Police recruits and perceptions of trust in diverse groups

Trust is critical in ensuring public co-operation with police and in turn building police legitimacy. Trust has been regarded as especially critical when police have sought to develop more positive interactions with diverse groups. Understanding how police officers perceive others and how this shapes trust in members of diverse groups is still developing. This study contributes valuable information regarding police perceptions of trust in minority group members; an area under-researched in policing studies, particularly in an Australian context. To understand how police recruit perceptions of socialization, interaction, and living and work choices affects their perceptions of trust in diverse groups of people, data were collected from a population of Police Recruits and Protective Service Officers (N = 1609) during pre-service awareness training. These were used in a Stepwise OLS model to ascertain opinions of trust in people distinguished by diverse identities. The results show socializing, and experiencing positive interaction whilst socializing with people from diverse groups, and the age of the participants, has a significant impact on the perceptions of trust police recruits have in members of diverse groups. However, this may not be enough to uphold positive levels of trust over time.     

Exploring the Link between Mentoring Program Structure & Success Rates: Results from a National Survey

Though mentoring has emerged as a promising and low-cost intervention for at-risk youth in recent years, the scientific knowledge base on the topic remains under-developed. The current study augments the knowledge base on youth mentoring by analyzing programmatic elements of mentoring programs situated in or adjacent to the juvenile justice system that are predictive of participant success. Poisson regression was utilized to analyze data collected through a national mentoring community saturation survey. Findings indicated that mentoring programs that require more frequent interaction and sustain relationships for longer timeframes realize higher success rates. Similarly, the use of formal mentor training was also observed as indicative of the use of evidence based practices and higher success rates, though likely beyond the logistical and fiscal reach of some local mentoring initiatives. The implications for further research and the mentoring community are discussed.     

Homosexuality as Defamation: A Proposal for the Use of the “Right-Thinking Minds” Approach in the Development of Modern Jurisprudence

False imputations of homosexuality have long been considered by courts to be defamatory per se, but many jurisdictions are beginning to revisit the issues surrounding homosexuality and defamation in the wake of a national debate over gay rights. This article examines whether courts should abandon false imputations of homosexuality as per se defamation and concludes that, at a minimum such statements should no longer be defamatory per se and further provides courts with a framework to go a step further and hold that such statements hold no defamatory meaning.     

Order and democracy: Trade‐offs between social control and civil liberties at Lake Parc Place

Abstract

This article applies the classic theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Stuart Mill to the issue of maintaining order, using Chicago's Lake Parc Place public housing project as a case study. I find that public housing residents living in frightening circumstances may be willing to give up some liberties to gain stability and order, but that very order can in turn provide them with the civil space necessary for them to become active participants in their own governance. While Lake Parc Place residents willingly submitted to strict rules to secure a sense of safety, as Hobbes would suggest, once order was established they chose Mill's path, becoming involved in managing their own community. Thus, policies restricting liberties to increase safety have the potential to increase civic participation.     

Rights of Self-delimiting Peoples: Protecting Those Who Want No Part of Us

While in recent years new charters and government actions have boosted the collective and individual rights enjoyed by “Fourth-World” indigenous peoples such as the Inuit, another set of indigenous peoples has not experienced such protection: “self-delimiting” peoples. Their rights go largely unprotected because of deliberate ambiguities in the word “indigenous”; because these peoples generally avoid all contact with the larger society, and so are unknown by it and have no voice in it; and because charters and institutions generally require validation of an indigenous people as bona fide—such as a history of contact and of evident land occupation—in order for the group to enjoy full rights protections. Both practice and theory may militate against the extension of full protection. This paper argues that theory, institutions building upon it, and practice realizable from theory and institutions must be reconsidered in terms of the particular circumstances and needs of these peoples if their rights are to be fully respected and maintained. Clear, special protection for these peoples’ rights to their culture must be established.     

Fixing failures of U.K. electoral management

Concerns about electoral malpractice have been raised in many democracies in recent years because of errors made in the administration of elections by local election officials (LEOs). This article argues that adopting appropriate policy instruments to manage LEOs is an under-explored method for improving election administration and reducing electoral malpractice. The article provides a case study of the use of performance benchmarking schemes in the UK 2008–2010. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 74 LEOs from 41 organisations subject to newly devised performance indicators. The research demonstrates that performance benchmarking can encourage learning amongst local electoral officials and strengthen central control over them.     

Factors impeding credit use in small‐farm households in Bolivia

Sample survey data show few Bolivian small‐farm households using credit, but most would like to borrow from formal market institutions. A theoretical framework is developed to formulate testable hypotheses to identify factors that inhibit credit use. Major impediments to borrowing are scale of operations, as measured by amount of useable land, and borrower's transactions costs that arise from loan paperwork, use of Indian language, remoteness from market, little education and low degree of market integration. When farmers with these characteristics borrow they tend to use informal market sources because of the lower transactions costs compared to those of formal market lenders. The policy implication is if formal market lenders are to reach more farmers they must lower transactions costs.     

Review of public budgeting and financial management

User charge is an alternative option to privatizing public service provision. But its use as a policy instrument, compared with that of asset sales or contracting out, for instance, is less researched and documented. This paper tries to fill the gap. By contrasting the experiences of employing user charge for two public services in Hong Kong with diametrically opposing results, this paper offers preliminary conclusions on several lessons, which governments, in their drive toward improved efficiency, can learn in commercializing their trading activities. Implications to public policy making are also suggested. These include: the user-pays principle has to be applied equitably, the public service market has to remain depoliticized, the management has to be transformed to behave more entrepreneurially, and the users have to be educated.     

Reviews and commentary

Lifting bob Woodward's veil

Bob Woodward : VEIL : The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987 Simon &; Schuster, New York, 1987, 543 p., $21.95.

His “Cover” Is Undercover

Steve Posner: Israel Undercover: Secret Warfare &; Hidden Diplomacy in the Middle East Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, N.Y., 1987, 350 p., $17.95.

Democracy and Intelligence: An Uneasy Compatibility

Stephen J. Cimbala, ed.: Intelligence and Intelligence Policy in a Democratic Society Transnational Publishers, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 262 p., $37.50.

A Much‐Needed Primer

Herbert E. Meyer: R eal‐ World In teltigence. Weidenfeld &; Nicolson, New York, 1987, 102 p., $14.95.

Agee Finds Two Friends

Jonathan Bloch and Patrick Fitzgerald (introduction by Philip Agee): British Intelligence and Covert Action Brandon Book Publishers Ltd., Kerry, Ireland, 1983, 284 p., PB, $9.95.

Questionable Secrets‐Questionable Sources

Fabrizio Calviand Olivier Schmidt: Intelligences secretes — Annales de l'espionnage Hachette, Paris, 1988, 309 p., 148 Fr. fr.

Scaling the Wall

Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova: Behind the High Kremlin Walls Dodd, Mead, New York, 1986, 248 p., $17.95.

The USSR As a Counterintelligence State

John J. Dziak: Chekisty: A History of the KGB Heath/Lexington Books, Lexington, Mass., 1988, 234 p., $17.95.