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Brad Astbury is research fellow in the Centre for Program Evaluation, Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne where he lectures within the Masters of Evaluation course. His interests lie in evaluation theory and social research methodology. Brad has conducted evaluations in a number of areas, including corrections, education, health promotion and various family and community service interventions.

Community policing has been around for at least two decades now and it is safe to say that it has become, in large part, more about managing disruptive subjects and virtuous citizens than preventing crime or disorder (Crank, 1994; DeLeon-Granados, 1999; Yngvesson, 1993). While the rhetoric of community may be succeeding where the policing policy is failing, the experience has certainly contributed to the growth of homologous efforts that include community prosecution and community correction. We see a criminal justice system pro-actively seeking to blur the boundaries between its institutions and the communities they work within and, all too often, without. In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in justice approaches that turn their attention toward the community. There are literally hundreds of examples of this trend, from offender-victim reconciliation projects in Vermont and Minneapolis to ‘beat probation’ in Madison, Wisconsin; from neighborhood-based prosecution centers in Portland, Oregon, and New York City, to community probation in Massachusetts. Of course, the most well-known version of community justice is community policing, but localized projects involving all components of the justice system have been widely promoted (Clear & Karp, 1998, p. 3).Like community policing and community prosecution, community correction programs generally focus on partnering with service providers and community groups in order to more finely calibrate their service delivery. For community corrections the recent focus has been on delivering re-entry programs and expanding the availability of intermediate sanctioning options. The sheriff (above) focuses on re-entry, to link jails and communities in two ways: extending the correctional continuum into power-poor communities and increasing political support for expanding the criminal justice system in more affluent communities. Even as fiscal stress translates into budget cuts in education, housing, drug treatment, and other services, the reach of the criminal justice system expands outside the fences as new community-based partnerships and inside the fences as an increasingly program-rich environment. These partnerships are, not surprisingly as we shall see, dominated by criminal justice professionals and dependent on coercive control techniques. Further, their budgets are growing with funds in previous eras earmarked for providing many of the same services in a social welfare, rather, than social control, service delivery context. While these budgetary trends map a macro political trend from an old democratic New Deal toward a new republican new deal network of patronage relationships (see Lyons, forthcoming 2004), this paper examines the micro politics of community corrections developing within an increasingly punitive American political-culture.

This chapter examines aggression at work perpetrated by individual insiders by bringing together streams of research that have often been examined separately. A comparison of the similarities and differences of aggression toward individuals, such as verbal abuse or physical attack, and aggression toward organizations, such as embezzlement or work slowdowns, is shown to provide important insights about the causes and consequences of workplace aggression. We propose a comprehensive model based on the integration of prior theoretical treatments and empirical findings. The model attempts to offer a framework to systematically examine psychological and organizational mechanisms underlying workplace aggression, and to explain the reasons why workplace violence policies and procedures sometimes fail. A set of research propositions is also suggested to assist in achieving this end in future research.

Professional ethics require researchers to disclose all risks to participants in their studies. Changes in the legal climate in the United States and new modes of surveillance and communication call into question the effectiveness of measures used by researchers to protect participants from the risks they now face. This paper explores existing and newly enhanced risks to participants in social movement studies and examines problems with confidentiality agreements and informed consent procedures, two avenues that scholars traditionally use to protect research participants. The utility of Certificates of Confidentiality and researcher privilege also are examined as means to safeguard the privacy and security of research participants. The conclusion raises larger issues about the accountability of scholars to their research participants and the nature of risk in today's changing political climate. These include how to weigh potential risks and benefits to social movements and activists who are studied, the consequences for scholarship if scholars avoid studying movements and activists that pose risks, and the need for scholars to collaborate with research participants to tailor ethical research practices and to use institutional resources to challenge threats to the privacy and integrity of the people and groups they study.

Drawing on the slavery history of the United States, the theoretical framework of the post-traumatic slave syndrome is used to understand the influences and challenges of contemporary assessment and counseling issues of African American offenders.

Through a qualitative review of the literature, supporting evidence is given from an investigation of slavery’s historical laws, practices, experiences, and beliefs’ and its influences on contemporary assessment and counseling issues concerning African American offenders and the challenges met by counselors.

The laws, the practices, the experiences, and the beliefs during slavery have had a profound influence on contemporary issues of assessment and counseling African American offenders. The transgenerational adaptations associated with previous traumas during and after slavery influenced counselors’ ability to effectively assess and counsel African American offenders. Moreover, transgenerational adaptations are equally present among white counselors, which have contributed to challenges with assessments and counseling of African American offenders.

Understanding history that is theoretically framed out of the post-traumatic slave syndrome builds knowledge in understanding present challenges and barriers to effective counseling of African American offenders in three ways: (1) it makes the connection between slavery and contemporary issues concerning assessment and counseling of African American offenders; (2) it explains how race might complicate counseling and assessment process; and (3) it sheds light on significant counseling concepts related to rehabilitation or sanctions of African American offenders.

When research is complete and findings concluded, is research really just about publishing findings? Have you ever wondered whether your research will have any real impact in the world? In our opinion, we believe a bigger obstacle awaits us at the end of a research project. This being the implementation of research findings. We share with you our combined experience spanning over three decades of research – the challenges and learnings we have gathered along the way as we aim to translate research findings into real world, everyday practical reality. Our research experience is generally about human behaviour and psychology within the forensic population. As a result, the implementation of findings is crucial to inform policy makers, practitioners, local community agencies and government departments about the way to work with this population. In this chapter we provide a practical step-by-step approach to how we aim to implement our findings in research. We look at the problem of linking between theory and practice alongside what is currently in practice today. We discuss the challenges we have faced and what we have done to ‘Making real-world research stick at the coal face’. We wish you all the best with your research and hope that you find it as challenging and rewarding as we have!