Representations of Migrancy in the Poetry of Contemporary Irish Poets in Britain

This thesis is a work of poetry criticism. It explores the theme of migrancy in the poetry of Bernard O’Donoghue, Peter McDonald, David Wheatley, Caitríona O’Reilly, and Conor O’Callaghan, five contemporary Irish poets who currently live in Britain. My main research question is, how does the theme of migration find expression in the poetry of O’Donoghue et al.? My method is founded on close reading as the principal means to understanding the poem. The context of postnationalism, sometimes termed post-Ireland, is an important cultural context. This is highlighted by critics such as Anthony Bradley, Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, and the contributors to the edited volume Post-Ireland? Essays on Contemporary Irish Poetry. This thesis explores the poetry in light of this context, particularly the ways in which migrancy intersects with this phenomenon. Place and poetic identity are important concepts to all five migrant poets. This investigation into representations of migrancy concludes that, while place and identity are common themes for migrant poets, the way migrancy finds expression is variable. The migrant experience is more of a process than a fixed position, and, therefore, the way that this finds expression in a given poet’s work is changeable and, even, contradictory. This study also finds that the poetry of the O’Donoghue group – supposedly ‘minor’ figures within contemporary Irish poetry – is a significant contribution to the canon of migrant Irish literature

Unfit to Plead or Unfit to Testify? R v Orr [2016] EWCA Crim 889

Discusses the scope and interpretation of the test for unfitness to plead, the stage at which a finding of unfitness may be made, and the interplay between the unfitness to plead process and s.35 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

Evidence-based policing and police receptivity to research: evidence from Taiwan

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate how evidence-based policing (EBP) is understood by police officers and citizens in Taiwan and the influence of police education on police recruit's receptivity to research evidence in policing. / Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a cross-sectional design that includes Taiwanese police officers (n = 671) and a control group of Taiwanese criminology undergraduate students (n = 85). A research instrument covering five themes is developed, and after a pilot test the final scale remains 14 items. / Findings: The analysis suggests that police officers in Taiwan generally hold a positive view towards the role of research and researchers in policing, more so than is often observed in similar studies conducted in Western countries. Receptivity to research was found to be significantly higher among the non-police sample compared to the police sample. Moreover, time spent in police education was significantly associated with lower levels of receptivity to research. / Originality/value: The paper makes two original contributions to the literature on police officer receptivity to research. It is the first paper to (1) empirically examine police officers' openness to, and use of research in an Asian setting and (2) to compare police officers' receptivity to research with those of a relevant non-police group

Project MARGIN: Conceptual report: defining the indicators defining demographic, socioeconomic and socio-geographic determinants of insecurity

In Deliverable 2.1 of the MARGIN project, a database was collated to enable a comparative analysis between police recorded crime data and crime victimisation surveys across five European countries. In the present report, we present such an analysis in order to identify a range of demographic, socioeconomic, and socio-geographic determinants of insecurity. The available data enable two dimensions of insecurity to be addressed. The first, victimisation, can be measured through two sources: police recorded crime data and responses to questions regarding victimisation in a crime victimisation survey. This dimension of insecurity is known in the MARGIN project as the objective dimension as it attempts to capture individuals’ actual experiences with crime. The second, perceived insecurity, relates to questions in the crime victimisation survey surrounding respondents’ thoughts about crime, safety, and how their perceptions about crime alter their habits. This aspect is known as the subjective dimension. It has been shown previously that, although related, perceived insecurity and victimisation capture different aspects of insecurity. Moreover, there are some instances where people who have a very small risk of experiencing victimisation in fact have very high levels of perceived insecurity (see Doran and Burgess (2012) for a review). In this report, we analyse consistencies in the MARGIN database with respect to a range of indicators of insecurity. It is important to determine indicators of insecurity in order to identify marginalised communities who tend to experience a disproportionate amount of victimisation and who also have high levels of perceived insecurity and fear of crime. Identification of such communities can enable directed policies to reduce levels of insecurity. The results of this analysis are intended to inform the development of the MARGIN victimisation survey being developed in Work Package 4. In what follows, we first conceptualise the objective dimension by examining victimisation rates across the different study areas, as obtained from both police recorded crime and victimisation survey data. Next, we consider the subjective dimension by considering questions relating to different aspects of perceived insecurity. After describing a number of problems that arise when attempting to directly compare questions across the different victimisation surveys, we turn to the identification of a range of demographic and socioeconomic indicators which we find to be associated with particular aspects of perceived insecurity. We present the results of a range of regression analyses performed with this data. Finally, we discuss a range of potential sociogeographic indicators of insecurity, focusing particularly on the example of street robbery in Barcelona. We also discuss a range of other points to be considered in the identification of marginalised communities

Project MARGIN: Factors affecting insecurity

The research undertaken in Work Package 3 has identified a number of indicators of insecurity following the analysis of victimisation surveys and police recorded crime data from each study region of the MARGIN project. From this analysis, it is clear that insecurity is a multi-faceted concept, with different factors acting at the individual, neighbourhood and even country levels. Despite this complexity, the analysis has identified several robust correlates of insecurity that should be focused on in the subsequent research of the MARGIN project. In this report, we discuss these factors with the intention of guiding future research. Work package 3 was designed to undertake analysis of the MARGIN database. Resulting from this analysis, a taxonomy to enable the selection of two neighbourhoods in each of the five cities of the MARGIN project—in which future research will be conducted—was defined. More detailed descriptions of these findings can be found in Deliverables 3.1 – 3.3. In this report, we give an overview of our findings and comment on how they largely conform to concepts and trends found in the existing research literature (which overwhelmingly focusses on trends within rather than between countries). We also discuss the limitations of our findings. Many of these limitations are familiar problems associated with cross-national comparisons of administrative surveys with little consistency in survey design. A further factor limiting any survey based research is that there will inevitably be questions that could have been asked but were not. In the final part of this report, we consider whether there are any areas of enquiry that could usefully be included in the MARGIN survey, which would help us to further understand the emergence of insecurity within marginalised communities

Noncompleted Sexual Offenses: Internal States, Risks and Difficulties Related to Crime Commission through the Lens of Sexual Offenders

The study aims to generate insights from sexual offenders on the influence of internal states and how they perceive risks of apprehension and difficulties in the context of noncompleted sexual offenses, that is when offenders initiated the offense but were stopped or discouraged either before or during sexual contact. Adult males incarcerated for sexually offending completed a self-report questionnaire. Regression models, including interaction effects, were estimated. Two interaction effects were found providing insights into which and how internal states, such as intoxication to alcohol, may influence perceived difficulties related to crime. Future research should promote the investigation of noncompleted sexual offenses, which could provide a real opportunity to generate new or complementary insights for better understanding and guiding prevention initiatives

Creating Honeypots to Prevent Online Child Exploitation

Honeypots have been a key tool in controlling and understanding digital crime for several decades. The tool has traditionally been deployed against actors who are attempting to hack into systems or as a discovery mechanism for new forms of malware. This paper presents a novel approach to using a honeypot architecture in conjunction with social networks to respond to non-technical digital crimes. The tool is presented within the context of Child Exploitation Material (CEM), and to support the goal of taking an educative approach to Internet users who are developing an interest in this material. The architecture that is presented in the paper includes multiple layers, including recruitment, obfuscation, and education. The approach does not aim to collect data to support punitive action, but to educate users, increasing their knowledge and awareness of the negative impacts of such material

The Australian Experience of Municipal Amalgamation: Asking the Citizenry and Exploring the Implications

© 2015 Institute of Public Administration Australia Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and scope consistently set against anti-amalgamation arguments designed to preserve extant communities. Following from an examination of recent episodes of consolidation in Australia, this paper reports on citizens' attitudes to amalgamation garnered from a national survey of 2,006 individuals. We found that generally, citizens are ambivalent toward amalgamation, although attitudes were influenced by particular demographic characteristics and attitudes to representation, belonging, service delivery requirements and the costs thereof. The results suggest that, away from the local government sector itself, structural reform may not be the vexatious issue it is often portrayed as. The implications of this are explored here

Characterisation of the impact response of energetic materials: Observation of a low-level reaction in 2,6-diamino-3,5-dinitropyrazine-1-oxide (LLM-105)

Time resolved and integrated diagnostics including high speed photography, mass and optical spectroscopy, and optical-radiometry used to study impact response of high explosives in far more detail than possible with conventional sensitiveness tests.The authors wish to acknowledge the funding and provision of samples for this research by AWE plc.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Royal Society of Chemistry via http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C6RA03096

Learning About Situational Crime Prevention From Offenders: Using a Script Framework to Compare the Commission of Completed and Disrupted Sexual Offenses

The collective knowledge of offenders is one of the richest ways to advance understandings of crime commission and effective crime prevention. Drawing on self-report data from 53 incarcerated offenders in three Australian states and territories, the current article presents an innovative method which, through a crime script framework, allows for a first-time comparison of completed versus disrupted sexual offenses involving adult female and child victims at each stage of the crime commission process. Findings (a) highlight the critical need to boost the efficacy of situational prevention in the crime setup phase of the sexual offense script and (b) showcase how incorporating a script framework in offender-based research can identify new directions for crime preventio