“What matters to someone who matters to me”: using media campaigns with young people to prevent interpersonal violence and abuse

Background: While media campaigns are increasingly advocated as a strategy for preventing interpersonal violence and abuse, there is little evidence available regarding their effectiveness. Setting and design: Consultation with experts and young people was used as part of a UK scoping review to capture current thinking and practice on the use of media campaigns to address interpersonal violence and abuse among young people. Three focus groups and 16 interviews were undertaken with UK and international experts, and three focus groups were held with young people. Main results: Participants argued that, although campaigns initially needed to target whole populations of young people, subsequently, messages should be “granulated” for subgroups including young people already exposed to interpersonal violence and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people. It was suggested that boys, as the most likely perpetrators of interpersonal violence and abuse, should be the primary target for campaigns. Young people and experts emphasized that drama and narrative could be used to evoke an emotional response that assisted learning. Authenticity emerged as important for young people and could be achieved by delivering messages through familiar characters and relevant stories. Involving young people themselves in creating and delivering campaigns strengthened authenticity. Conclusions: Practice is developing rapidly, and robust research is required to identify the key conditions for effective campaigns in this field. The emotional impact of campaigns in this field appears to be as important as the transmission of learning

Great Expectations: Voluntary Sports Clubs and Their Role in Delivering National Policy for English Sport

“The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com”. Copyright International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University. DOI: 10.1007/s11266-009-9095-yVoluntary sports clubs (VSCs) account for about a quarter of all volunteering in England. The volunteers work in a mutual aid, self-production, self-consumption system whose main purpose is identifying and nurturing high-level performers. But the new HMG/Sport England strategies leading to London 2012 expects volunteers to make a major contribution to sustaining and extending participation. The study utilized six focus group sessions with a total of 36 officials and members of 36 clubs across the six counties of Eastern England to assess whether and to what extent government policy objectives can be delivered through the voluntary sector. The study focused on the perceptions and attitudes of club members about being expected to serve public policy and the current pressures they and their clubs face. The results lead the authors to question the appropriateness, sensitivity, and feasibility of current sport policy, particularly the emphasis on VSCs as policy implementers.Peer reviewe

'Time Out' for Women: Innovation in Scotland in a Context of Change

The 218 Centre was set up following consistent concerns about the increasing number of women in prison in Scotland and the high-level needs of many of these women. It is an innovative and high profile attempt to develop appropriate responses to women in the criminal justice system. It offers women an opportunity for ‘time out’ of their normal environment without resorting to ‘time in’ custody, providing both residential and community-based services. This article outlines some of the issues and challenges which characterised the early development and operation of the 218 Centre. It illustrates the ways in which some of the issues that arose during the evaluation resonate with current and ongoing debates within criminology and draws attention to the difficulties in using the criminal justice system to address other issues

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

Under-regulated and unaccountable?:Explaining variation in stop and search rates in Scotland, England and Wales

From a position of near parity in 2005/6, by 2012/13 recorded search rates in Scotland exceeded those in England/Wales seven times over. This divergence is intriguing given the demands placed on the police, and the legal capacity to deal with these are broadly similar across the two jurisdictions. The aim of this paper is to unpack this variation. Using a comparative casestudy approach, the paper examines the role of structural ‘top-down’ determinants of policing: substantive powers of search, rules and regulations, and scrutiny. Two arguments are presented. First, we argue that the remarkable rise of stop and search in Scotland has been facilitated by weak regulation and safeguards. Second, we argue that divergence between the two jurisdictions can also be attributed to varying levels of political and public scrutiny, caused, in part, by viewing stop and search almost exclusively through the prism of ‘race’. In Scotland, the significance of these factors is made evident by dint of organisational developments within the last decade; by the introduction of a target driven high-volume approach to stop and search in Strathclyde police force circa 1997 onwards; and the national roll-out of this approach following the single service merger in April 2013. The salient point is that the Strathclyde model was not hindered by legal rules and regulations, nor subject to policy and political challenge; rather a high discretion environment enabled a high-volume approach to stop and search to flourish

Liquor licensing and public disorder Review of literature on the impact of licensing and other controls/ audit of local initiatives

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/17062 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons Scope and focus

Includes bibliographical referencesAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/10277 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Vulnerable and intimidated witnesses Review of provisions in other jurisdictions

Also available via the InternetSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:3487. 3366(no 60) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Diversity in the public appointments process in Scotland

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/38765 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Personal budgets for all? Implementing self-directed support in mental health services

Personal budgets provide people with more choice and control over how their needs are met and, allied to new thinking concerning individualisation of mental health care, are increasingly a feature of international governmental responses to long-term care. This study was based in an English National Health Service Health and Social Care Trust covering a large predominantly rural area. We aimed to develop self-directed support and understand more fully service-user and carer involvement in the process, using an action research design. Data collection took place between 2007 and 2011, and the project ran in three sequential spirals collecting qualitative data. Findings showed users and carers, and trust recovery coordinators acknowledged the need for cultural change, personal budgets’ effect on outcomes, and service-users’ capacity to manage these responsibilities. We conclude that moving to personal budgets can be empowering for mental health services users, but is problematic and may present challenges to service-users with fluctuating mental health. Recruiting service-users and carers to participate in research illuminates their otherwise-hidden perspectives, and our use of service-users as coresearchers is a process that others might want to emulate