Social capital in Scottish and Danish neighbourhoods: paradoxes of a police–community nexus at the front line

Community-oriented social capital strategies and punitive-oriented policing approaches conflict. Establishing local networking initiatives with community-oriented policing at the centre lends itself to an assets-based policing approach, based on honouring, mobilizing and extending the assets of community members. Scholars argue about the need for comparative research on convergences and divergencies across subcultures on the streets and communities. Based on qualitative data gathered from working class communities in Scotland and Denmark in 2014, the article draws inspiration from community-generated theory of social capital to explore the micro-sociology of experiences and understandings about community–police integration policy initiatives. We use this perspective to argue that the building of positive inter-generational and police–community relationships is the result of social exchanges and officers’ use of what we call ‘constructive investment strategies’. Ironically, our insights from Scotland to Denmark also suggest what appear as positive achievements of community policing may instead intensify residents’ negative perceptions of police officers and organizations. In this way, the article illuminates the tangled and conflicted nature of these embedded symbolic interactions, social capital formations and the latter’s form as a potential positional and ‘tribal’ commodity.     

Change in treatment has no relationship with subsequent re-offending in U.K. domestic violence sample: a preliminary study

In this study, data is presented from a sample of 52 male domestic violence offenders who were court mandated to attend a profeminist psycho-educational rehabilitation program in the West Midlands. The extent of both statistically and clinically significant psychological change achieved across a variety of measures (pro-domestic-violence attitudes, anger, locus of control, interpersonal dependency) assessed pre- and post-treatment, and their association with post-treatment re-offending within an 11-month follow-up period is examined. The results indicate that program completers achieved limited significant psychological change. However, the level of psychological change achieved had no association with re-offending.     

Dissociation and variability of adult attachment dimensions and early maladaptive schemas in sexual and violent offenders

The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of constructs that may indicate the presence of disorganized attachment style in sexual and violent offenders. Constructs measured were dissociation, variability on self-report measures of attachment style and early maladaptive schemas, and variability in observed behavior. Data on variability was collected at four time intervals, approximately 3 weeks apart. No differences between the groups were found in variability of self-reported attachment style. Both offending groups showed greater variability in early schemas and higher levels of dissociation than the nonoffending group. Sex offenders showed greater variability than violent offenders in behaviors related to distress.     

Law as a Parasitic Discipline

British university law schools are undergoing a radical change in the nature of legal research and scholarship. They were once dominated by pure doctrinal analysis but the new generation of legal scholars are either abandoning doctrinal work or infusing it with techniques and approaches drawn from the humanities and the social sciences. This essay argues that this change will lead to a greater ability to provide law students with a truly liberal education and will also enable the law school to take a much greater part in the intellectual debates to be found elsewhere in the university.     

Economic growth and environmental quality are compatible

Man's relationship to the natural environment and nature's influence upon human life are among the oldest topics of speculation. Until modern times the major reason for concern was the prospect of diminishing returns. It was thought that population and economic growth would press against natural resource limits, and that economic welfare would fall to subsistence levels.In modern times in developed nations the prospect of diminishing returns has been avoided. Population increase has abated to rates which promise stability in population numbers. Technology, capital accumulation, and improvements in labor force have yielded increasing returns. Per capita output grows at 2 or 3 % per year.The modern concern is quality of environment and quality of life. The technology, industrialization and agglomeration which have yielded increasing returns of goods per capita have side effects. These are pollution and crowding, increased needs for public goods, expanded monopoly in the market places, and dilemmas of choice from affluence. The task for modern societies is to bend their enlarged technology and productive power to improving quality of environment and, more generally, quality of life.Presented at the Man and Land Symposium on Economic Growth and the Quality of Life, College of Liberal Arts, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, May 10, 1973.