Search results

The purpose of this paper is to describe and test a quantitative harm-focused approach to offender selection for investigation and surveillance. The approach incorporates a measure of crime harm as well as a time-decay function that adjusts the score downward for offenders who desist from crime.

Across 10 of 21 high-crime police districts in the city of Philadelphia, the authors compare the mean harm scores of 60 prolific offenders selected by district analysts, 60 prolific offenders selected citywide by detectives assigned to the Gun Violence Reduction Task Force and the top 60 prolific offenders chosen from a harm-score generated list of known offenders in the ten high-crime districts.

The offenders on the harm-focused list have significantly greater mean harm scores than the offenders identified by the crime analysts or task force personnel. They have a significantly greater mean number of gun crime episodes in their offending history as well.

The harm-focused approach uses arrest data that may not accurately reflect convictions and which miss undetected criminal activity. A leader of a criminal organization who orchestrates criminal activities but does not engage directly may have a low harm score. Arrest data may also suffer from some inherent bias. The approach also requires the creation of a crime harm index. Determining the operational impact on overall crime reduction by focusing on offenders with higher harm scores will require further research.

Clinical methods of target selection based on officer intuition, opinion and experience may have limitations in terms of effectiveness and accuracy. They also lack transparency and may incorporate bias, a critical consideration given the current crisis in police-community trust and legitimacy. The actuarial method of weighing the harm of past offending with a crime harm score may be more acceptable and defendable to the community. It also identifies offenders with a higher frequency of involvement in gun crimes. Until methodological limitations are better understood, a compromise may be to start with the harm-score method (data-driven) and supplement this initial list through intelligence and investigative information.

The paper expands crime harm indices to quantify offender triage lists. The authors also empirically demonstrate through a case study that the approach is more effective at identifying harmful offenders than methods that solely rely on the experience or intuition of either crime analysts or detectives.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a group of Romanian injecting substance users “migrating” from heroin to novel psychoactive substances (NPS) as a counterpublic seeking to escape the stigma of drug abjection.

The findings are drawn from interview and observational data collected mainly at drug services sites in Bucharest, Romania.

The stimulant powders sold by head shops appealed to experienced drug users because they seemed to emulate a consumerist ethos and cultivate a healthy, rational agent that popular discourses of addiction deem incompatible with drug careers. NPS and head shops were thus initially understood as a possibility of escaping “junk identities”. However, they ultimately sealed injectors as abject bodies that obstructed the collaborative goals of rehabilitation and health restoration. A sense of symbolic distance shaped by notions of moral and bodily hygiene separated heroin and NPS users, as the latter increasingly came to be seen and see themselves as flawed consumers of health and freedom.

NPS retail spaces could present valuable opportunities to insert harm-reduction resources and harness counterpublic health strategies.

Dominant definitions of substance use as unavoidable paths into self-destruction push users towards unknown compounds they can attach more fluid meanings to. This suggests that prohibitionist language still obscures rational dialogue about existing and emerging drugs.

The paper traces ATS/NPS in an Eastern European context offering an alternative vantage point to harm-focused perspectives.

The Kensington transit corridor runs between Huntingdon and Allegheny stations in the Kensington area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is one of the largest illicit drug areas in the country. The authors report qualitative findings from ride-alongs with transit police officers assigned to a vehicle patrol dedicated to reducing the response time to opioid overdoses in and around the transit system (trains and buses) in this large open-air drug market. This study's focus was on management and mitigation of the criminogenic harms associated with the illicit drug environment.

For ten months, transit officers patrolled the Kensington transit corridor in a dedicated vehicle (callsign “Oscar One”). Oscar One operated during either an early (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) or late (4 p.m. to midnight) shift, between September 2020 and June 2021. 269 shifts were randomly selected for Oscar One from 574 possible shifts. Researchers accompanied Oscar One for 51 observations (19%), 45 of which were completed by the authors. Semi-structured interviews occurred during these shifts, as well as ethnographic field observations.

Four main themes emerged from the study. These centered on the role of law enforcement in a large drug market, the politics of enforcement within the city of Philadelphia, the policing world around risk and proactive engagement post–George Floyd, and the sense of police being overwhelmed on the front-line of community safety.

Police officers have a community safety as well as a law enforcement mandate, and this study explores the community safety and harm mitigation role from their perspective. The article draws on their words, based on approximately 400 h of field observation.

The internet plays an important role in the lives of self-harming and suicidal young people yet little is known about how internet use influences this behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence base with a view to determining directions for future research and practice.

Literature relating to self-harming and suicidal behaviour, young people, and the internet is reviewed with a focus on content and methodology.

The internet provides access to: “how-to” descriptions of suicide; unregulated/illegal online pharmacies; forums to spread this information; access to others seeking to end their own lives. Such sites are believed to elevate risk amongst vulnerable individuals. Conversely, the internet provides access to intervention and prevention activity, online support groups, advice, and personal chat. These can be a key resource in helping young people. There is a lack of consensus on what constitutes harmful and helpful online exchange, often evidenced in disparity between the perceptions of professionals and users.

Research is needed to map out a more accurate picture of suicide and self-harm resources on the internet and to establish a consensus about what constitutes harmful and helpful exchange. This needs to be based on: a comprehensive and informed range of search terms; a clear distinction between types of resource; a clear and consistent rationale for distinguishing and categorizing sites; a systematic replicable methodology for plotting the scope, content, accessibility, and popularity of web resources at a given point in time; the views of young people who use these sites, as well as practitioners and professionals.

Practitioners need to: regularly assess the quantity, quality, and nature of self-harm/suicide focused internet use amongst service users; be aware of which sites are most appropriate for particular individuals; promote sites directed at young people that enhance effective coping. Professional mental health organizations need to find ways of ensuring that: they are consistently well represented amongst search results online; sites are readily accessible; more practitioners are trained in text-based communications.

This paper offers a framework and rationale for future research and for those involved in service provision, policy, and practice.

This paper aims to analyse and critique common performance indicators for the policing of organised crime, and to propose a new approach.

This paper was based on key respondent interviews with staff at an organised crime‐policing agency; literature review; analytical work and construction of a new model.

KPIs and other targets drive the policing of organised crime. Often these ultimately constitute numerical targets – amount of drugs seized; number of key nominals arrested, etc. – which are crude and which the research evidence base on the reduction or prevention of organised crime activity does not support as being suitable measures of success. Success in contemporary organised crime policing is increasingly becoming defined in terms of “harm reduction” (often at the “community level”). A new performance management framework for organised crime‐policing agencies is proposed, which is more sensitive than traditional measures to harm reduction. The proposed model comprises three components: programme logic; a pathway approach; and the use of evaluation panels.

The empirical research was only conducted in one organised crime agency and therefore provides a case study approach to performance management. The literature review suggests that the performance management framework of that agency was similar to other comparable agencies around the world, but more comparative research would be needed to confirm that. The model proposed would benefit from piloting and evaluation.

The analysis and modelling provided in this paper create the groundwork for the development of more effective performance indicators and targets in organised crime policing.

This lies in the attempt to tie business model drivers into policing that is more sensitive to reducing the adverse social outcomes of organised crime than traditional drivers that tend to create formal, rather than substantive, police interventions.

Throughout the world the police have undergone considerable criticism for a lack of transparency and accountability. Many police agencies across the world have been grappling with how to improve transparency and accountability, as well as public acceptance of the police, most especially in minority and immigrant communities, which are the places where aggressive police tactics are often most visible.

This chapter considers policing in Boston, United States, and Bordeaux, France, framed by a three-part medical intervention model. The central thesis here is that in their quest to shed their other social support roles or in undercounting and undervaluing such efforts the police lose an opportunity to reframe the police legitimacy discussion. While issues of police legitimacy have been predominantly framed as fair treatment at the point of being stopped, admonished, arrested, or detained, much of what the police do to actually support communities is not much accounted for in the present legitimacy discourse.

Our preliminary findings suggest that public contact with the police goes well beyond issues of crime. Individuals and communities use the police for preventing harm, responding to a wide array of needs and for mitigating harm and fear, all of which help frame public opinion toward the police and hence shape the level of legitimacy accorded the police.

Analysis of police data from Boston and impressions from a developing effort in Bordeaux consider how the police are organized and what they do in these very different cultures, thereby broadening the conception and measurement of police efforts that support or detract from legitimacy.

This paper aims to examine the policing of youth anti‐social behaviour and crime.

The paper considers the Independent Commission report, Time for a Fresh Start and argues that its analysis would be enhanced by a fuller consideration of the role of the police as gatekeepers to the criminal justice system. As such this represents something of a missed opportunity.

The paper contends that, like many other reviews of youth justice, and proposals for reform, Time for a Fresh Start says relatively little about policing. As gatekeepers and agenda‐setters for much of the criminal justice system, the police occupy a key position. This paper suggests that reform programmes must focus on the role the police play in regulating the flow of young people into the justice system and, in particular, argues in favour of a constructive reappraisal of the value of “diversion”.

Without considering the role the police play in regulating the flow of young people into the justice system, any programme of reform is incomplete. We need to rehabilitate the idea of “diversion” and to rescue it from the one‐sided picture that became dominant from the mid‐1990s onward.

This paper aims to explain how companies can benefit from their human rights due diligence process to identify opportunities for sustainable development goals (SDGs) activities in an operationalisation of political corporate social responsibility (PCSR).

Combining PCSR, SDGs and business and human rights (BHR) literature, the paper develops an extension of the risk-based due diligence process described by the BHR literature, helping companies identify societal needs to which they may contribute in accordance with PCSR through engaging in the SDGs.

Companies can benefit from resources they already invest in due diligence to identify their adverse human rights impacts, by drawing on the insights gained on broader needs, including human rights, to which they may contribute. This can help them develop appropriate interventions to address local needs and advance their moral legitimacy through assisting in SDG-relevant fulfilment of human rights.

The paper provides theory-based guidance on how companies can assess their capacity for contributing societal value through human rights-oriented SDG interventions. Future empirical research may explore how companies apply the extended due diligence process to assess needs and determine relevant actions.

The paper offers a principle-based analytical approach for integrating the “do no harm” imperative of BHR theory with PCSR’s call for business assistance in the delivery of public goods and the SDGs’ call for business action to “do good’.

This paper enables enhanced business implementation of the SDGs in line with PCSR and human rights theory, especially the emergent field of business and human rights.

This study gives theory-based guidance for companies for SDG contributions based on innovative combination of literatures.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Firms can enhance business performance through their innovation capabilities. Optimum results become more attainable when they develop each intellectual capital dimension, increase knowledge management effectiveness and comply with and commit to environmental welfare requirements.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The library and information science profession finds itself grappling with substantial difficulties and hurdles when addressing the trustworthiness and accuracy of information disseminated through social media platforms. This study aims to highlight the educational authority of librarians and propose a framework for librarians to establish their identity, understand the meaning behind their practice and integrate their expertise through knowledge practices, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness in the social media environment.

This study delves into a conceptual framework rooted in philosophical inquiry, seeking to establish a harmonious connection between interrelated concepts of civic roles, professional identity and knowledge practices. It draws upon both original research findings and a review of existing literature in the field.

Civic responsibilities reflect the professional identities of librarians. Evidence of knowledge practices collected from scientific literature emerged to be the important characterization of how librarians uphold their image as educational authorities. It describes the meaning of civic roles and professional practice.

The study sheds light on how librarians maintain their reputation as educators and the knowledge practices that underpin their civic responsibilities amidst the pervasiveness of information disorders.

The framework presented in the study offers a timely and relevant contribution to the complex realm of social media information disorders, a challenge that librarians grapple with regularly. It highlights the emerging role of librarians in society to assert their identity and recognize their civic responsibility in addressing this pressing issue that society faces.