Researcher–practitioner partnerships and crime analysis: a case study in action research

This paper describes a recent researcher–practitioner partnership designed to address the challenges faced by law enforcement agencies when implementing crime control and prevention strategies. Using an action research methodology, the project embedded a group of trained students within the law enforcement community to assist with local crime problems and supplement existing crime analysis and research capabilities in six agency units. Results of this case study offer several implications for future researcher–practitioner partnerships focused on crime analysis and present an enhanced set of metrics for evaluating success.     

Truth and Politics: Thinking About Evidence‐Based Policy in the Age Of Spin

Evidence‐based policy and the contemporary politics of spin are said to characterise contemporary politics and policy. The paper asks firstly what sense is to be made of this coincidence, and then documents this coincidence. It then asks how credible is the conception of ‘evidence’ espoused by advocates of evidence‐based policy when it is conventionally represented as an ‘objective’ counter to ideology, spin or opinion? It points to major problems with the conventional understandings of ‘evidence’. It is suggested that while the evidence‐based policy literature relies on the associations ‘evidence’ is presumed to have with ‘sensory data’, this is neither the case nor all that defensible. The paper reprises arguments advanced by Henry Mayer and Hannah Arendt that the relationship of politics to the empirical was and is a far more complex relationship than is conventionally understood to be the case.     

The Afterlives of Global Capital

ABSTRACT

Decay and decomposition have long been important to the histories of capitalist development but what are the particular forms that characterize the relationship between “waste” and value in post-2008 financialization? I argue that financialization is characterized by the organized conversion of distress into forms of financial value. To make this argument I lay particular emphasis on the rehabilitation of “toxic” assets through the practices of asset management in Ireland's National Asset Management Agency. I extend this argument by foregrounding political interventions staged around post-crisis housing, a critical strategy which seeks a certain point of confrontation between the abstract and the visceral. This strategy identifies the “afterlives of global capital” as sites that could incubate imaginative work designed to challenge finance in key ways. This provokes questions about financialized value: do we now locate value in forms of financial integrity or in decay, decomposition and detritus?     

Reexamining the correlates of adolescent violent victimization: the importance of exposure, guardianship, and target characteristics

The present study examines the relative contributions of various theoretical constructs to violent victimization by operationalizing multiple measures of exposure to motivated offenders, guardianship, and target characteristics. Using a nationally representative sample of American adolescents, we conducted principal components factor analysis and logistic regression analysis to examine whether such measures do in fact represent empirically distinct constructs and if they are each correlated with violent victimization risk. Findings suggest that both nondelinquent and delinquent routine activities which expose adolescents to motivated offenders increase risk of victimization. In terms of guardianship, parental attachment appears to protect adolescents from victimization, although direct parental control actually increases risk. Finally, only one of four target characteristics-psychological vulnerability-was significantly associated with violent victimization risk. We discuss the implications for theory and future research in light of the findings.     

Psychological autopsy in the investigation of serial neonaticides

While the use of psychological autopsies has at least a 50-year history in the investigation of equivocal deaths and suicides, we report a case where, after the discovery of a woman who died of natural causes, a subsequent search of her home found three deceased newborn infants. The infants were born on three separate occasions; the most recent was delivered approximately 2 weeks before the death of the mother. Using her own diaries and interviews with family and friends along with the physical autopsy and scene investigation data, we built a psychological autopsy that addressed the mother's mental state over the period of time when the infants' deaths took place. While the use of the psychological autopsy was not employed to distinguish the manner of death of the mother, it did provide explanatory power over circumstances of the crime scene and the behavioral disturbance of the mother.     

Dissent,Litigation, and Investigation: Hitting the Powerful Where It Hurts

Environmentally harmful activity undertaken by powerful corporations receive approvals from multiple levels of government, therefore leaving the wellbeing of the environment to those individuals and organisations committed to fighting against such corporate-driven, government-backed projects. This article discusses three avenues for challenging corporate interests, drawing upon issues and events in Australia. Dissent, as illustrated by the Gunns20 case, can provide ordinary individuals with a means to democratically debate existing practices, proposals, and even the law itself. Litigation, as seen in the Carmichael mining case, can be a valuable tool in postponing environmentally disastrous activities by challenging the government’s legitimacy in approving projects that would result in environmental harm. Investigation can expose the manipulation of information presented to the public by both governments and corporations. These three areas of engagement constitute important components for effective environmental activism.     

Critiquing the regulation of private security in the United Kingdom: views from inside the sector

ABSTRACT

The UK Private Security Industry Act 2001 provided the legal mechanism for the statutory regulation of parts of the private security sector with the explicit aim of reducing criminality in the industry and raising standards. It created the Security Industry Authority as the regulator which commenced operation in 2003. Since then, it has received mixed reviews, and proposals have been forwarded to change its status and the way it works. This paper provides insights from two groups most affected by regulation: security specialists who buy security, and managers and directors of security companies who are subject to regulation and work with its strengths and weaknesses. The paper reports on their views of both the existing regime and some proposed changes. It suggests that the regulator and the industry share similar views albeit there has been a lack of emphasis on what it takes to enhance the ability of the industry to support the public generally rather than just those who pay.     

Trace Evidence Potential in Postmortem Skin Microbiomes: From Death Scene to Morgue

Microbes can be used effectively as trace evidence, at least in research settings. However, it is unknown whether skin microbiomes change prior to autopsy and, if so, whether these changes interfere with linking objects to decedents. The current study included microbiomes from 16 scenes of death in the City and County of Honolulu and tested whether objects at the scenes can be linked to individual decedents. Postmortem skin microbiomes were stable during repeated sampling up to 60 h postmortem and were similar to microbiomes of an antemortem population. Objects could be traced to decedents approximately 75% of the time, with smoking pipes and medical devices being especially accurate (100% match), house and car keys being poor (0%), and other objects like phones intermediate (~80%). These results show that microbes from objects at death scenes can be matched to individual decedents, opening up a new method of establishing associations and identifications.