Police Empathy and Victim PTSD as Potential Factors in Rape Case Attrition

This exploratory study investigated whether rape victims’ subjective perceptions of whether to proceed with legal action were associated with their experience of disclosing to the police during their initial interview. Specifically, the study investigated associations between symptoms of PTSD, shame and self-blame post-rape, subjective perceptions of police empathy and subjective perception of victims’ intentions to take the case to court. Participants (N = 22) were found to have elevated levels of PTSD severity, shame and self-blame. Police empathy was positively correlated with victims’ ratings of likelihood of taking the case to court, and negatively correlated with PTSD severity and shame. These preliminary findings suggest that training police officers how to respond more empathically to psychologically distressed rape victims may potentially help reduce victim attrition rates.     

Techniques of Knowing in Administration: Co‐production,Models, and Conservation Law

Law frequently demands the production, sometimes effortful, of adequate knowledge for decision making. This article explores the challenging epistemic demands made by nature conservation law during planning law approval processes for major offshore wind farms. It explores this area through the prism of co‐production: not only are ‘science’ and ‘facts’ socially and legally constructed, but in addition, scientific and factual findings shape society, and law and governance. Models are used in planning law to assess whether bird deaths associated with a proposed wind farm will have an adverse effect on the integrity of a protected site. As much as providing an accurate factual representation of the impact of a wind farm on biodiversity, the models contribute to the very possibility of governing the impact of these novel infrastructure developments on biodiversity.