Reluctant Participants in Restorative Justice? Youthful Offenders and their Parents

This paper examines offender and parental involvement in the Vermont Juvenile Restorative Panels Program. In this program, juvenile offenders on probation appear before citizen-run boards to negotiate the terms of their probation, which may include apologies, community service, restitution, and competency development tasks. Victims and parents of the offender also participate. This study reports findings from a qualitative analysis of 22 cases, including observations of panel meetings and interviews with program coordinators, offenders, parents, and victims. We find that offenders vary in the level of participation as well as in their willingness to take responsibility. Parents do not understand the program well, worry about their child’s likelihood of compliance, but generally support the goals of the program. Implications of these findings for restorative practices with juveniles is explored in the concluding section

Developing Predictive Algorithm for Possible Fuel Stops for Private Aviation

Machine learning algorithms\u27 capacity to improve over time is one of their main advantages. When more and more data is handled, machine learning technology often becomes more effective and accurate. Machine learning can be used to address problems in industry. OneSky Flight is an aviation company under an umbrella of companies offering technology services for other private jet companies. One problem they face as a business is predicting when a flight will need a fuel stop upon a booking request. Given a data set of approximately 230,000 flights from OneSky, dating back to 2019, a prediction model will be made in order to achieve the overall objective of the project: a fuel stop predictor. Therefore, the customer is aware and can upgrade the aircraft or plan for the necessary fuel stop, saving the customer money and time

Aleuria Aurantia Lectin (AAL)-Reactive Immunoglobulin G Rapidly Appears in Sera of Animals following Antigen Exposure.

We have discovered an Aleuria Aurantia Lectin (AAL)-reactive immunoglobulin G (IgG) that naturally occurs in the circulation of rabbits and mice, following immune responses induced by various foreign antigens. AAL can specifically bind to fucose moieties on glycoproteins. However, most serum IgGs are poorly bound by AAL unless they are denatured or treated with glycosidase. In this study, using an immunogen-independent AAL-antibody microarray assay that we developed, we detected AAL-reactive IgG in the sera of all animals that had been immunized 1-2 weeks previously with various immunogens with and without adjuvants and developed immunogen-specific responses. All of these animals subsequently developed immunogen-specific immune responses. The kinetics of the production of AAL-reactive IgG in mice and rabbits were distinct from those of the immunogen-specific IgGs elicited in the same animals: they rose and fell within one to two weeks, and peaked between four to seven days after exposure, while immunogen-specific IgGs continued to rise during the same period. Mass spectrometric profiling of the Fc glycoforms of purified AAL-reactive IgGs indicates that these are mainly comprised of IgGs with core-fucosylated and either mono-or non-galactosylated Fc N-glycan structures. Our results suggest that AAL-reactive IgG could be a previously unrecognized IgG subset that is selectively produced at the onset of a humoral response

"‘We just want to be treated with respect!’: Using restorative approaches and the dramatic arts to build positive relationships between the police and young people"

This article explores the application of an ambitious arts-based restorative intervention that has been applied in a direct response to perceived issues with procedural justice, legitimacy and community relations between police and young people. The research focuses on a series of Youth Forums that took place in the West of England, employed as an attempt to improve strained relationships between both parties. It reports on detailed ethnographic research of the Forum processes and procedures presenting this primary evidence in light of the existing literature on police legitimacy and procedural justice in police-youth encounters. The findings suggest that community-based arts programmes can be a powerful and effective tool for challenging entrenched views with the potential to improve future encounters between police and young people; and that the relevance and effectiveness of arts-based interventions can be increased by combining with restorative justice principles

Family Physician Participation in Maintenance of Certification

PURPOSE The American Board of Family Medicine has completed the 7-year transition of all of its diplomates into Maintenance of Certification (MOC). Participation in this voluntary process must be broad-based and balanced for MOC to have any practical national impact on health care. This study explores family physicians’ geographic, demographic, and practice characteristics associated with the variations in MOC participation to examine whether MOC has potential as a viable mechanism for dissemination of information or for altering practice

Exploring recent developments in restorative policing in England and Wales

The evolution of the policing role over the last decade has led to 33 police forces in England and Wales integrating restorative justice practices, in one form or another, into their responses to minor crime committed for the first time by both youths and adults. Most recently, this reform dynamic has been used in response to more serious offences committed by persistent offenders and expanded to include all stages of the criminal justice process. Despite the significant positive rhetoric that surrounds the adoption and use of restorative justice, there are a number of procedural and cultural challenges that pose a threat to the extent to which restorative justice may become embedded within the policing response. This article explores these developments and highlights where potential problems for implementation may arise as well as some strategies to overcome them

Morality tales: young women's narratives on offending, self-worth and desistance

This article emerges from a study of female offenders’ participation in police-facilitated restorative justice in one county in England. The qualitative study, presented here, is based on life history interviews with twelve women and focuses on three morality tales that emerged through narrative analysis: ‘offending as play,’ ‘the strong woman’ and ‘work and a normal life.’ The women used these tales to protect self-worth and justify ‘bad’ behavior in order to counter professional responses which they viewed as stigmatising. The paper concludes with implications for practice with girls and women who offend, which may benefit police, probation and social workers

Desistance from crime and restorative justice

Over the last twenty years, research on desistance from crime and on restorative justice has grown rapidly and both have emerged as exciting, vibrant, and dynamic areas of contemporary criminological interest. While the implementation of restorative justice practices in Europe has been essentially victim-oriented, there has always also been an emphasis on including the moral and social rehabilitation of the offender. This more offender-centred approach to restorative justice and its practices is not limited to the evaluation of its ability to reduce crime, but is to be seen within the connection between reparation, resettlement (reintegration into the community after sentence), and desistance from crime. This article examines, from a broad perspective, but including some preliminary data from ongoing research on victim-offender mediation in prison, the capacity of restorative justice interventions to impact positively on offenders’ likelihood of stopping committing criminal offences