Navigating the Legal System After a Motor Vehicle Collision

More often than not, individuals involved in motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) do not sustain physical injuries. When individuals are involved in serious, injury-causing MVCs, the consequences may be devastating. Injured persons sometimes elect to pursue legal action to address the medical costs incurred and earning losses experienced in association with their injuries and the resulting impairments in function. This article presents a comprehensive review of the requirements of MVC-related litigation and the laws that govern this process, with emphasis placed on Ontario law in effect at the time of writing. Information considered germane to the decision to pursue legal action is reviewed, including the likely settlement amount, length of the legal process, costs associated with legal services and fee agreements that govern remuneration paid to the lawyer. Also described are no-fault regime and civil lawsuit, the two avenues of compensation that injured persons can pursue in an effort to recover losses and obtain the assistance they need to recover from their MVC-related injuries.     

Examining self-protection measures guarding Adult Protective Services social workers against compassion fatigue

Little research has focused on the risk factors, effects, and experiences of compassion fatigue among gerontological social workers. This qualitative study explores the experiences and perspectives of nine Adult Protective Services (APS) social workers in relation to compassion fatigue. Results show that the APS social workers combined personal characteristics and professional factors to develop boundary-setting mechanisms that protected them from experiencing the deleterious symptoms and effects of compassion fatigue. Implications center around the elements needed to implement boundaries in order to maintain a separation between the work and home environment. Suggestions for future research are provided.     

Group size,misinformation and unanimity influences on co-witness judgements

Researchers have typically observed the effects of co-witness influence on eyewitness pairs. However, research suggests that individuals are more likely to witness crimes in larger groups. Additionally, there is an abundance of evidence suggesting that social influence is heavily moderated by group size. Therefore, the present study aimed to gain a more accurate understanding of the risks of co-witness influence in relation to unanimity and group size effects. Participants (N = 608) viewed and discussed a CCTV footage of a fight breaking out, with co-witnesses, before giving individual statements, where they were asked to identify which person had started the fight; confederates were used to suggest that the wrong man had started the fight. Results indicated that participants were vulnerable to co-witness influence, but only when exposed to misinformation from a majority of co-witnesses. Misinformation presented by an individual confederate did not have a significant influence over the participants’ responses. This study was the first to investigate the effects of group size on blame attribution. The findings suggest that the true risks of co-witness influence may not be as high as originally predicted from research on eyewitness pairs.     

The Patterns of Syrian Uprising: Comparing Hama in 1980–1982 and Homs in 2011

Economic grievances that marginalized rural citizens and eroded the Syrian government’s political base are widely considered to have sparked the 2011 uprising. Although the country’s 1980–1982 protests were also blamed on economic factors, commentators to date have largely resisted comparing the events. This article draws parallels between Hama in the lead-up to 1980–1982 and Homs pre-2011, arguing that while there are differences between the uprisings—including the socioeconomic group involved—the root causes of grievance were remarkably similar. Both uprisings followed a redrawing of Syria’s social contract that marginalized a group that had previously had a stake in the Syrian state. In both cases, a new underclass was formed that became the backbone of the political unrest. Although economic factors cannot explain the 2011 uprising in its entirety, this article argues that some of the seed dynamics in 2011 were remarkably similar to 1980–1982.     

Building and Sustaining Academic Researcher and Criminal Justice Practitioner Partnerships: A Corrections Example

Bringing researchers and practitioners together in partnerships has substantial benefits. Partnerships can inform research questions and provide researchers with data to further their academic dialogues. Collaborative research provides practitioners with a better appreciation for research, and its integration into the provision of service. Published examples of successful partnerships in the criminological field offer insight into navigating the relationship building and maintenance process. The current paper discusses a partnership between researchers and practitioners at a corrections institution. The benefits and challenges to partnerships and recommendations for building and sustaining researcher-practitioner partnerships are discussed.     

Community environmental policing: Assessing new strategies of public participation in environmental regulation

This paper evaluates a new form of public participation in environmental monitoring and regulation advanced through local “bucket brigades,” which allow community members to sample air emissions near industrial facilities. These brigades represent a new form of community environmental policing, in which residents participate in collecting, analyzing, and deploying environmental information, and more importantly, in an array of public policy dialogues. Use of this sampling technology has had marked effects on local residents' perceptions and participation in emergency response and citizens' right‐to‐know. However, when viewed through the lens of the more developed literature on community policing, the bucket brigades are currently limited in their ability to encourage “co‐production” of environmental protection between citizens and the state. Means are examined to strengthen the bucket brigades and to more broadly support community participation in environmental regulation. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Victim Offender Overlap: Dual Trajectory Examination of Victimization and Offending Among Young Felony Offenders Over Seven Years

The relationship between victimization and offending has been shown consistently across different samples, settings, and crime types. This study uses data from the Pathways to Desistance Study to examine dual trajectories of offending between the ages of 15 and 24 in a sample of male felony offenders. The dual trajectory models demonstrate substantial convergence in victimization and offending. And while there are sizable numbers of youth who continue to be victimized, but desist or decrease in their offending behaviors, very few youth continue to offend in the absence of continued victimization. This study also proposes and tests three criminological theories that have been employed as explanations for the victim-offender overlap—low self-control, lifestyles/routine activities, and street-code attitudes. The logistic regression results indicate that involvement in risky and/or unstructured, unsupervised activities is a key correlate of the victim-offender overlap. The strength of the relationship between routine activity variables and the victim-offender overlap supports the provision of structured, supervised activities for youth and young adults as a way of preventing future victimization and offending, particularly among youth who have high exposure to violence.