Researching trust in the police and trust in justice: a UK perspective

This paper describes the immediate and more distant origins of a programme of comparative research that is examining cross-national variations in public trust in justice and in the police. The programme is built around a module of the fifth European Social Survey, and evolved from a study funded by the European Commission. The paper describes the conceptual framework within which we are operating – developed in large measure from theories of procedural justice. It reviews some of the methodological issues raised by the use of sample surveys to research issues of public trust in the police, public perceptions of institutional legitimacy and compliance with the law. Finally it gives a flavour of some of the early findings emerging from the programme

Suturing Workshop for Third-Year Medical Students: A Modern Educational Approach

Background: This study sought to determine if developing suturing workshops based on modern educational theory would lead to a significant increase in third-year medical students’ confidence and preparedness as compared to before the workshop. Methods: A group of pre-clinical, third-year medical students (n = 20) were voluntarily recruited. The workshop consisted of an interactive didactic session, a hands-on suturing session, and a question-answer session with surgeons. The nine-point Likert scale surveys were given pre-and post-workshop to 17 participants. Total scores of “confidence” and “preparedness” were analyzed using the Student t-test. Results of Q-Q plot and normality tests were used to validate the normality assumption. All analysis was conducted using SAS Software 9.4 (Cary, North Carolina). Results: A statistically significant increase in both confidence and preparedness was found between results of pre- and post-workshop surveys. Average total scores in confidence increased by 19.7 points, from 19.3 to 39 (95% CI: 15.0-24.4; P value \u3c 0.001). For scores in preparedness, the total score increased by an average of 18.4 points, from 22.8 to 41.2 (95% CI: 14.1-22.8; P value \u3c 0.001). Conclusions: These findings suggest that a structured course based on modern educational theory can increase both the confidence and preparedness of third-year medical students who are matriculating into their hospitalbased clerkships

Obeying the rules of the road: Procedural justice, social identity and normative compliance

Why do people comply with traffic laws and regulations? Road traffic policing tends to be premised on the idea that people comply when they are presented with a credible risk of sanction in the event of non-compliance. Such an instrumental model of compliance contrasts with the normative account offered by procedural justice theory, in which compliance is encouraged by legitimate legal authorities. Comparing these two accounts, we find evidence that both instrumental and normative factors explain variance in motorists’ self-reported propensity to offend. Extending the standard procedural justice account, we also find that it is social identity – not legitimacy – that forms the ‘bridge’ linking procedural fairness and compliance, at least according to a definition of legitimacy that combines felt obligation and moral endorsement. Fair treatment at the hands of police officers seems to enhance identification with the social group the police represent, and in turn, identification seems to motivate adherence to rules (laws) governing social behavior. These findings have implications not only for understandings of legal compliance, but also our understanding of why procedural justice motivates compliance, and the role of procedural justice in promoting social cohesion

Therapeutic jurisprudence and procedural justice in Scottish drug courts

Scotland, like other Western jurisdictions, has recently witnessed the development of problem-solving courts aimed at responding more effectively to issues that underlie certain types of offending behaviour. The first to be established were two pilot Drug Courts which drew upon experience of Scottish Drug Treatment and Testing Orders. In common with Drug Courts elsewhere, the Scottish pilots combined treatment, drug testing, supervision and judicial oversight. This article focuses upon the role of judicial involvement in the ongoing review of Drug Court participants’ progress, drawing upon court observation and interviews with offenders and Drug Court professionals. Drug Court dialogues were typically encouraging on the part of sheriffs, aimed at recognising and reinforcing the progress made by participants and motivating then to maintain and build upon their achievements to date, while participants were generally responsive to the positive feedback they received from the sheriffs as their orders progressed. Interactions within the Scottish Drug Courts reflect key features of procedural justice (Tyler, 1990), including ethicality, efforts to be fair and representation. By contributing to enhanced perceptions of procedural justice, Drug Court dialogues may, it is argued, increase the perceived legitimacy of the court and by so doing encourage increased compliance with treatment and desistance from crime

Exploring the dynamics of compliance with community penalties

In this paper, we examine how compliance with community penalties has been theorized hitherto and seek to develop a new dynamic model of compliance with community penalties. This new model is developed by exploring some of the interfaces between existing criminological and socio-legal work on compliance. The first part of the paper examines the possible definitions and dimensions of compliance with community supervision. Secondly, we examine existing work on explanations of compliance with community penalties, supplementing this by drawing on recent socio-legal scholarship on private individuals’ compliance with tax regimes. In the third part of the paper, we propose a dynamic model of compliance, based on the integration of these two related analyses. Finally, we consider some of the implications of our model for policy and practice concerning community penalties, suggesting the need to move beyond approaches which, we argue, suffer from compliance myopia; that is, a short-sighted and narrowly focused view of the issues

Crime, Policing and Compliance with the Law

Social scientific research has made a very substantial contribution to specialist academic understanding of crime and its control. This chapter sketches out that contribution that has been made in three areas: our understanding of crime trends; our knowledge of policing and its effects of crime; and the factors that encourage people to comply with the law. The ways in which practitioners and academics think about these issues has been transformed over the last half-century, and social scientific research is a significant factor in achieving this transformation. However, the same research has achieved a much more tenuous hold on political and public discourse about crime, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of the reasons for this, and offers some thoughts on how social science should aim to extend its reach into highly politicised issues such as “law and order”

Understanding Compliance Dynamics in Community Justice Settings

This article seeks to expand the existing literature on compliance in community justice settings by highlighting the importance of service user participation in efforts to achieve compliance. The article’s central argument is that although co-productive strategies can enhance service user participation, the degree to which co-production is achievable in penal supervision is perhaps uncertain, and has received insufficient theoretical or empirical attention. To address the gap in knowledge, the article draws on the data generated from a study of compliance in Wales, United Kingdom, and employs the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, field, and capital to argue that the convergence of two key factors undermines the viability of co-productive strategies in penal settings. One factor is the service users’ habitus of powerlessness which may breed passivity rather than active participation. The second also relates to the power dynamics that characterize penal supervision contexts. Within these contexts, practitioners are statutorily empowered to implement and enforce the requirements of community orders. In the current target-focused policy climate in England and Wales, practitioners may prioritize measurable compliance over forms of compliance that stem from service user participation and engagement perhaps because these are not readily quantifiable

Bioavailability in soils

The consumption of locally-produced vegetables by humans may be an important exposure pathway for soil contaminants in many urban settings and for agricultural land use. Hence, prediction of metal and metalloid uptake by vegetables from contaminated soils is an important part of the Human Health Risk Assessment procedure. The behaviour of metals (cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, lead and zinc) and metalloids (arsenic, boron and selenium) in contaminated soils depends to a large extent on the intrinsic charge, valence and speciation of the contaminant ion, and soil properties such as pH, redox status and contents of clay and/or organic matter. However, chemistry and behaviour of the contaminant in soil alone cannot predict soil-to-plant transfer. Root uptake, root selectivity, ion interactions, rhizosphere processes, leaf uptake from the atmosphere, and plant partitioning are important processes that ultimately govern the accumulation ofmetals and metalloids in edible vegetable tissues. Mechanistic models to accurately describe all these processes have not yet been developed, let alone validated under field conditions. Hence, to estimate risks by vegetable consumption, empirical models have been used to correlate concentrations of metals and metalloids in contaminated soils, soil physico-chemical characteristics, and concentrations of elements in vegetable tissues. These models should only be used within the bounds of their calibration, and often need to be re-calibrated or validated using local soil and environmental conditions on a regional or site-specific basis.Mike J. McLaughlin, Erik Smolders, Fien Degryse, and Rene Rietr

Setting upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134 using the first science data from the GEO 600 and LIGO detectors

Data collected by the GEO 600 and LIGO interferometric gravitational wave detectors during their first observational science run were searched for continuous gravitational waves from the pulsar J1939+2134 at twice its rotation frequency. Two independent analysis methods were used and are demonstrated in this paper: a frequency domain method and a time domain method. Both achieve consistent null results, placing new upper limits on the strength of the pulsar's gravitational wave emission. A model emission mechanism is used to interpret the limits as a constraint on the pulsar's equatorial ellipticity