Learning Together: Localism, Collaboration and Reflexivity in the Development of Prison and University Learning Communities

This paper engages with challenges of localism, collaboration and reflexivity in thinking about the conceptualisation and development of partnership learning communities between higher education and criminal justice institutions. Grounded in experiences of partnership working in the UK and Australia, our arguments are twofold: first, drawing on missions, policy and practice challenges, that there is a case to be made for partnership-working between higher education and criminal justice institutions; and second that, although there is a need to think about collaborative international structures, there is also a need to reflect critically on how different socio-political and cultural realities (both within and beyond national borders) might shape the particular nature of partnership working. Therefore, while warmly welcoming international collaboration in this field, we urge caution in importing or exporting different models of partnership working. We make the case, instead, for open-textured theoretical and empirical reflexivity

Master of Science

thesisPrevious research documents the tendency for listeners to assign negative attributes to children with communication disorders. However, variability within rater groups has been large across studies. Factors that influence ratings remain unaccounted for. In this study, 60 mothers rated 1-minute narratives produced by matched child speakers with specific language impairment (SLI), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and typical development (TD). It was predicted that mothers who have a child with a disability (MWCD) would be more sensitive to the consequences of negative biases and would be less inclined to assign pejorative ratings to child speakers with communication disorders than mothers whose children only have typical development (MWCTD). Participant groups were matched for age, educational level, family size, and race/ethnicity. After hearing each sample, participants provided ratings in response to 20 questions about each speaker's narrative and a 16-item questionnaire providing details about their personal experiences with individuals with disabilities. Narrative questions included information about the actual narrative, child speaker attributes, and parent/family attributes. A 2 (MWCTD, MWCD) X 3 (SLI, ADHD, TD) mixed model ANOVA revealed statistically significant main effects within group (SLI, ADHD, TD). Analyses revealed that ratings for the TD speaker were significantly higher (i.e., "better") than the SLI and ADHD speaker ratings such that ADHD=SLI < TD or ADHD < SLI < TD. The pattern of ADHD < SLI < TD was found for questions related to narrative form and behavioral attributes. No significant effects were found for the between groups variable or for the group x speaker interaction. Overall age, education level, and exposure to disabilities predicted ratings but having a child with disability did not. Raters seemed to be very sensitive to features present in the ADHD speaker's narrative that marked him as having behavioral difficulties. Another surprising outcome was the lack of differences between ratings of narrative form assigned to the two clinical speakers, given that the narrative produced by the SLI speaker contained numerous grammatical errors. It appears that listeners do not differentiate grammatical problems from other problems with form (phonology, fluency). Clinical implications are discussed

The view from East Anglia: Brexit messages to Theresa May

What do the public in East Anglia, where both Leave (in rural Lincolnshire) and Remain (in Cambridge) polled strongly, want from Brexit? Catherine Barnard (left) and Amy Ludlow held public engagement events in school halls, community centres, prisons and market squares in parts of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire in early 2017. They found a striking degree of moderate consensus: a desire for Single Market access with a rebalanced free movement of people. That said, despite Theresa May’s claim that the country is coming together, discussions revealed deep wounds and a divided society, generationally and geographically

Privatising public prisons: Penality, law and practice

In October 2011, HM Prison Birmingham was transferred from public to private management, under G4S. This was the first time that an existing operational public prison was privatised in the UK. The move marked the third and most far reaching phase of prison privatisation policy, and was intended both to increase quality of life for prisoners, from a low baseline, and to reduce costs. Prior to 2011, private prisons had all been new-builds. Private contractors had thus far avoided the additional challenges of inheriting a pre-existing workforce and operating in old, often unsuitable, buildings. This article reports on a longitudinal evaluation of the complex process of the transition, and some outcomes for both staff and prisoners. As an experiment in the reorganisation of work and life in a ‘traditional’ public sector prison, the exercise was unprecedented, and has set the agenda for future transformations. The example illustrates the intense, distinctive and rapidly changing nature of penality as it makes itself felt in the lived prison experience, and raises important questions about the changing use of State power.The MQPL, G4S, National Offender Management Servic

Learning Together: Localism, Collaboration and Reflexivity in the Development of Prison and University Learning Communities

This paper engages with challenges of localism, collaboration and reflexivity in thinking about the conceptualisation and development of partnership learning communities between higher education and criminal justice institutions. Grounded in experiences of partnership working in the UK and Australia, our arguments are twofold: first, drawing on missions, policy and practice challenges, that there is a case to be made for partnership-working between higher education and criminal justice institutions; and second that, although there is a need to think about collaborative international structures, there is also a need to reflect critically on how different socio-political and cultural realities (both within and beyond national borders) might shape the particular nature of partnership working. Therefore, while warmly welcoming international collaboration in this field, we urge caution in importing or exporting different "models" of partnership working. We make the case, instead, for open-textured theoretical and empirical reflexivity

What minimum wage? Why enforcement of EU migrants’ employment rights matters

EU migrants nominally enjoy the same employment rights as Britons. Yet (left to right) Catherine Barnard, Amy Ludlow and Sarah Fraser Butlin of the EU Migrant Worker Project found that they are often ignorant of the minimum wage and the Working Time Directive and do not pursue claims in Employment Tribunals. In this they are sometimes aided and abetted by exploitative employers who are willing to use them to undercut the wages of UK staff. They also found that enforcement of employment rights in the UK is, at best, patchy

What’s so good about participation? Politics, ethics and love in Learning Together

This article tells the story of our movement towards using participatory approaches in an action research project aiming to understand the experiences and impacts of belonging to learning communities that span prison and university walls. We draw on our experiences over the past 5 years of building learning communities involving students from higher education and criminal justice organisations and describe some of our attempts to provide creative opportunities for participation and voice within research. We highlight some of the benefits that we have seen through adopting these approaches, as well as some of the discomforts that we, and our students, have experienced. We use these examples to question for whom we think participation ‘works’, whether participation is always good, or whether it can, rather, sometimes cause harm, and the extent to which participation addresses some of the ethical concerns levelled at more traditional approaches to social science research, including matters of power, purpose, positioning and personhood. Using the work of Cantillon and Lynch as an orienting framework, in the conclusions we return to their arguments to suggest that the benefits of participatory action research might not be in alleviating these ethical concerns, but rather in establishing affective links between people occupying different roles within research, thus imbuing the process with love. This has the potential to transform all of the actors, and the research itself. </jats:p

High-resolution optical frequency dissemination on a telecommunication network with data traffic

We transferred the frequency of an ultra-stable laser over a 108 km urban fiber link comprising 22 km of optical communications network fiber simultaneously carrying Internet data traffic. The metrological signal and the digital data signal are transferred on two different frequency channels in a dense wavelength division multiplexing scheme. The metrological signal is inserted into and extracted from the communications network by using bidirectional off-the-shelf optical add-drop multiplexers. The link-induced phase noise is measured and cancelled with round-trip technique using an all-fiber-based interferometer. The compensated link shows an Allan deviation of a few 10-16 at one second and below 10-19 at 10,000 seconds. This opens the way to a wide dissemination of ultra stable optical clock signals between distant laboratories via the Internet network

Long-distance frequency transfer over an urban fiber link using optical phase stabilization

We transferred the frequency of an ultra-stable laser over 86 km of urban fiber. The link is composed of two cascaded 43-km fibers connecting two laboratories, LNE-SYRTE and LPL in Paris area. In an effort to realistically demonstrate a link of 172 km without using spooled fiber extensions, we implemented a recirculation loop to double the length of the urban fiber link. The link is fed with a 1542-nm cavity stabilized fiber laser having a sub-Hz linewidth. The fiber-induced phase noise is measured and cancelled with an all fiber-based interferometer using commercial off the shelf pigtailed telecommunication components. The compensated link shows an Allan deviation of a few 10-16 at one second and a few 10-19 at 10,000 seconds

Long-distance remote comparison of ultrastable optical frequencies with 1e-15 instability in fractions of a second

We demonstrate a fully optical, long-distance remote comparison of independent ultrastable optical frequencies reaching a short term stability that is superior to any reported remote comparison of optical frequencies. We use two ultrastable lasers, which are separated by a geographical distance of more than 50 km, and compare them via a 73 km long phase-stabilized fiber in a commercial telecommunication network. The remote characterization spans more than one optical octave and reaches a fractional frequency instability between the independent ultrastable laser systems of 3e-15 in 0.1 s. The achieved performance at 100 ms represents an improvement by one order of magnitude to any previously reported remote comparison of optical frequencies and enables future remote dissemination of the stability of 100 mHz linewidth lasers within seconds.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure