Understanding and Managing the Occupational Health Impacts on Investigators of Internet Child Exploitation

An empirical research project was carried out involving Internet child exploitation (ICE) investigators from all nine Australian police jurisdictions. The aim of the research was to examine the physical, social and psychological impacts of ICE investigation in order to inform the development of prevention and best practice guidelines. The research comprised two studies. The first study involved an online survey of 188 current, former and incoming ICE investigators and a comparison sample of 106 non-ICE police. The survey comprised a wide-ranging set of existing scales and items written specifically for this study. The second study involved a sub-sample of 32 current and former ICE investigators who agreed to take part in a semi-structured, anonymous telephone interview. Despite the disturbing nature of their role, most ICE investigators are coping well. To the extent that investigators find their role to be stressful, some of the causes of this stress relate to generic workplace issues. To the extent that exposure to ICE contributes to workplace stress, the effects do not seem to be accumulative, that is, they are not a function of the extent of exposure to ICE material. There is, however, no universal ICE investigator experience. In particular, there is a small number of investigators who experience clinically-significant adverse reactions to their exposure to ICE material

Environmental sustainability: A case of policy implementation failure?

© 2017 by the author. For a generation, governments around the world have been committed to sustainable development as a policy goal. This has been supported by an array of new policies ranging from international agreements, to national strategies, environmental laws at many levels of government, regional programs, and local plans. Despite these efforts, decades of scientific monitoring indicate that the world is no closer to environmental sustainability and in many respects the situation is getting worse. This paper argues that a significant contributing factor to this situation is policy implementation failure. A systematic review of the literature reveals that the failure to achieve the intended outcomes of environmental policies is due to economic, political and communication factors. Conflict between the objectives of environmental policies and those focused on economic development, a lack of incentives to implement environmental policies, and a failure to communicate objectives to key stakeholders are all key factors that contribute to the inability to attain environmental sustainability

Correction to: Towards a ‘smart’ cost–benefit tool: using machine learning to predict the costs of criminal justice policy interventions

The original version of the article (Manning et al. 2018) contained an error in the funding section and name of an author. The correction funding note should be This project was funded by the Economic & Social Research Council grant (ESRC Reference: ES/L007223/1) titled ‘University Consortium for Evidence-Based Crime Reduction’, the Australian National University’s Cross College Grant and the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science. The author name was spelt incorrectly as Cristen instead of Christen. The original article has been corrected. The original article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-018-0086-4

Towards a ‘smart’ cost–benefit tool: using machine learning to predict the costs of criminal justice policy interventions

BACKGROUND: The Manning Cost–Benefit Tool (MCBT) was developed to assist criminal justice policymakers, policing organisations and crime prevention practitioners to assess the benefits of different interventions for reducing crime and to select those strategies that represent the greatest economic return on investment. DISCUSSION: A challenge with the MCBT and other cost–benefit tools is that users need to input, manually, a considerable amount of point-in-time data, a process that is time consuming, relies on subjective expert opinion, and introduces the potential for data-input error. In this paper, we present and discuss a conceptual model for a ‘smart’ MCBT that utilises machine learning techniques. SUMMARY: We argue that the Smart MCBT outlined in this paper will overcome the shortcomings of existing cost–benefit tools. It does this by reintegrating individual cost–benefit analysis (CBA) projects using a database system that securely stores and de-identifies project data, and redeploys it using a range of machine learning and data science techniques. In addition, the question of what works is respecified by the Smart MCBT tool as a data science pipeline, which serves to enhance CBA and reconfigure the policy making process in the paradigm of open data and data analytics

The three dimensions of online child pornography offending

The internet has opened up opportunities for non-contact sex offending, such as the viewing of child pornography. This paper proposes a model for the classification of child pornography offenders as an aid for their assessment and treatment, deducted from empirical studies and existing typologies for child pornography offenders. Different subgroups of child pornography offenders may be described according to three dimensions: (1) type of offending, (2) the motivation behind child pornography offending and (3) the situational and social engagement in the offending behaviour. Distinct pathways of child pornography offending can be identified, related to differing criminogenic needs, severity of offending, and appropriate assessment and treatment strategies for the offenders

Investigation of occupational and environmental causes of respiratory cancers (ICARE): a multicenter, population-based case-control study in France

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Occupational causes of respiratory cancers need to be further investigated: the role of occupational exposures in the aetiology of head and neck cancers remains largely unknown, and there are still substantial uncertainties for a number of suspected lung carcinogens. The main objective of the study is to examine occupational risk factors for lung and head and neck cancers.</p> <p>Methods/design</p> <p>ICARE is a multi-center, population-based case-control study, which included a group of 2926 lung cancer cases, a group of 2415 head and neck cancer cases, and a common control group of 3555 subjects. Incident cases were identified in collaboration with cancer registries, in 10 geographical areas. The control group was a random sample of the population of these areas, with a distribution by sex and age comparable to that of the cases, and a distribution by socioeconomic status comparable to that of the population. Subjects were interviewed face to face, using a standardized questionnaire collecting particularly information on tobacco and alcohol consumption, residential history and a detailed description of occupational history. Biological samples were also collected from study subjects. The main occupational exposures of interest are asbestos, man-made mineral fibers, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chromium and nickel compounds, arsenic, wood dust, textile dust, solvents, strong acids, cutting fluids, silica, diesel fumes, welding fumes. The complete list of exposures of interest includes more than 60 substances. Occupational exposure assessment will use several complementary methods: case-by-case evaluation of exposure by experts; development and use of algorithms to assess exposure from the questionnaires; application of job-exposure matrices.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The large number of subjects should allow to uncover exposures associated with moderate increase in risks, and to evaluate risks associated with infrequent or widely dispersed exposures. It will be possible to study joint effects of exposure to different occupational risk factors, to examine the interactions between occupational exposures, tobacco smoking, alcohol drinking, and genetic risk factors, and to estimate the proportion of respiratory cancers attributable to occupational exposures in France. In addition, information on many non-occupational risk factors is available, and the study will provide an excellent framework for numerous studies in various fields.</p

Racial Similarities in Response to Standardized Offer of Influenza Vaccination

Despite known benefits of influenza vaccination and coverage by Medicare Part B, elderly minority patients are less likely to receive influenza vaccination than whites. OBJECTIVES : To test whether a nonphysician-initiated standardized offer of influenza vaccination to all elderly primary care patients would result in similar proportions of African-American and white patients accepting vaccine. DESIGN : In 7 metropolitan Detroit primary care practices during the 2003 influenza vaccination season, medical assistants assessed influenza immunization status of all patients 65 years and older and collected limited demographic data. Eligible patients were offered vaccination. MEASUREMENTS : Proportion of patients accepting influenza vaccination by race and predictors of vaccine acceptance. RESULTS : Four hundred and fifty-four eligible patients with complete racial information were enrolled: 40% African American, 52% white, 8% other race/ethnicity. Similar proportions of African Americans and whites had already received the 2003 vaccine (11.6% and 11.0%, respectively) or stated vaccination as the reason for visit (23.8% and 30.5%, respectively). Among the remainder, there also were similar proportions who accepted vaccination: 68.9% white and 62.1% African-American patients. History of previous vaccination was the only statistically significant predictor of vaccine acceptance (odds ratio [OR] 8.64, 95% confidence interval [CI] 4.17, 17.91, P <.001). After adjusting for history of previous vaccination, age, gender, and education, the odds of vaccine acceptance were no different for whites and African Americans (OR 1.20, 95% CI 0.63, 2.29, P =.57). CONCLUSIONS : Vaccination acceptance differed little between African-American and white elderly patients. Using nonphysician personnel to identify and offer influenza vaccine to eligible patients is easily accomplished in primary care offices and has the potential to eliminate racial disparities in influenza vaccination.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74908/1/j.1525-1497.2006.00401.x.pd

Minority youth, crime, conflict, and belonging in Australia

In recent decades, the size and diversity of the minority population of contemporary western societies has increased significantly. To the critics of immigration, minority youth have been increasingly linked to crime, criminal gangs, anti-social behaviour, and riots. In this article, we draw on fieldwork conducted in Sydney, Australia's largest and most ethnically diverse city, to probe aspects of the criminality, anti-social behaviour, national identity, and belonging of ethnic minority youth in Australia. We conclude that the evidence on minority youth criminality is weak and that the panic about immigrant youth crime and immigrant youth gangs is disproportionate to the reality, drawing on and in turn creating racist stereotypes, particularly with youth of 'Middle Eastern appearance'. A review of the events leading up to the Sydney Cronulla Beach riots of December 2005 suggests that the underlying cause of the riots were many years of international, national, and local anti-Arab, anti-Muslim media discourse, and political opportunism, embedded in changing but persistent racist attitudes and practises. Our argument is that such inter-ethnic conflict between minority and majority youth in Sydney is the exception, not the rule. Finally, we draw on a hitherto unpublished survey of youth in Sydney to explore issues of national identity and belonging among young people of diverse ethnic and religious background. We conclude that minority youth in Sydney do not live 'parallel lives' but contradictory, inter-connected cosmopolitan lives. They are connected to family and local place, have inter-ethnic friendships but are often disconnected to the nation and the flag. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V