Good practice? invest in a framework!

M any reports on major national initiatives like the Crime Reduction Programme acknowledge ‘implementation failure’. Common explanations are ‘poor project-management skills’,or ‘short-term funding regimes’. Important as these are,Heraclitus’excellent Soapbox article (‘Good Practice - What’s it all about?’ Network News,Winter 2005) also blamed ‘dumbing down.’ Higher echelons in crime prevention often believe ‘The only information you can hope to get into practitioners’heads is a slogan or two,if lucky.’ I totally disagree. Crime prevention’s basic idea is simple (cutting the cause cuts the risk),but its practice is complex

Afterword: Safety research on the move

Question: What makes connections (often deep ones) between diverse areas, has a network of equally diverse participants, and the potential to significantly impact the life of cities and their inhabitants? Answer: The researchers who combined to produce this special issue, of course. I was privileged to see them, and others, in action at a workshop convened in Stockholm by the Editor of this special issue, and to read the papers published here. I am no specialist in transport crime, but have a broad interest in research and practice in crime prevention and particular concern with the built environment and with design in general. The Editor has already capably summarised the content of the articles in the Introduction, which allows me, in what follows, to reflect on some of the many issues raised, both specific to transport and common to the whole of crime science

Legislative and Administrative Processes. By Hans A. Linde and George Bunn; Introduction to the American Public Law System: Cases and Materials. By Jerry L. Mashaw and Richard A. Merrill

Background: Genome and transcriptome sequencing applications that rely on variation in sequence depth can be negatively affected if there are systematic biases in coverage. We have investigated patterns of local variation in sequencing coverage by utilising ultra-deep sequencing (>100,000X) of mtDNA obtained during sequencing of two vertebrate genomes, wolverine (Gulo gulo) and collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis). With such extreme depth, stochastic variation in coverage should be negligible, which allows us to provide a very detailed, fine-scale picture of sequence dependent coverage variation and sequencing error rates. Results: Sequencing coverage showed up to six-fold variation across the complete mtDNA and this variation was highly repeatable in sequencing of multiple individuals of the same species. Moreover, coverage in orthologous regions was correlated between the two species and was negatively correlated with GC content. We also found a negative correlation between the site-specific sequencing error rate and coverage, with certain sequence motifs "CCNGCC" being particularly prone to high rates of error and low coverage. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that inherent sequence characteristics govern variation in coverage and suggest that some of this variation, like GC content, should be controlled for in, for example, RNA-Seq and detection of copy number variation

Digital gene expression analysis of the zebra finch genome

Background: In order to understand patterns of adaptation and molecular evolution it is important to quantify both variation in gene expression and nucleotide sequence divergence. Gene expression profiling in non-model organisms has recently been facilitated by the advent of massively parallel sequencing technology. Here we investigate tissue specific gene expression patterns in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) with special emphasis on the genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Results: Almost 2 million 454-sequencing reads from cDNA of six different tissues were assembled and analysed. A total of 11,793 zebra finch transcripts were represented in this EST data, indicating a transcriptome coverage of about 65%. There was a positive correlation between the tissue specificity of gene expression and non-synonymous to synonymous nucleotide substitution ratio of genes, suggesting that genes with a specialised function are evolving at a higher rate (or with less constraint) than genes with a more general function. In line with this, there was also a negative correlation between overall expression levels and expression specificity of contigs. We found evidence for expression of 10 different genes related to the MHC. MHC genes showed relatively tissue specific expression levels and were in general primarily expressed in spleen. Several MHC genes, including MHC class I also showed expression in brain. Furthermore, for all genes with highest levels of expression in spleen there was an overrepresentation of several gene ontology terms related to immune function. Conclusions: Our study highlights the usefulness of next-generation sequence data for quantifying gene expression in the genome as a whole as well as in specific candidate genes. Overall, the data show predicted patterns of gene expression profiles and molecular evolution in the zebra finch genome. Expression of MHC genes in particular, corresponds well with expression patterns in other vertebrates

Bike off 2: catalysing anti theft bike, bike parking and information design for the 21st Century

Project Bikeoff's Design for the 21st Century programme, followed earlier research and development work on preventing bike theft by colleagues at the Design Against Crime Research Centre, my own work over 15 years in developing conceptual frameworks for theoretical and practice knowledge in crime prevention, and work on crime pattern analysis and evaluation techniques for situational crime prevention at the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science. Bikeoff aimed to draw on this experience to develop and build capacity among designers to undertake innovative and focused work in design against crime, which could generalise from bike parking to other crimes/fields of design. Work Package A2 sought to apply my Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity framework (a criminological map of the immediate causes of crime and preventive interventions in those causes) to guide the thinking of designers and organise existing knowledge and experience of secure bike parking facilities. During the collaboration with designers CCO significantly evolved e.g. to match the original interest in 'abusers' to the designer's central interest in 'users', and to become more dynamic through the concept of the 'scripts' of users in parking bikes securely, and of abusers in seeking to steal them, culminating in the new and fundamental concept of 'script clashes' (e.g. surveil v conceal, pursue v escape). These clashes sharply focus the designers' task: it is their job to shape products, environments and services to tip the balance to favour users. Beyond this a particular procedure was developed, of wide application, to use the amended CCO to 1) systematically analyse the crime risks to and from a given product, and then 2) guide designers to reduce/mitigate the risks whilst maximising design freedom

Beccaria partner meeting - professional training in crime prevention: the UK situation

Keynote address to the European Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN) Best Practices Conference, Häämeenlinna, Finland

In Search for the Right Measure: Assessing Types of Developed Knowledge While Using a Gamified Web Toolkit

Game-based learning has been used to teach topics in diverse domains, but it is still hard to determine when such approaches are an efficient learning technique. In this paper we focus on one open challenge – the limited understanding in the community of the types of knowledge these games help to develop. Using a taxonomy that distinguishes between declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge, we evaluate a game-based toolkit to analyse and solve an information security problem within a holistic crime prevention framework. Twenty-eight participants used the toolkit. We designed a portfolio of learning assessment measures to capture learning of different types of knowledge. The measures included two theoretical open-answer questions to explore participants' understanding, three problem-specific open-answer questions to test their ability to apply the framework, and 9 multiple-choice questions to test their ability to transfer what was learned to other contexts. The assessment measures were administered before and after use of the tookit. The application questions were analysed by classifying suggested ideas. The theoretical questions were qualitatively analysed using a set of analytical techniques. The transferability questions were statistically analysed using ttests. Our results show that participants' answers to the application questions improved in quality after the use of the toolkit. In their answers to the theoretical questions most participants could explain the key features of the toolkit. Statistical analysis of the multiple-choice questions testing transferability however failed to demonstrate significant improvement. Whilist our participants understood the CCO framework and learned how to use the toolkit, participants didn't demonstrate transfer of knowledge to other situations in information security. We discuss our results, limitations of the study design and possible lessons to be learned from these

A ‘criminal personas’ approach to countering criminal creativity

This paper describes a pilot study of a ‘criminal personas’ approach to countering criminal creativity. The value of the personas approach has been assessed by comparing the identification of criminal opportunity, through ‘traditional’ brainstorming and then through ‘criminal personas’ brainstorming The method involved brainstorm sessions with Computer Forensics Practitioners and with Product Designers, where they were required to generate criminal scenarios, select the most serious criminal opportunities, and propose means of countering them. The findings indicated that there was merit in further research in the development and application of the ‘criminal personas’ approach. The generation of criminal opportunity ideas and proposal of counter criminal solutions were both greater when the brainstorm approach involved the group responding through their given criminal personas