The perfect storm - a moment for decarceration

The metaphorical use of the term ‘perfect storm’ has been applied to the conditions that led to a decrease in the level of incarceration for children in England and Wales in the 1980s. The three main factors seen as contributing to this reduction were; the prevailing economic conditions that exposed the spiralling cost of incarceration, a pragmatic political administration that became receptive to professional bodies in criminal justice organisations with practice and research expertise, and a radical, organised set of practitioners, passionate about the abolition of custody as a response to criminal behaviour by children and young people

"It's become fashionable": Practitioner perspectives on football hooliganism involving young people.

Senior officers responsible for policing football highlight a concerning increase in football hooliganism involving young people in England and Wales. This study is specifically concerned with people under 18 years old that are engaged with hooliganism in connection with football matches, which is an under-researched problem despite recent high-profile incidents. Surveys and interviews with football club safety officers, and police officers involved in football policing were conducted to gain a first-hand insight into this issue. Freedom of Information requests were sent to the Home Office, to establish data trends in youth arrests, banning orders and disorder at football. Despite the concerns of senior police officers, it was found that there is no readily available Home Office data on football hooliganism involving young people. The study highlights that this issue is perceived to be increasing, with children as young as 10 being involved. Whilst there is some indication that football banning orders are being used on under 18s, this is currently seen as a last resort for police forces with a range of interventions being used in order to divert young people away from football hooliganism. However, there is no nationally adopted approach to managing this issue. Youth projects have had successful results in preventing under 18s from going on to reoffend in a football context. Best practice interventions are recommended, which if adopted by football clubs and police forces may help to minimise the impact of football violence involving young people

Criminal History Enhancements Sourcebook

Criminal history scores make up one of the two most significant determinants of the punishment an offender receives in a sentencing guidelines jurisdiction. While prior convictions are taken into account by all U.S. sentencing systems, sentencing guidelines make the role of prior crimes more explicit by specifying the counting rules and by indicating the effect of prior convictions on sentence severity. Yet, once established, criminal history scoring formulas go largely unexamined. Moreover, there is great diversity across state and federal jurisdictions in the ways that an offender's criminal record is considered by courts at sentencing. This Sourcebook brings together for the first time information on criminal history enhancements in all existing U.S. sentencing guidelines systems. Building on this base, the Sourcebook examines major variations in the approaches taken by these systems, and identifies the underlying sentencing policy issues raised by such enhancements.The Sourcebook contains the following elements:A summary of criminal history enhancements in all guidelines jurisdictions;An analysis of the critical dimensions of an offender's previous convictions;A discussion of the policy options available to commissions considering amendments to their criminal history enhancements;A bibliography of key readings on the role of prior convictions at sentencing

SALT Spectropolarimetry and Self-Consistent SED and Polarization Modeling of Blazars

We report on recent results from a target-of-opportunity program to obtain spectropolarimetry observations with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) on flaring gamma-ray blazars. SALT spectropolarimetry and contemporaneous multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) data are being modelled self-consistently with a leptonic single-zone model. Such modeling provides an accurate estimate of the degree of order of the magnetic field in the emission region and the thermal contributions (from the host galaxy and the accretion disk) to the SED, thus putting strong constraints on the physical parameters of the gamma-ray emitting region. For the specific case of the $\gamma$-ray blazar 4C+01.02, we demonstrate that the combined SED and spectropolarimetry modeling constrains the mass of the central black hole in this blazar to $M_{\rm BH} \sim 10^9 \, M_{\odot}$.Comment: Submitted to Galaxies - Proceedings of "Polarized Emission from Astrophysical Jets", Ierapetra, Crete, June 12 - 16, 201