Analysing of supervision skills of juvenile justice workers

There is evidence that the style of supervision by juvenile justice workers can make a difference to the likelihood that young people under supervision will re-offend. This study aimed to examine the style of supervision offered by juvenile justice workers and how this relates to re-offending patterns by clients. It provides information about what goes on in worker/client interviews and what works best in fostering reduced recidivism.More specifically the aim was to gather information about the nature of micro-skills which are used by youth justice workers in the supervision of offenders on probation parole and other community based orders, how clients respond to the use of those micro-skills and how the use of the skills relates to client outcomes such as recidivism.The research was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Juvenile Justice in NSW. Forty-seven workers participated in the study. The next 5 clients allocated to the workers from the time of volunteering from the study were then selected for each of the workers. The workers were then asked to invite the research officers who were working on the project to observe the next interview they conducted with any one of the five clients who were allocated to them. Eighty-nine interviews were observed however an additional 39 were also observed as part of the pilot study for this project. They are included in the analysis and results reported on in this paper. In total 128 interviews were observed. Eighty interviews were also conducted with clients following the observation and 78 interviews were conducted with workers following the observations and interviews with the clients.Two year recidivism data is available for 117 of the observations. Eleven of the interviews were conducted in remote areas of NSW during 2011 and the recidivism data for those interviews is not yet available

Darkening Programmable Donations

Around 2019, a group of researchers working with a large international charity, developed an innovative system for ‘programmable donations’. Riding a wave of hype related to blockchain technologies, they envisaged a way to support conditional and data-driven giving. The researchers realised that they could use ‘smart contracts’ to create digital escrows that could securely hold an individual donation, and only release when they received data about specified real-world conditions. While a number of commercial players were looking at means to use similar technologies to hold charities to account, and make funding conditional on detailed impact reporting from the 'last mile', this project had sought to flip attention to the 'first-mile' of giving, and donors own motivations and triggers for giving to charity. Although the system was developed carefully, with good intentions, this paper provides a speculative account of series of unfortunate events taking place years later, as the technology evolved and became misguided in various ways

A Mobile Platform for Event-Driven Donations Using Smart Contracts

We demonstrate Smart Donations, a blockchain powered mobile platform and application that facilitates a novel model for real-time, condition-based donations using smart contracts. By leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology, Smart Donations empower donors to (i) attach conditions dependent on real-world phenomena to a donation, (ii) store funds in a secure, transparent and decentralised escrow, and (iii) automatically release funds to charitable organisations or particular projects once the donor's conditions have been met. We believe this mobile prototype demonstrates a compelling new approach to charitable giving that leverages dynamic pledge controls and considers new trust relationships between donors and NGOs

Spatial Variability of Soil Phosphorus in Grazing Systems

Phosphorus (P) use efficiency has been identified as a key issue for Australian grazing systems. This project examined the spatial variability in soil P concentration from two separate surveys of grazed pasture fields. A field on the central tablelands of NSW had a range in Bray P of 1.2 to 140 mg/kg and a COV of 107%. The other field on the northern tablelands of NSW reported a range in Colwell P from 13.0 to 121.1 mg/kg and a COV of 59%. Maps of the spatial variability of soil P demonstrated that there is a relationship with field elevation. Application of critical P values to both fields enabled an estimation of the value of site specific fertiliser management. For one field, fertiliser inputs could potentially be isolated to 37% and the other 56% if nutrient additions were targeted at responsive areas. The opportunity for increased fertiliser use efficiency through site specific management (SSM) warrants further investigation. Research is required into both the value of SSM and the techniques that might enable the development of this strategy

Programmable Donations:Exploring Escrow-based Conditional Giving

This paper reports on a co-speculative interview study with charitable donors to explore the future of programmable, conditional and data-driven donations. Responding to the rapid emergence of blockchain-based and AI-supported financial technologies, we specifically examine the potential of automated, third-party ‘escrows’, where donations are held before they are released or returned based on specified rules and conditions. To explore this we conducted pilot workshops with 9 participants and an interview study in which 14 further participants were asked about their experiences of donating money, and invited to co-speculate on a service for programmable giving. The study elicited how data-driven conditionality and automation could be leveraged to create novel donor experiences, however also illustrated the inherent tensions and challenges involved in giving programmatically. Reflecting on these findings, our paper contributes implications both for the design of programmable aid platforms, and the design of escrow-based financial services in general

Smart Donations:Event-Driven Conditional Donations Using Smart Contracts On The Blockchain

Recent work has questioned the largely unconditional nature of charitable donations and explored the value of conditional giving with contemporary donors. In this paper, we extend this work by exploring how to operationalise features of conditionality in charitable giving, situated in the context of large international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Building on prior engagements with international aid organisations, we present design considerations and a conceptual architecture supporting real-time, conditional giving for individual and institutional donations. Our architecture leverages properties of distributed-ledger technologies (DLT) to empower donors to (i) attach conditions to their donation, (ii) store funds in a secure, decentralised escrow and (iii) automatically release funds once conditions are met. Unlike prior work that envisions radical disintermediation and the removal of intermediate NGOs using DLT, our work recognises the expertise of NGOs in tackling complex global problems and instead investigates compelling new way for charities to increase transparency and accountability by introducing dynamic pledge controls

A Right Time to Give:Beyond Saving Time in Automated Conditional Donations

Smart Donations is a blockchain-based platform that offers users ‘contracts’ that donate funds to certain causes in response to real-world events e.g., whenever an earthquake is detected or an activist tweets about refugees. We designed Smart donations with Oxfam Australia, trialled it for 8-weeks with 86 people, recorded platform analytics and qualitatively analysed questionnaires and interviews about user experiences. Temporal qualities emerge when automation enforces conditions that contributed to participants’ awareness of events that are usually unconscious, and senses of immediacy in contributing to crisis response and ongoing involvement in situations far-away while awaiting conditions to be met. We suggest data driven automation can reveal diverse temporal registers, in real-world phenomena, sociality, morality and everyday life, which contributes to experiencing a ‘right time’ to donate that is not limited to productivity or efficiency. Thus, we recommend a sensitivity to right time in designing for multiple temporalities in FinTech more generally

The Effectiveness of Support and Rehabilitation Services for Women Offenders

There is a large body of research evidence suggesting that support, rehabilitation, and supervision programs can help offenders to reduce recidivism. However, the effectiveness of these services is dependent upon the extent to which the workers who deliver them comply with "what works" principles and practices. Because most of this research has been conducted with men, this study focused on the extent to which these principles and practices apply to women. In particular, the study examined services offered to a group of women in prison in Victoria, Australia, and following their release to the community; and the relationship between these women's views about the services, recidivism, and the characteristics of the services. Results were generally consistent with earlier research. The women favoured services that are delivered by workers who are reliable, holistic, collaborative, who understand the women's perspective, and that focus on strengths. They did not support services that challenged the women, focused on their offences, or on the things they did badly