“White Flight” or positive contact? Local diversity and attitudes to immigration in Britain

Does the local presence of immigrant groups increase White hostility to immigration? Most research finds that diverse neighborhoods reduce White opposition to minorities and immigration. However, most studies at higher geographies find the reverse effect. We confirm this pattern for England and Wales for 2009-2012. Yet, contextual studies are open to selection bias, which is where this article makes its main contribution. Is White tolerance in diverse neighborhoods the result of a positive effect of inter-ethnic contact, or does it arise from White flight, with anti-immigrant Whites exiting diverse areas but remaining within wider geographies as radicalized opponents of immigration? We provide the first attempt we are aware of to track the opinions of in- and out-migrants, as well as stayers, from local areas over an extended period. We use 20 years of large-scale geocoded British longitudinal data and find only limited evidence of selection effects associated with White flight

Cross-Sector Review of Drivers and Available 3Rs Approaches for Acute Systemic Toxicity Testing

Acute systemic toxicity studies are carried out in many sectors in which synthetic chemicals are manufactured or used and are among the most criticized of all toxicology tests on both scientific and ethical grounds. A review of the drivers for acute toxicity testing within the pharmaceutical industry led to a paradigm shift whereby in vivo acute toxicity data are no longer routinely required in advance of human clinical trials. Based on this experience, the following review was undertaken to identify (1) regulatory and scientific drivers for acute toxicity testing in other industrial sectors, (2) activities aimed at replacing, reducing, or refining the use of animals, and (3) recommendations for future work in this area

Too few Jews to count

Despite its significance as a specific category of hate crime, anti-Jewish crime has received little attention in the scholarly literature on policing hate crime. Whereas hate crimes against Jews figure prominently in the annual hate crime statistics published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, there are no routinely published police data on anti-Jewish incidents in the United Kingdom. Given the concerns about a rise in anti-Semitism in Britain in recent years, this article expands on written and oral testimony provided by the author to the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism. It illuminates the inadequacies in the police monitoring of, and use of data on, anti-Jewish incidents and discusses the shortcomings in the context of the value of hate crime data for police services

Predicting sexual and nonsexual recidivism in a consecutive sample of juveniles convicted of sexual offences

Reliable and valid risk assessments are essential for responding adequately to juveniles who have sexually offended (JSO). Given the lack of specific research focusing on the JSO population, the present study aims at confirming and expanding previous findings based on clinical samples dealing with risk assessments of JSO. The predictive power of the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol (J-SOAP-II) and the Sexual Offence Severity (SOS) Scale are evaluated retrospectively by analyzing forensic, police, and judicial files in a consecutive sample of 223 adolescents (mean age of 15.7 years, SD = 2.1 years) who had been convicted of a sexual crime in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, between 2000 and 2008. Based on local official recidivism data (mean follow-up period = 4.3 years; SD = 2.5 years), univariate and multivariate predictions of sexual and nonsexual recidivism are tested by use of the J-SOAP-II and the SOS Scale in logistic regression and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analyses. Sexual recidivism (n = 7, 3.1%) is best predicted by a multivariate model, including the J-SOAP-II Adjustment Scale and the SOS Scale (ROC: Area under the curve [AUC] = .818). Nonsexual violent (n = 37, 16.6%) and general recidivism (n = 100, 44.8%) are only moderately predicted by the J-SOAP-II impulsive/antisocial behavior scale (AUC = .677 and .662, respectively). In conclusion, the J-SOAP-II adjustment scale, the J-SOAP-II impulsive/antisocial behavior scale, and the SOS Scale may be helpful for screening purposes in JSO, but additional risk assessment seems necessary. Overall, further research is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of risk factors in JSO

Human trafficking heroes and villains: Representing the problem in anti-trafficking awareness campaigns

Since the declaration by the United Nations that awareness raising should be a key part of efforts to combat human trafficking, government and non-government organisations have produced numerous public awareness campaigns designed to capture the public’s attention and sympathy. These campaigns represent the ‘problem’ of trafficking in specific ways, creating heroes and villains by placing the blame for trafficking on some, while obscuring the responsibility of others.\ud \ud This paper adopts Carol Bacchi’s ‘What is the problem represented to be?’ framework for examining the politicisation of problem representation in 18 anti-trafficking awareness campaigns. It is argued that these campaigns construct a narrow understanding of the problem through the depiction of ‘ideal offenders’. In particular, a strong focus on the demand for commercial sex as causative of human trafficking serves to obscure the problematic role of consumerism in a wide range of industries, and perpetuates an understanding of trafficking that fails to draw a necessary distinction between the demand for labour, and the demand for ‘exploitable’ labour. This problem representation also obscures the role governments in destination countries may play in causing trafficking through imposing restrictive migration regimes that render migrants vulnerable to traffickers