Disabling justice

It has long been obvious to many who struggle with mental and/or cognitive impairment (and their supporters) and whose lives are enmeshed with the criminal justice system that they are not well served by our public institutions. Evidence from all ‘Western’ countries, particularly the United Kingdom and United States, over the past 30 years shows that people with mental impairments are imprisoned at higher rates than their peers without mental impairment.In New South Wales there has been mounting and strong evidence via the Inmate Health and the Young People in Custody Surveys that 40–50 per cent of adult prisoners and 60 per cent of juvenile detainees have mental impairment (excluding drug or alcohol disorder) and the rate appears to be increasing. Although the level of over-representation is not as high in Victoria, rates of mental illness amongst prisoners are also of great concern.Lesser recognised is that people with a cognitive impairment are also over-represented in police events, at courts, in the prison population and, most alarmingly, in the juvenile justice population. For example, a recent survey of juvenile offenders in custody in NSW demonstrated that a remarkable 77 per cent scored below the average range of intellectual functioning, compared to 25 per cent expected in the general population. Of these:• 14 per cent had an IQ of less than 70 (intellectual disability [ID] range) compared with 2 per cent expected in the general population, and• a further 32 per cent had an IQ between 70 and 79 (borderline intellectual disability [BID] range) compared with less than 7 per cent expected in the general population.Young Aboriginal people in custody had an even higher incidence of cognitive impairment, with 20 per cent in the ID range and 39 per cent in the BID range.But there is very little information on or understanding of those in criminal justice systems with complex needs;6 that is, persons who have more than one and, most often, multiple impairments, and who also experience serious social disadvantages. They are more likely than people with only one impairment or none to have earlier contact with police, be victims as well as offenders, be a client of juvenile justice, have more police contacts, and more police and prison custody episodes and to experience these criminal justice events over much of their lives.Differentiating the manifestations of mental or psychiatric disabilities from those associated with cognitive impairment is a challenge for many working outside specialist medical and/or disability fields. But when it comes to recognising and working with people with both mental and cognitive impairment who have lived with social disadvantage, abuse and exclusion (complex needs), most people working in criminal justice systems, including police, legal officers and corrections staff, have virtually no idea of what this means or what to do to best assist

Letting the children lead: the jeely nursery - a first interim report to the robertson trust

This is the first interim report undertaken for the Robertson Trust (RT) of an ongoing project developed by the Jeely Nursery (JN) in Castlemilk Glasgow 2007 – 2010. The Robertson Trust funding has enabled the JN to initiate a radical multi faceted programme of development focussed on children living in highly adverse socioeconomic conditions who may in addition be subject to the negative effects of living in families coping with substance abuse. They represent one of the most vulnerable groups of children in contemporary society. The task ahead for the nursery staff is complex, challenging and long term, requiring a high degree of consistency and commitment to both professional and personal growth. There is no question that the challenge is understood and accepted at all levels; that commitment to the project is well established and that a high level of motivation is sustained in spite of a number of difficult circumstances occurring over the year, unrelated to the project

The jeely nursery, letting the children lead: final report to the robertson trust

This is the final report written at the conclusion of a three year Robertson Trust funded project at the Jeely Nursery in Castlemilk, Glasgow, 2007 to 2010. The project purpose was to meet the particular needs of children vulnerable to highly adverse social and economic circumstances, including those living with parental addiction. The aim was to develop a collaborative strategy which would, by involving children, nursery staff and parents together, help to build enduring resources for the emotional resilience needed by children to overcome adversity and improve their chances of achieving educational success. The well validated premise underpinning the child-led pedagogy, Special Playtime, is that early negative attachment experiences can be transformed through direct positive experience with trained staff. The report examines the project using a three dimensional conceptual framework located in the literature on attachment, resilience and child-led pedagogy and focuses on the manner in which the several and differing relationships within the project interacted with and sustained each other

Time-series spectroscopy of the rapidly oscillating Ap star HR 3831

We present time-series spectroscopy of the rapidly oscillating Ap star HR 3831. This star has a dominant pulsation period of 11.7 minutes and a rotation period of 2.85 days. We have analysed 1400 intermediate-resolution spectra of the wavelength region 6100--7100 AA obtained over one week, using techniques similar to those we applied to another roAp star, Alpha Cir. We confirm that the H-alpha velocity amplitude of HR 3831 is modulated with rotation phase. Such a modulation was predicted by the oblique pulsator model, and rules out the spotted pulsator model. However, further analysis of H-alpha and other lines reveal rotational modulations that cannot easily be explained using the oblique pulsator model. In particular, the phase of the pulsation as measured by the width of the H-alpha line varies with height in the line. The variation of the H-alpha bisector shows a very similar pattern to that observed in Alpha Cir, which we have previously attributed to a radial node in the stellar atmosphere. However, the striking similarities between the two stars despite the much shorter period of Alpha Cir (6.8 min) argues against this interpretation unless the structure of the atmosphere is somewhat different between the two stars. Alternatively, the bisector variation is a signature of the degree l of the mode and not the overtone value n. High-resolution studies of the metal lines in roAp stars are needed to understand fully the form of the pulsation in the atmosphere.Comment: 13 pages, 20 figures, accepted by MNRA

Retraction with face saving: Modelling conversational interaction through dynamic hypermedia

This paper describes RWFS (Retraction With Face Saving), a hypermedia application which models an interview between a lawyer and his client ‐ a lorry driver ‐ facing court charges of reckless driving. At one level RWFS takes the form of a sophisticated game in which different outcomes to the interview are possible according to the learner's degree of skill. At another level, RWFS is designed to encourage the language learner's awareness and understanding of the pragmatic features of conversation. RWFS runs on HyperContext, a hybrid hypertextlexpert system developed in Pavia by two of the authors, Marco Piastra and Roberto Bolognesi, and which supports dynamic hypermedia units. HyperContext's dynamic linking capacity plays a vital role in simulating significant conversational features such as the conditioning of a current move in the conversation by information acquired much earlier in the course of the interview. In this connection, the paper discusses the contribution of RMCI (Re‐usable Model of Conversational Interaction), a re‐usable application‐independent applied model of interaction on which the game is based, and which links a tactical level (the conversation) to a metalevel which provides a move‐by‐move commentary on interactional theory. In its turn, RMCFs metalevel is linked to a strategic level which interprets the structure of the conversation in terms of a pyramid‐like hierarchy of increasingly abstract theoretical concepts

Panchromatic properties of galaxies in wide-field optical spectroscopic and photometric surveys

The past 15 years have seen an explosion in the number of redshifts recovered via wide area spectroscopic surveys. At the current time there are approximately 2million spectroscopic galaxy redshifts known (and rising) which represents an extraordinary growth since the pioneering work of Marc Davis and John Huchra. Similarly there has been a parallel explosion in wavelength coverage with imaging surveys progressing from single band, to multi-band, to truly multiwavelength or pan-chromatic involving the coordination of multiple facilities. With these empirically motivated studies has come a wealth of new discoveries impacting almost all areas of astrophysics. Today individual surveys, as best demonstrated by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, now rank shoulder-to-shoulder alongside major facilities. In the coming years this trend is set to continue as we being the process of designing and conducting the next generation of spectroscopic surveys supported by multi-facility wavelength coverage.Comment: Invited review article to be published in Proceedings of IAU Symposium 284 on "The Spectral Energy Distribution of Galaxies", (Eds: R.J.Tuffs & C.C.Popescu