The role of mass media and police communication in trust in the police: new approaches to the analysis of survey and media data

The thesis contributes to the literature on public opinion of and trust in the police. The theoretical framework is based on Tyler’s procedural justice theory adapted to the British context. Procedural justice theory postulates that legitimacy and trust are largely based on perceptions of procedural fairness – believing that the police treat citizens with fairness and respect and that citizen’s views are heard and taken into account. The focus of the thesis is on the role of the mass media and police communication in shaping such perceptions, public trust, and other related aspects of public opinion of the police. The thesis contributes new empirical evidence of theoretical and practical significance with three empirical studies. The first study tests a series of hypotheses about media effects on public opinion. It combines a comprehensive content analysis of newspaper reporting on policing in five major British newspapers from 2007 to 2010 with public opinion data from a large-scale population representative survey fielded continuously over the same three-year period. The second study is a ‘real-world’ quasi-randomised experiment testing the impact of local police newsletters on public trust in the police in seven neighbourhoods in London. The third study examines the role of perceptions of information provision in public trust in the police more closely based on the survey data from the first study. The findings suggest that media and police messages about how the police conduct themselves towards individual citizens as well as towards the community at large have a bigger effect on public trust than messages about the effectiveness of the police in carrying out their duties. Overall, press reporting has a small effect on public trust in the police. Police communication can enhance public trust in the police and is important in particular for those who have least trust in the police

Trust and legitimacy across Europe: a FIDUCIA report on comparative public attitudes towards legal authority

FIDUCIA (New European Crimes and Trust-based Policy) seeks to shed light on a number of distinctively ‘new European’ criminal behaviours which have emerged in the last decade as a consequence of both technology developments and the increased mobility of populations across Europe. A key objective of FIDUCIA is to propose and proof a ‘trust-based’ policy model in relation to emerging forms of criminality – to explore the idea that public trust and institutional legitimacy are important for the social regulation of the trafficking of human beings, the trafficking of goods, the criminalisation of migration and ethnic minorities, and cybercrimes. In this paper we detail levels of trust and legitimacy in the 26 countries, drawing on data from Round 5 of the European Social Survey. We also conduct a sensitivity analysis that investigates the effect of a lack of measurement equivalence on national estimates

Accessible Justice? Rape Victimisation and Psychosocial Disability

In a context in which research evidence indicates high rates of alleged sexual victimization amongst adults with psychosocial disabilities (PSD), this paper sets out to explore some of the challenges that are posed to the criminal justice system by these types of complainants. We do so by drawing upon rape allegation data recently collected by the London Metropolitan Police Service over a two month period. Our analysis of this snapshot of Metropolitan Police rape reporting suggests that a significant number of rape complainants have recorded PSDs, and that these complainants are significantly more likely than those without recorded PSDs to experience additional, circumstantial vulnerabilities, including intellectual disability, alcohol and/or drug dependency, and repeat victimisation. Our findings also suggest that cases involving complainants with recorded PSDs are significantly more likely to suffer attrition – to ‘drop out’ of the criminal justice system - due to police or prosecutorial decision-making. In this paper we reflect upon possible explanations for this heightened attrition rate but also use our snapshot analysis as a stepping off point from which to highlight the need for more sustained critical research on the treatment of complainants, and the adequacy of police and prosecutor training and practice in this area

Do closed survey questions over-estimate public perceptions of food risks?

In this paper we show that the widely accepted methodology for the assessment of risk perception – Likert type survey questions featuring a set of risks with fixed response alternatives measuring the extent of worry or concern – may over-estimate food risk perception. Using a European representative sample survey (n=26,961) that included an open-ended question asking about problems and risks with food and eating, followed by a battery of closed questions assessing food risk perception we find a similar ranking of perceived food risks across the two methods. Across Europe the five priority concerns are chronic food related illness; food origins and quality; acute food related illness; chemical contamination, and adulteration of food. However, the discrepancies between mentioning a risk in the open ended question and the expression of worry about risks in the closed question are substantial. Of those who did not mention a specific risk category in the open question, between 60% and 83% (depending on risk category) expressed worry in the closed question. This parallels previous research on the fear of crime, showing that survey responses lead to greatly inflated estimates of the public’s fear of crime than is evidenced by qualitative questioning. It is also consistent with evidence from research on cognitive aspects of survey methodology suggesting that survey questions may frame the respondent’s thinking about an issue. We conclude with recommendations for the use of branched questions in the quantitative elicitation of public perceptions of risk

CARD9⁺ microglia promote antifungal immunity via IL-1β- and CXCL1-mediated neutrophil recruitment

This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, as well as NIH grants awarded to TMH (R01 093808), SGF (R01AI124566) and SRL (R01CA161373). Additional funding was provided by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (awarded to TMH), the Wellcome Trust (102705, 097377; awarded to GDB), the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology and the University of Aberdeen (MR/N006364/1; awarded to GDB). The authors additionally thank Celeste Huaman for care and screening of the Malt1 793 -/- mice.Peer reviewedPostprin

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

Dissociation of CAK from Core TFIIH Reveals a Functional Link between XP-G/CS and the TFIIH Disassembly State

Transcription factor II H (TFIIH) is comprised of core TFIIH and Cdk-activating kinase (CAK) complexes. Here, we investigated the molecular and cellular manifestation of the TFIIH compositional changes by XPG truncation mutations. We showed that both core TFIIH and CAK are rapidly recruited to damage sites in repair-proficient cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation against TFIIH and CAK components revealed a physical engagement of CAK in nucleotide excision repair (NER). While XPD recruitment to DNA damage was normal, CAK was not recruited in severe XP-G and XP-G/CS cells, indicating that the associations of CAK and XPD to core TFIIH are differentially affected. A CAK inhibition approach showed that CAK activity is not required for assembling pre-incision machinery in vivo or for removing genomic photolesions. Instead, CAK is involved in Ser5-phosphorylation and UV-induced degradation of RNA polymerase II. The CAK inhibition impaired transcription from undamaged and UV-damaged reporter, and partially decreased transcription of p53-dependent genes. The overall results demonstrated that a) XP-G/CS mutations affect the disassembly state of TFIIH resulting in the dissociation of CAK, but not XPD from core TFIIH, and b) CAK activity is not essential for global genomic repair but involved in general transcription and damage-induced RNA polymerase II degradation

Responding to the Covid-19 domestic abuse crisis: developing a rapid police evidence base

The project aimed to provide timely empirical evidence on how Covid-19 and related lockdown measures has impacted domestic abuse recorded by police,1 and associated policing responses. This research was conducted in partnership with seven police forces in England, the Home Office, the College of Policing, and the National Police Chief’s Council. The project analysed all domestic abuse crimes reported to seven police services in England since the start of the pandemic (March 2020) until the end of April 2021. The difference in differences method and data from the two previous years (2018 and 2019) were used to test whether the introduction and lifting of lockdowns had a statistically significant impact on the volume and/or nature of domestic abuse coming to police attention during the pandemic. In addition, 73 officers from four police services were interviewed between June 2020 and June 2021 to triangulate the quantitative results with how officers experienced, made sense of, and responded to domestic abuse as the pandemic unfolded