Patterns of Policing and Policing Patten

In September 1999 the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland, chaired by Chris Patten, published its recommendations. This article examines the political context of policing reform, the contents of the report and the rejection of its core ideas in the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill published in May 2000. The central argument of the paper is that the Commission's radical model of policing – a network of regulating mechanisms in which policing becomes everyone's business – failed, because it gave insufficient attention, like much modern writing on policing, to the role of the state and the vested interests within policing. The overall outcome is that the Patten Commission has been effectively policed and Northern Ireland will be left with a traditional, largely undemocratic and unaccountable model of policing with most of the control resting with the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable.     

The privacy commissioner of Canada: Multiple roles,diverse expectations and structural dilemmas

Abstract: The contemporary roles of the privacy commissioner of Canada are multiple: he can be an ombudsman, auditor, consultant, educator, policy adviser, regulator and judge. Yet, Canadian privacy legislation provides quite poor guidance as to how he should perform and balance these roles and tends to put emphasis on complaints‐resolution, a function that is less useful in promoting general compliance with the privacy principles. The analysis of the experience of privacy protection agencies, however, suggests that the most important powers are those that are general rather than specific, and proactive rather than reactive. The implementation of privacy protection law is as much an educational effort as a regulatory one, as much can be achieved in anticipation of policy and system development if privacy protection is built in at the outset. The successful implementation of privacy protection policy involves a considerable degree of learning and mutual adjustment and readjustment. It is not characterized by a top‐down process of command, control and sanction. The privacy commissioner is one among many actors involved in privacy protection policy in Canada, and his success is dependent on the recognition that he has many policy instruments at his disposal, besides the law, to encourage higher standards for the treatment of personal information by Canadian organizations. Sommaire: Le Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée du Canada joue à l'heure actuelle des rôles multiples: il peut être ombudsman, vérificateur, consultant, éducateur, conseiller en politique, responsable de la réglementation et juge. Et pourtant, les lois canadiennes relatives à la protection de la vie privée n'offrent que de médiocres directives quant à la manière dont il devrait s'acquitter de ces différents rôles et les équilibrer. Elles ont tendance à mettre I'accent sur la résolution des plaintes, fonction qui est moins utile pour promouvoir I'observation des principes du respect de la vie privée. L'analyse de l'expérience des organismes de protection de la vie privée laisse entendre cependant que les plus importants pouvoirs sont ceux qui sont généraux plutôt que spécifiques, et proactifs plutôt que réactionnels. La mise en aeuvre de lois sur la protection de la vie privée représente un effort autant éducatif que réglementaire, car de bons résultats peuvent être atteints si la protection de la vie privée fait dès le depart partie intégrante de l'élaboration de politiques et de systèmes. La mise en ceuvre réussie d'une politique de protection de la vie privée comporte un important degré d'apprentissage et d'ajustement et de réajustement mutuels. Elle n'est pas caractérisée par un processus pyramidal descendant de commande, de contrôle et de sanction. Le Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée est l'un des nombreux acteurs de la politique de protection de la vie privée au Canada. Son succès repose sur le fait qu'il dispose de nombreux instruments de politique, en plus de la loi, pour encourager les organismes canadiens qui traitent les renseignements personnels à adopter des normes très éelevées.     

Identification of the Class Characteristics in the Handwriting of Polish People Writing in English

Abstract: An investigation was carried out to identify the class characteristics of Polish people writing in English and to specifically identify those characteristics that separate Polish handwriting from English handwriting. In the first stage, 40 Polish and 40 English handwriting samples were collected and systematically examined. In total, 31 features were identified that occurred in ≥25% of the Polish handwriting samples and therefore considered class characteristics. Of these, chi‐square analyses identified 21 class characteristics that occurred significantly more in Polish compared to English handwriting. Twenty‐one of the class characteristics in the Polish handwriting had similar constructions to the copybook pattern thus supporting the theory that class characteristics frequently stem from the taught writing system. In the second stage, an algorithm was developed using seventeen of the class characteristics that successfully discriminated between a further 13 Polish and 12 English handwriting samples.     

The Use of Social Media Policies by US Municipalities

As the use of social media technologies becomes ever more ingrained in the day-to-day functions of public organizations, it is important to develop relevant social media policies to guide their effective use and enable increasingly transparent engagement with citizens. Analyzing the content of such policies can inform scholars about the intended purpose of government’s use of social media. Hence, to build the foundation for a research agenda focused on the role of policy in government’s ability to effectively engage citizens, this exploratory study first identified 156 US cities with a recognizable social media presence and then employed a content analysis to analyze the key elements of their social media policies. Based on our findings, most cities have integrated social media into daily operations, however, many do not provide effective social media policies to guide such use.     

FIFTY YEARS LATER: THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

This paper assesses the legacy of the Civil Rights Act over the past 50 years, reviewing its history, scope, and impact on wage, employment, and segregation outcomes of the Act's five protected classes. In addition to improving outcomes for protected classes, the Act launched a period of expanded civil rights legislation and established a framework that allows expansion of coverage through judicial interpretation without requiring passage of new laws. Applications include prohibiting sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination and protection against color discrimination separately from race discrimination, which may be increasingly salient with increased immigration and with a multirace population.     

Technology transfer in the Americas: common and divergent practices among major research universities and public sector institutions

The present article presents the results of a qualitative study whose purpose was to compare the structure and operation of the programs for intellectual property management and technology transfer, and the mechanisms through which to foster entrepreneurship, in five high-profile research institutions across the Americas. The institutions of focus included Stanford University and the University of California, Davis in the United States; the Universidad Católica and the Universidad de Concepción in Chile; and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina. The purpose of the study was to elucidate commonalities and differences among these institutions with respect to their technology transfer practices, and to distill methodologies that could be used to establish or refine technology transfer offices in American regions. Research revealed common goals and core activities, shared and implemented in similar ways among all five institutions. However, the analysis also identified divergent areas within the structure and operation of the various technology transfer programs, representing significant differences between the five institutions.     

Equity and Conscience

This article argues that the peculiarly ‘common law tradition’separation of common law and equity had at its origins a principledbasis in the concept of ‘conscience’. But ‘conscience’here did not mean primarily either the modern lay idea, or the‘conscience’ of Christopher St German's exposition.Rather, it referred to the judge's, and the defendant's, privateknowledge of facts which could not be proved at common law becauseof medieval common law conceptions of documentary evidence andof trial by jury. The concept of a jurisdiction peculiarly concernedwith this issue allowed the ‘English bill’ procedureto be held back to a limited subject area rather than—asin Scotland and the Netherlands—overwhelming the old legalsystem. By the later 17th century, however, the concept of consciencehad lost its specific content, leaving behind the problem, stillwith us, of justifying the separation of ‘equity’.