Mass Incarceration and Public Opinion on Crime and Justice: From Democratic Theory to Method and Reality’

... All: The Folly of Doing Good by Stealth 187 David A. Green Mass Incarceration and Public Opinion on Crime and Justice: From Democratic Theory to Method and Reality 213 Elizabeth R. Turner A Trade-Off Between Safety and Democracy

Democracy (Re)imagined: Some Proposals for Democratic Policing

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Western societies entered a climate of austerity which has limited the penal expansion experienced in the US, UK and elsewhere over recent decades. These altered conditions have led to introspection and new thinking on punishment even among those on the political right who were previously champions of the punitive turn. This volume brings together a group of international leading scholars with a shared interest in using this opportunity to encourage new avenues of reform in the penal sphere. Justice is a famously contested concept and this book takes a deliberately capacious approach to the question of how justice can be mobilised to inform new reform agendas. Some of the contributors revisit an antique question in penal theory and reconsider the question of what fair or just punishment should look like today. Others seek to make gender central to understanding of crime and punishment, or actively reflect on the part that related concepts such as human rights, legitimacy and trust can and should play in thinking about the creation of more just crime control arrangements. Faced with the expansive penal developments of recent decades, much research and commentary about crime control has been gloom-laden and dystopian. By contrast, this volume seeks to contribute to a more constructive sensibility in the social analysis of penality: one that is worldly, hopeful and actively engaged in thinking about how to create more just penal arrangements. Justice and Penal Reform is a key resource for academics and as a supplementary text for students undertaking courses on punishment, penology, prisons, criminal justice and public policy. This book approaches penal reform from an international perspective and offers a fresh and diverse approach within an established field

Lead and other toxic metals in playground paints from South West England

Paints on surfaces of public playground structures in south west England have been analysed for Pb, Cr, Cd and Sb by field-portable, energy-dispersive XRF. Lead was detected (> 8 g g-1) in 102 out of 242 cases, with concentrations ranging from 10 to 152,000 g g-1 (median = 451 g g-1). Chromium was detected (> 25 g g-1) in 48 cases, and concentrations ranged from 26 to 24,800 g g-1 (median = 1,040 g g-1) and exhibited a significant positive correlation with Pb concentrations. Antimony concentrations ranged from 273 to 16,000 g g-1 (median = 2,180 g g-1) in 56 detectable cases, and Cd was detected in eight paints and up to a concentration of 771 g g-1 (median = 252 g g-1). The highest concentrations of Pb, Cr and Sb generally occurred in yellow or red paints but were encountered on a variety of structures and equipment (e.g. gates, flooring lines, railings and handles of climbing frames and seesaws, and the interior of a model train) and were observed in both flaking, extant paint and in formulations that appeared to have been recently applied. Maximum bioaccessible concentrations of Pb, Cr and Sb in a range of paints, evaluated in selected samples by ICP analysis following pepsin-dilute HCl extraction, were 2,710, 205 and 23.6 g g-1, respectively, or 16.6, 2.25 and 0.56% of the respective total concentrations. Total and bioaccessible concentrations of toxic metals in playground paints that exceed various contemporary and historical standards (and in many cases for Pb, by orders of magnitude) is likely to be a more widespread and pervasive issue that needs addressing by the relevant authorities

Spectral Clustering and Integration: The Inner Dynamics of Computational Geometry and Spatial Morphology

Deviating from common evaluation strategies of spatial networks that are realised through numerical comparison of single floating-point numbers such as global and local space syntax measures (centralities, connectivity, etc.) we aim to present a new computational methodology for creating detailed topo-geometric encodings of spaces that encapsulate some of the fundamental ideas about spatial morphology by Hillier (Space is the Machine: A Configurational Theory of Architecture, London, UK, Space Syntax, 2007 [1]). In most cases, space syntax measures try to capture a particular quality of the space for comparison but they lose much of the detail of the spatial topo-geometry and morphology by mainly aggregating graph path traversals and not retaining any other information. This research explores the use of weighted graph spectra, in a composite form, for the purpose of characterising the spatial structure as a whole. The new methodology focuses on the three primary space syntax graph modelling concepts, ‘angular’, ‘metric’ and ‘topological’, from the point of view of the resulting spatial geometries and develops new computational innovations in order to map spatial penetration of local neighbourhood spectra in different scales, dimensions and built environment densities in a continues way. The result is a new composite vector of high dimensionality that can be easily measured against others for detailed comparison. The proposed methodology is then demonstrated with the complete road-network dataset of Great Britain. The main dataset together with subsets is then used in a series of unsupervised machine learning analyses, including clustering and a form of Euclidian ‘spectral integration’

First evidence of industrial fly-ash in an Antarctic ice core

Spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs) are a component of fly-ash, the particulate by-product of industrial high temperature combustion of fuel-oil and coal-series fuels. We provide the first evidence that these indelible markers of industrialisation have been deposited in Antarctic ice, thousands of kilometres from any potential source. The earliest observed particle was deposited in an ice layer from 1936 CE. While depositional fluxes are low, chemical analysis of individual SCPs indicates a coal combustion origin

Human behaviour in emergency situations: comparisons between aviation and rail domains

This article presents a comparative review of the knowledge base regarding human behaviour in emergencies for both aviation and rail domains. Generic models of human behaviour in emergency situations are introduced and specific attention is then focussed on methods of behaviour prediction, exhibited behaviours in emergencies and methods of aiding evacuation across both modes of transport. Using established knowledge from the aviation domain, it has been possible to make observations and comparisons about the rail domain. Traditionally, the aviation domain has been a major focus of research attention and this is used to inform and interpret the rail domain. By drawing comparisons across these domains for human behaviour in emergency situations, the observations are discussed along with recommendations for future policies/planning for emergencies and future research areas

On the validity of the Born approximation for weak cosmic flexions

Weak lensing calculations are often made under the assumption of the Born approximation, where the ray path is approximated as a straight radial line. In addition, lens-lens couplings where there are several deflections along the light ray are often neglected. We examine the effect of dropping the Born approximation and taking lens-lens couplings into account, for weak lensing effects up to second order (cosmic flexion), by making a perturbative expansion in the light path. We present a diagrammatic representation of the resulting corrections to the lensing effects. The flexion signal, which measures the derivative of the density field, acquires correction terms proportional to the squared gravitational shear; we also find that by dropping the Born approximation, two further degrees of freedom of the lensing distortion can be excited (the twist components), in addition to the four standard flexion components. We derive angular power spectra of the flexion and twist, with and without the Born-approximation and lens-lens couplings and confirm that the Born approximation is an excellent approximation for weak cosmic flexions, except at very small scales.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRA

Thalamic inputs to dorsomedial striatum are involved in inhibitory control: evidence from the five-choice serial reaction time task in rats

Rationale Corticostriatal circuits are widely implicated in the top-down control of attention including inhibitory control and behavioural flexibility. However, recent neurophysiological evidence also suggests a role for thalamic inputs to striatum in behaviours related to salient, reward-paired cues. Objectives Here, we used designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) to investigate the role of parafascicular (Pf) thalamic inputs to the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) using the five-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT) in rats. Methods The 5CSRTT requires sustained attention in order to detect spatially and temporally distributed visual cues and provides measures of inhibitory control related to impulsivity (premature responses) and compulsivity (perseverative responses). Rats underwent bilateral Pf injections of the DREADD vector, AAV2-CaMKIIa-HA-hM4D(Gi)-IRES-mCitrine. The DREADD agonist, clozapine N-oxide (CNO; 1 μl bilateral; 3 μM) or vehicle, was injected into DMS 1 h before behavioural testing. Task parameters were manipulated to increase attention load or reduce stimulus predictability respectively. Results We found that inhibition of the Pf-DMS projection significantly increased perseverative responses when stimulus predictability was reduced but had no effect on premature responses or response accuracy, even under increased attentional load. Control experiments showed no effects on locomotor activity in an open field. Conclusions These results complement previous lesion work in which the DMS and orbitofrontal cortex were similarly implicated in perseverative responses and suggest a specific role for thalamostriatal inputs in inhibitory control

A Conceptual Basis for Feature Engineering

The gulf between the user and the developer perspectives lead to diculties in producing successful software systems. Users are focused on the problem domain, where the system's features are the primary concern. Developers are focused on the solution domain, where the system's life-cycle artifacts are key. Presently, there is little understanding of how to narrow this gulf