Seasonal Cycles in Crime, and Their Variability

Seasonal crime patterns have been a topic of sustained criminological research for more than a century. Results in the area are often conflicting, however, and no firm consensus exists on many points. The current study uses a long time series and a large areal sample to obtain more detailed seasonality estimates than have been available in the past. The findings show that all major crime rates exhibit seasonal behavior, and that most follow similar cycles. The existence of seasonal patterns is not explainable by monthly temperature differences between areas, but seasonality and temperature variations do interact with each other. These findings imply that seasonal fluctuations have both environmental and social components, which can combine to create different patterns from one location to another.     

Street‐Level Tort Law: The Bureaucratic Justice of Liability Decision‐Making

Most legal scholarship on tort focuses primarily on judicial decisions, but this represents only a limited aspect of tortious liability. The vast majority of decisions concerning tortious liability are made by bureaucrats. Unavoidably then, there are two tiers of justice in tort law. This article focuses on the lower tier – bureaucratic decision‐making – arguing that the justice of bureaucratic decisions on tort should be considered on its own terms and not by judicial standards. We develop the notion of bureaucratic justice, applying a normative framework originally set out in relation to public administration. This enables an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of bureaucratically determining liability claims in tort. The regimes discussed concern the liability of public authorities, but decision makers comprise both state and non‐state actors and the bureaucratic justice framework is, in principle, applicable to understand and evaluate the liability of both public and private actors.     

Initiating customer/police interaction in the UK: Early insights from research

Policing does not exist in a social, political or economic vacuum. As the task of policing becomes ever more complex, policing in the UK should explore innovative ways to remain effective. The notion that the public are the ‘customer’ is relatively new within the policing world and there is an increasing emphasis to ensure that the police maintain and preferably increase the public’s perception of the organisation. In the main, the public contact the police for some form of service and in times of austerity; police services across the country are attempting to align their service and organisational structures to customers’ needs in order to provide an economic and efficient service. In order to do this, the needs of those who receive the service need to be considered as the first step in this process. This article, based on recent research explores how customers engage with and contact the police and by better understanding the dynamics and intricacies of such contacts, may allow the police service in England and Wales to better understand customer preferences.     

THE PROLIFERATION OF PORTFOLIOS

Abstract: A comparison of contemporary lists of Cabinet ministers with those of the 1850s or 1900s shows a substantial increase in the number of portfolio titles and the appearance of many new titles. However examination of the record of the designation of new portfolios shows very little by way of pattern. Initially Victoria made the innovations, and overall Victoria and New South Wales account for two-thirds of new titles. But long periods of time have elapsed between the first and final adoption of a new title, and some titles which might have been expected to be attractive were introduced relatively late in the day. Murray Edelman's view that much government activity is directed to providing "symbolic reassurance" is not substantiated, with the possible exception of the 1970s when an unusually rapid and extensive round of portfolio initiation took place. It is suggested that more detailed study of why particular portfolios were brought into use might be rewarding.