8,448 research outputs found
Challenges to providing culturally sensitive drug interventions for black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME) groups within UK youth justice systems
To explore how substance use practitioners intervene with ethnically and culturally diverse groups of young people in contact with the youth justice system.
Telephone, face to face interviews and a focus group were conducted. Data were analysed thematically using a frame reflective theoretical approach.
Practitioners tended to offer individualised interventions to young people in place of culturally specific approaches partly due to a lack of knowledge, training or understanding of diverse cultural needs, and for practical and resource reasons.
Practitioners reject the official narrative of BAME youth in the justice system as dangerous and in need of control, viewing them instead as vulnerable and in need of support but report they lack experience, and sufficient resources, in delivering interventions to diverse groups.
There is little information regarding how practitioners respond to diversity in their daily practice. This paper is an exploration of how diversity is framed and responded to in the context of youth substance use and criminal justice
Framing 'drug prevention' for young people in contact with the criminal justice system in England: views from practitioners in the field
Drawing on the work of Rein and Schon (1993; 1996), we explore the ways in which ‘young people’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘risk’, ‘prevention’ and ‘prevention practice’ were defined and framed by practitioners engaged in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug prevention interventions for young people in contact with the criminal justice system. We argue that practitioners describe their work in terms of both a preventative frame – based on a ‘deficit’ model - and a transformative praxis frame, more in line with an increasing shift towards ‘positive youth justice’ where practitioners aspire to actively involve the young person in a process of change. The implications of those, often competing, frames are discussed in relation to the development of prevention approaches and the challenges in designing drugs prevention for this group of young people. The paper is based on interviews and focus groups with thirty-one practitioners in England and is part of the EU funded EPPIC project (Exchanging Prevention Practices on Polydrug Use among Youth in Criminal Justice Systems 2017-2020)
The risk matrix : drug-related deaths in prisons in England and Wales, 2015-2020
Aims: This article explores the factors contributing to drug-related deaths in English and Welsh prisons between 2015-2020.
Methods: Based on content analysis of all Prison and Probation Ombudsman ‘other non-natural’ fatal incident investigation reports, descriptive statistics were generated. Qualitative analysis explored the circumstances surrounding deaths and key risk factors.
Results: Most deaths were of men, whose mean age was 39 years. Drug toxicity was a main factor in causing death, exacerbated by underlying physical health conditions and risk-taking behaviours. A variety of substances were involved. New psychoactive substances became more important over time. A high proportion had recorded histories of substance use and mental illness. During this period, the prison system was under considerable stress creating dangerous environments for drug-related harm.
Conclusion: This study highlights the process of complex interaction between substances used, individual characteristics, situational features and the wider environment in explaining drug-related deaths in prisons. Implications for policy and practice are discussed
Forage Production on Reclaimed Surface Mined Land in Eastern Kentucky
Forage crop production for hay or pasture can be important for the utilization of the many acres of reclaimed surface mined land in eastern Kentucky. Even though grasses and legumes are seeded during reclamation to provide ground cover and reduce soil loss, these areas are not usually managed for forage crop production. On the other hand, these vast land areas have the capability to provide significant amounts of desirable grasses or grass-legume mixtures for cattle when well-managed
Nitrogen Fertilizer Use by a High Yielding No-Till Corn Crop
At the present time there is public concern about the effect which nitrogen (N) fertilizer use by farmers has on groundwater quality. This has resulted in research efforts to describe what happens to nitrogen fertilizer after it is applied to a crop. We have conducted a study for the past 3 years which enables us to make a reasonable estimate of how much fertilizer N is taken up by a high yielding corn crop. And, depending on whether the corn is harvested for silage or grain, we have estimated how much of the fertilizer N is removed from the field. Such an evaluation provides a good picture of the extent to which fertilizer N is utilized by the crop and its potential as a groundwater pollutant
Building cultures of participation: involving young people in contact with the criminal justice system in the development of drug interventions in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy and Poland
This paper explores the participation of young people in contact with criminal justice systems in the development of drugs interventions. Interviews were undertaken with 160 young people (aged 15-25) and 66 practitioners involved in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug interventions. We analyse the key challenges in involving young people in the development of interventions including structural, organisational and individual factors. We argue that these barriers can be overcome by fostering flexible models of participation and identifying the most meaningful and appropriate approaches for involving young people at different stages and in different initiatives which consider socio-cultural contexts
A Catalogue of Field Horizontal Branch Stars Aligned with High Velocity Clouds
We present a catalogue of 430 Field Horizontal Branch (FHB) stars, selected
from the Hamburg/ESO Survey (HES), which fortuitously align with high column
density neutral hydrogen (HI) High-Velocity Cloud (HVC) gas. These stars are
ideal candidates for absorption-line studies of HVCs, attempts at which have
been made for almost 40 years with little success. A parent sample of 8321 HES
FHB stars was used to extract HI spectra along each line-of-sight, using the HI
Parkes All-Sky Survey. All lines-of-sight aligned with high velocity HI
emission with peak brightness temperatures greater than 120mK were examined.
The HI spectra of these 430 probes were visually screened and cross-referenced
with several HVC catalogues. In a forthcoming paper, we report on the results
of high-resolution spectroscopic observations of a sample of stars drawn from
this catalogue.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. ApJS accepted. Full catalogue and all online-only
images available at
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/cthom/catalogue/index.htm
Catastrophic Phase Transitions and Early Warnings in a Spatial Ecological Model
Gradual changes in exploitation, nutrient loading, etc. produce shifts
between alternative stable states (ASS) in ecosystems which, quite often, are
not smooth but abrupt or catastrophic. Early warnings of such catastrophic
regime shifts are fundamental for designing management protocols for
ecosystems. Here we study the spatial version of a popular ecological model,
involving a logistically growing single species subject to exploitation, which
is known to exhibit ASS. Spatial heterogeneity is introduced by a carrying
capacity parameter varying from cell to cell in a regular lattice. Transport of
biomass among cells is included in the form of diffusion. We investigate
whether different quantities from statistical mechanics -like the variance, the
two-point correlation function and the patchiness- may serve as early warnings
of catastrophic phase transitions between the ASS. In particular, we find that
the patch-size distribution follows a power law when the system is close to the
catastrophic transition. We also provide links between spatial and temporal
indicators and analyze how the interplay between diffusion and spatial
heterogeneity may affect the earliness of each of the observables. We find that
possible remedial procedures, which can be followed after these early signals,
are more effective as the diffusion becomes lower. Finally, we comment on
similarities and differences between these catastrophic shifts and paradigmatic
thermodynamic phase transitions like the liquid-vapour change of state for a
fluid like water
Catastrophic regime shifts in model ecological communities are true phase transitions
Ecosystems often undergo abrupt regime shifts in response to gradual external
changes. These shifts are theoretically understood as a regime switch between
alternative stable states of the ecosystem dynamical response to smooth changes
in external conditions. Usual models introduce nonlinearities in the
macroscopic dynamics of the ecosystem that lead to different stable attractors
among which the shift takes place. Here we propose an alternative explanation
of catastrophic regime shifts based on a recent model that pictures ecological
communities as systems in continuous fluctuation, according to certain
transition probabilities, between different micro-states in the phase space of
viable communities. We introduce a spontaneous extinction rate that accounts
for gradual changes in external conditions, and upon variations on this control
parameter the system undergoes a regime shift with similar features to those
previously reported. Under our microscopic viewpoint we recover the main
results obtained in previous theoretical and empirical work (anomalous
variance, hysteresis cycles, trophic cascades). The model predicts a gradual
loss of species in trophic levels from bottom to top near the transition. But
more importantly, the spectral analysis of the transition probability matrix
allows us to rigorously establish that we are observing the fingerprints, in a
finite size system, of a true phase transition driven by background
extinctions.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, revised versio
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