Prison: the facts…the values…and the grey areas of management discretion

Last week the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) and Bromley Trust released an innovative new ‘app’ for anyone interested in keeping an eye on the ever-persistent operational pressures on the UK prison system. ‘Prison: the facts’ is downloadable free through i-Tunes, and transforms the excellent Bromley Briefings for a digital-era audience. Getting more ‘facts’ about prison life out into the open is clearly a vital public service, says Simon Bastow, but it assumes that there is consensus about what the facts actually are

An overview of electromagnetic interference problems in spacecraft

Electromagnetic Interference Workshop held at JPL /Feb., 1968/ permitted an exchange of information on electromagnetic interference problems encountered in aerospace programs. The experiences related at this workshop dealt primarily with Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter, OGO, ATS, and Mariner unmanned programs

Can Clarke square the circle of reforming criminal justice while also cutting costs by a quarter, by getting 20,000 people out of jail?.

In a major speech that has already furrowed brows amongst the Tory right wing, Ken Clarke set out proposals for wide-ranging criminal justice reform. Simon Bastow listened to his speech and sets it against the overall picture of pressures on the Ministry of Justice, where 25 per cent cuts might come, and the future of the prisons system especially.

The development of magmatism along the Cameroon Volcanic Line: Evidence from teleseismic receiver functions

[1] The Cameroon Volcanic Line (CVL) in West Africa is a chain of Cenozoic volcanism with no clear age progression. The reasons for its existence are unclear, and the nature of its magmatic plumbing system is poorly understood. Specifically, whether or not the CVL crust presently contains melt and/or mafic intrusions, as is often observed at hot spots and rifts elsewhere, is presently unknown. To address this issue, we present a receiver function study of crustal structure using earthquakes recorded by the Cameroon Broadband Seismic Experiment. In regions of the CVL unaffected by Cretaceous extension associated with the breakup of Gondwana (e.g., the Garoua rift), Vp/Vs ratios are markedly low (network average ?1.74) compared to hot spots elsewhere, providing no evidence for either melt or cooled mafic crustal intrusions due to CVL magmatism. The character of P-to-S conversions from beneath the CVL also indicates that lower-crustal intrusions (often termed underplate) are not present beneath the region. Our observations thus corroborate earlier petrological studies that show CVL alkaline magmas fractionate in the mantle, not the crust, prior to eruption. Hypotheses for the formation of the CVL should not include markedly elevated upper-mantle potential temperatures, or large volumes of partial melt, both of which can explain observations at hot spots and rifts worldwide. The protracted, yet sporadic, development of small-volume alkali melts beneath the CVL may instead be explained better by lower melt volume mechanisms such as shear zone reactivation or lithospheric delamination

Mariner Mars spacecraft magnetic contamination Status report

Magnetic field intensity measurements for Mariner spacecraft component

Curtailing the market for private prisons: schism or blip?

The reputation of the privately managed prison sector in the UK has taken a beating in recent years. Does this spell the end for the ‘whole prison’ contracting era, asks Dr. Simon Bastow

Lockup quotas in U.S. prisons are not necessarily a tax on low crime, and may actually help maximise value for money for taxpayers

Last Thursday’s post on this blog (and research report) by In the Public Interest (ITPI) shows how U.S. private prison operators have negotiated ‘lockup quotas’ to protect their business against reductions in the prison population. It raises important questions, writes Simon Bastow, about how governments should manage such reductions and the dynamics of entrenched private-sector interests. But to say, as the authors do, that lockup quotas constitute a ‘tax on low crime’ seems like one ideological extrapolation too far. Click here to view a Google Hangout video related to this article