Engineering a safer society

Evidence based policing continues to be an important area of discussion among police organisations across the world, and parallels are often drawn with medicine as a means to describe how a profession can be enhanced through a commitment to evidence based techniques. The use of the medical analogy in policing does not have everybody convinced, however, and there are those who argue that rather than molecules, bacteria and disease, we are dealing with the complexity of human behaviour, meaning simple cause and effect may always be difficult to establish. In this Research Focus Professors Nick Tilley and Gloria Laycock of the Jill Dando Institute at University College London extend this thinking and suggest that a better professional parallel might be drawn with engineering. Arguing that a process of evidence based trial and error might be more effective in policing than the experimental testing of narrow hypotheses, Professors Tilley and Laycock provide an important and thought provoking addition to the ongoing evidence based policing debate

What caused the decline in child arrests in England and Wales: the Howard League’s programme or something else?

There has been a steep decline in child arrests in recent years. The Howard League report Child Arrests in England and Wales 2017 attributes this to a Howard League programme of work with police. We show the decline in arrests began well before that programme of work, and conclude the report's claims are unfounded. However, there is strong evidence that the decline in arrests is due to the long-term fall in child offending rates, probably caused by security improvements. While we are sympathetic to the aims of the Howard League, if security is having such positive effects in terms of safer communities and fewer children being processed through the criminal justice system, then it should command wide support

Optical studies of two LMC X-ray transients : RX J0544.1-7100 and RX J0520.5-6932

We report observations which confirm the identities of the optical counterpart to the transient sources RX J0544.1-7100 and RX J0520.5-6932. The counterparts are suggested to be a B-type stars. Optical data from the observations carried out at ESO and SAAO, together with results from the OGLE data base, are presented. In addition, X-ray data from the RXTE all-sky monitor are investigated for long term periodicities. A strong suggestion for a binary period of 24.4d is seen in RX J0520.5-6932 from the OGLE data.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

The diffusion of police innovation: A case study of problem-oriented policing in England and Wales

There is significant evidence demonstrating that when done well, problem-oriented policing is associated with meaningful reductions in crime and public safety concerns. And yet, history shows that the implementation and delivery of problem-oriented policing is challenging, and that police organisations have generally not adopted it and even when they try to it is often rejected over time. This article draws on the concept of ‘diffusion of innovation’ (Rogers, E. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edn. New York: Free Press) to unpick aspects of the processes through which problem-oriented policing has been adopted or otherwise among police forces in England and Wales. This article shows how factors related to the nature of problem-oriented policing – notably its incompatibility with prevailing norms and values of the police service, its complexity and unobservability – have influenced its adoption. Implications are also discussed

Contributions of community-based solid waste management to sustainable development : the case study of the Kisumu Ndogo Solid Waste Management Project

viii, 149 leaves ; 28 cm.Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-134).Over the past decade and a half, sustainable development has become a major developmental focus for many international organizations. As a result, recognized inefficiencies of various governmental services in providing sustainable solutions have highlighted community-based organizations as a viable alternative. In Kenya, one area in which this has occurred is in solid waste management. Solid waste management services provided by many municipalities in developing countries are incapable of meeting demand, resulting in both direct and indirect negative effects on the recognized features of sustainable development: economic prosperity, environmental protection, and social advancement. Community-based organizations, including the case study organization the Kisumu Ndogo Solid Waste Management Project, offer themselves as an opportunity to make up for these losses and contribute to sustainable development. This researcher finds that indicators of sustainable development are present in the case study example, and therefore concludes that community-based solid waste management does contribute to sustainable development

Developing a Knowledge Base for Crime Prevention: Lessons Learned From the British Experience

During the past 20 years, there have been several initiatives, led by the British government, to improve crime prevention by informing policy and practice with research. Two in particular stand out for the scale of the investment: The first was the establishment of the Crime Reduction Programme (CRP) in 1999. The CRP was supposed both to be based on what was already known from research and also to improve the evidence base and was scheduled to run for a decade. The CRP involved an unprecedented financial commitment to improving the knowledge base of crime prevention. The second was the establishment of the What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (WWCCR) in 2013. The WWCCR attempts both to distil findings from high quality research on what works in crime reduction in a form that would be readily accessible to and useable by decision-makers, and to encourage original research to improve the knowledge base. We touch more briefly also on the creation of the National Police Improvement Agency in 2007 and its successor body, the College of Policing in 2013. The core mission of both has been to professionalise policing (including police efforts to reduce crime) by making policing more evidence based, and the College of Policing has been home to WWCCR. This paper will provide a critical account of these major efforts to bring evidence to crime reduction and discuss lessons that can be learned from their experience

A developmental evaluation to enhance stakeholder engagement in a wide-scale interactive project disseminating quality improvement data: Study protocol for a mixed-methods study

© 2017 Article author(s). All rights reserved. Introduction: Bringing together continuous quality improvement (CQI) data from multiple health services offers opportunities to identify common improvement priorities and to develop interventions at various system levels to achieve large-scale improvement in care. An important principle of CQI is practitioner participation in interpreting data and planning evidence-based change. This study will contribute knowledge about engaging diverse stakeholders in collaborative and theoretically informed processes to identify and address priority evidence-practice gaps in care delivery. This paper describes a developmental evaluation to support and refine a novel interactive dissemination project using aggregated CQI data from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare centres in Australia. The project aims to effect multilevel system improvement in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare. Methods and analysis: Data will be gathered using document analysis, online surveys, interviews with participants and iterative analytical processes with the research team. These methods will enable real-time feedback to guide refinements to the design, reports, tools and processes as the interactive dissemination project is implemented. Qualitative data from interviews and surveys will be analysed and interpreted to provide in-depth understanding of factors that influence engagement and stakeholder perspectives about use of the aggregated data and generated improvement strategies. Sources of data will be triangulated to build up a comprehensive, contextualised perspective and integrated understanding of the project's development, implementation and findings. Ethics and dissemination: The Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the Northern Territory Department of Health and Menzies School of Health Research (Project 2015-2329), the Central Australian HREC (Project 15-288) and the Charles Darwin University HREC (Project H15030) approved the study. Dissemination will include articles in peer-reviewed journals, policy and research briefs. Results will be presented at conferences and quality improvement network meetings. Researchers, clinicians, policymakers and managers developing evidence-based system and policy interventions should benefit from this research