Under-regulated and unaccountable?:Explaining variation in stop and search rates in Scotland, England and Wales

From a position of near parity in 2005/6, by 2012/13 recorded search rates in Scotland exceeded those in England/Wales seven times over. This divergence is intriguing given the demands placed on the police, and the legal capacity to deal with these are broadly similar across the two jurisdictions. The aim of this paper is to unpack this variation. Using a comparative casestudy approach, the paper examines the role of structural ‘top-down’ determinants of policing: substantive powers of search, rules and regulations, and scrutiny. Two arguments are presented. First, we argue that the remarkable rise of stop and search in Scotland has been facilitated by weak regulation and safeguards. Second, we argue that divergence between the two jurisdictions can also be attributed to varying levels of political and public scrutiny, caused, in part, by viewing stop and search almost exclusively through the prism of ‘race’. In Scotland, the significance of these factors is made evident by dint of organisational developments within the last decade; by the introduction of a target driven high-volume approach to stop and search in Strathclyde police force circa 1997 onwards; and the national roll-out of this approach following the single service merger in April 2013. The salient point is that the Strathclyde model was not hindered by legal rules and regulations, nor subject to policy and political challenge; rather a high discretion environment enabled a high-volume approach to stop and search to flourish

The Complexities of 'Home': Young people 'on the move' and state responses

'Home’ invokes ambiguous meanings for social policy; issues of safety within and beyond the home are recurring themes in criminological research and literature as well as policy and practice-based interventions. These concepts are further complicated when consideration is given to the experiences of young people who run away or go missing from the family home or alternative care. Drawing on an extensive body of research and rigorous analysis of ‘home’ in this context, the paper considers how gendered and classed youth identities affect responses and interventions. By ‘problematizing’ the universalised concept of home and the notion of ‘family’ that it implies, this paper makes an original contribution to theoretical aspects of running away and youth journeys, engaging with issues of space, place and relations of exclusion, subordination and domination in relation to family and state powers and responsibilities. Journeys from home are, interchangeably, escape routes and dangerous endeavours, but can also denote acts of resistance and quests for emancipation

Freedom of speech in Australia

On 8 November 2016, pursuant to the section 7(c) of the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011, the Attorney-General referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights the following matters for inquiry and report: whether the operation of Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) (including sections 18C and 18D) impose unreasonable restrictions on freedom of speech; and whether the complaints-handling procedures of the Australian Human Rights Commission should be reformed