural Universe Big Data System as a Knowledge-Based Foundation for Sustaining and Recapitalizing the Cultural Sector

The cultural sector needs information to support recapitalization efforts. However the majority of existing studies all point to a knowledge gap within the sector: how to evaluate the amount of capital that can be raised. Through big data, we now have the ability to understand the “universe” of support to the cultural sector. In a test employing over two million data cells from 2007 onward for cultural organizations in Charlotte, North Carolina, the author has found evident patterns and predictors for sector support as a foundation for recapitalization, making the case for big data.     

Impacts,Measurements, and Art Policy: Starting the Change Process

The author discusses a survey of companies with art collections in German-speaking countries—Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Drawing on the data collected in the survey, he highlights the differences between two groups of curators currently responsible for corporate art collections, the "new professionals" and the "management administrators." First, organizational changes in corporations that occurred during the "founding boom" of the 1990s had a significant effect on the roles of corporate art managers, introducing the art-educated "new professional" into the process, which before then had been controlled by the corporate-trained "management administrators." Second, the nature, content, and styles of current corporate art collections reflect specific "corporate cultures." Third, the "new professional" corporate art curators purchase contemporary art for their collections at art fairs, a reality that has significant impact on the art market. The author concludes with an analysis of the relationship between these new professional corporate collectors and the contemporary art market by highlighting significant changes in pre- and post-1990 corporate art collections.     

Screening procedures in the United Kingdom for positions of trust with children

Abstract

Child services organisations need policies that minimise the risk of sexual abuse of the children in their care. In particular, managers (and the public) are justifiably concerned when abuse is perpetrated by individuals who should not have been working with children in the first place. Unfortunately, there has been relatively little work on determining unacceptable risk for sexually abusive behaviour in child service organisations. The purpose of this paper is to describe the contexts in which screening procedures are appropriate, review the academic literature on screening procedures and present the results of a pilot survey of current screening practices in the United Kingdom. We comment on the effectiveness of screening measures available for use by organisations and provide suggestions for improvement. Specifically, we recommend that screening procedures consider risk factors associated with the onset and persistence of child sexual abuse perpetration.     

The promises and perils of the emotional Stroop task: A general review and considerations for use with forensic samples

Abstract

Assessing the implicit attitudes and beliefs of offenders has proved difficult over decades of work and research with offender samples. The purpose of this paper is to outline the research related to the use of the emotional Stroop task and to encourage researchers and practitioners to use it as a measure to assess the implicit attitudes of offenders within their assessments. We consider the factors that may influence Stroop results along with the research considerations that need to be taken into account when using an emotional Stroop paradigm. Currently, a significant limitation of the emotional Stroop task is a lack of standard word stimulus sets that are able to distinguish between offender types. This limitation could seriously impede further development of this tool. Suggestions for future research are proposed.     

Trends of indecent images of children and child sexual offences between 2005/2006 and 2012/2013 within the United Kingdom

Abstract

Little is known about the trends of indecent images of children (IIOC) offences, as UK criminal justice figures are unavailable within official crime data. This study aims to explore the rates of conviction and the relationship between IIOC offences and child sexual abuse offences from 2005/2006 to 2012/2013. The results indicated a continuing increase in offences of take, permit, distribute IIOC, rape of a child under 13, sexual activity of child under 16 and abuse of children through prostitution or pornography. Six out of a possible 17 correlations were significant, with the strongest correlation found between take, make, distribute IIOC and rape of a female under 13. Explanations for the findings are discussed and the utility of comprehensive prevalence figures for different stakeholders involved in addressing this crime issue.     

Sexual Harassment, PTSD, and Criterion A: If It Walks Like a Duck …

Sexual harassment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are two topics that generate heated debate in the social science literature. When the two are combined in the civil litigation context, the intensity of the debate is heightened by the adversarial context of the courts. The current paper examines research on both sexual harassment and PTSD separately, before addressing the issues that arise for psychologists and psychiatrists who serve as expert witnesses in sexual harassment litigation. Proposed resolutions of controversies are offered that attempt to expand the knowledge base for expert witnesses on the topic of sexual harassment as well as work within the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association 2000) framework of PTSD.     

Comment on Charles C. Bohl's “new urbanism and the city: Potential applications and implications for distressed inner‐city neighborhoods”

Abstract

This article argues that distressed neighborhoods greatly benefit from New Urbanist design. New Urbanists have been rebuilding distressed neighborhoods for years, and New Urbanism's mix of architecture, planning, and public policy offers inner‐city neighborhoods the best set of tools available to improve the quality of life for their residents. Principles based on flexibility and absolute rejection of formula allow New Urbanism to offer solutions for a broad range of situations.     

Application of the BioMek 2000 Laboratory Automation Workstation and the DNA IQ System to the extraction of forensic casework samples

Robotic systems are commonly utilized for the extraction of database samples. However, the application of robotic extraction to forensic casework samples is a more daunting task. Such a system must be versatile enough to accommodate a wide range of samples that may contain greatly varying amounts of DNA, but it must also pose no more risk of contamination than the manual DNA extraction methods. This study demonstrates that the BioMek 2000 Laboratory Automation Workstation, used in combination with the DNA IQ System, is versatile enough to accommodate the wide range of samples typically encountered by a crime laboratory. The use of a silica coated paramagnetic resin, as with the DNA IQ System, facilitates the adaptation of an open well, hands off, robotic system to the extraction of casework samples since no filtration or centrifugation steps are needed. Moreover, the DNA remains tightly coupled to the silica coated paramagnetic resin for the entire process until the elution step. A short pre-extraction incubation step is necessary prior to loading samples onto the robot and it is at this step that most modifications are made to accommodate the different sample types and substrates commonly encountered with forensic evidentiary samples. Sexual assault (mixed stain) samples, cigarette butts, blood stains, buccal swabs, and various tissue samples were successfully extracted with the BioMek 2000 Laboratory Automation Workstation and the DNA IQ System, with no evidence of contamination throughout the extensive validation studies reported here.