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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the clinical outcome data collected as part of an 18-week, abstinence-based residential therapeutic community (TC) programme, Higher Ground Drug Rehabilitation Trust (Higher Ground) in New Zealand. Lessons and implications for routine collection of clinical outcome data are identified.

Higher Ground collects longitudinal data on all consenting clients using a battery of validated psychometric tools, with repeated measures at up to nine points in time from first presentation through to 12-month post-discharge follow up. Data analysis covered clients who entered Higher Ground between 1 July 2012 and 2 June 2015 (n=524).

Clients presented with histories of addiction which often had significant negative associations with their physical and psychological health, their relationships, work, accommodation and criminal behaviour. By the time they exited the programme, clinically and statistically significant improvements were seen across multiple indicators including: substance use and abstinence; symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and stress; and a range of social indicators.

Attrition in follow-up research is a significant challenge, with people completing the TC programme being more likely to participate than those who do not. This limits generalizability in post-discharge data. There was no control group, making causal attribution a challenge. Identifying suitable benchmarks from the literature is challenging because of the variety of outcome measures and research methodologies used.

Tracking client outcomes longitudinally using psychometric tools is potentially valuable for TCs and their funding bodies, as it provides insights into patterns of client recovery that can inform ongoing service improvements and resource allocation decisions. However, significant challenges remain.

The study demonstrates the value, and practical challenges, of collecting high-quality outcome data in a TC setting.

The purpose of this study is to explore how a large UK police force – Greater Manchester Police (GMP) – sought during a period of continuing budget reductions to take a cost-effective approach to certain types of fraud through the establishment of a central Volume Fraud Team (VFT), which in turn would also have wider operational resource benefits across the force. It then explores the decision to merge that team with its existing serious and complex fraud team.

The research was undertaken over a period of two years by interview and desk review to explain the internal processes which underpinned the approach and the initial outcomes. It discusses why the approach was short lived as a consequence of other factors.

The paper sets out briefly the context of changes to the policing of fraud since 1979 and describes the GMP decision-making processes that established a centralised response to volume fraud and major (serious and complex) fraud. The paper assesses the available data on the approach and whether the changes facilitated a more effective means of addressing fraud and other internal policing priorities. It then discusses the decision in 2014 to merge the staff resources for volume and major frauds in response to identified policy trends in fraud investigations and changes in fraud reporting.

The single case study is limited in terms of focus and in applicability to the wider law enforcement response to fraud.

The research discusses practitioner issues arising from the complexities of balancing resources and priorities against changing trends and patterns of criminal activity in a specific area of policing.

The research is an original study into the internal and external change agendas, and there are, therefore, wider lessons for the policing of fraud in the UK.

The social categories “Hutu” and “Tutsi” have long been central to Rwandan politics, though never more so than during the 1994 genocide, when they formed the ultimate divide: kill (Hutu) or be killed (Tutsi). Since then, the Rwandan government has sought to eliminate these categories and replace them with a new, national identity category of “Rwandan.” This chapter draws on theories of state symbolic power and legibility to analyze how top-down projects of remaking Rwandans are being received from below. Specifically, we examine ordinary Rwandans' responses to gacaca, a community justice practice central to the state's National Unity and Reconciliation Program, and find Rwandans resent efforts to “unmake race” in favor of “nation” because the state's account of genocide in gacaca does not allow them to sincerely express their experiences; it activates traumatic pasts for what they feel is superficial national reconciliation; and it detracts from their material needs. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between compliance and conviction in research on state efforts to transform civilian subjectivities. They also suggest directions for further research. Namely, future research on state symbolic power should attend to how individual experiences with violence mediate top-down efforts at remaking civilian subjectivities, to how different forms of governance shape civilian resistance to state categorization and classification projects, and to what kinds of interests are likely to motivate people to alter their self-perceptions. We conclude by arguing for more work on state race and nation-making from the perspectives of its targets.

In 1967, Robert N. Bellah famously argued that there existed an “American Civil Religion,” which was distinct from churchly religion and captured the “transcendental” dimension of the American project. In this chapter, I revisit the civil religion concept and reconstruct it along more Weberian lines. Specifically, I argue that the civil religion tradition is one of three competing traditions for thinking about the proper relationship between religion and politics in America; the other two are religious nationalism and liberal secularism. Whereas liberal secularism envisions a complete separation of the religious and political value spheres, and religious nationalism longs for their (re)unification, civil religion aims for a mediating position of partial separation and productive tension. Following Bellah, I argue that the two central strands of the civil religion tradition have been covenant theology and civic republicanism. The body of the chapter sketches out the development of the tradition across a series of national foundings and refoundings, focusing on the writings of leading civil theologians from John Winthrop and John Adams through Abraham Lincoln and John Dewey to Martin King and Barack Obama. The conclusion advances a normative argument for American civil religion – and against liberal secularism and religious nationalism. I contend that liberalism is highly inclusive but insufficiently solidaristic; that religious nationalism is highly solidaristic but insufficiently inclusive; and that only civil religion strikes a proper balance between individual autonomy and the common good.

This paper investigates the extent to which disability type contributes to differential evaluation of employees by managers. In particular, the authors examined managerial prejudice against 3 disability diagnoses (i.e. psychiatric, physical disability and pending diagnosis) compared to a control group in a return-to-work scenario.

Working managers (N = 238) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 scenarios containing medical documentation for a fictional employee that disclosed either the employee's psychiatric disability, physical disability, or a pending diagnosis. The authors also collected a separate sample (N = 42) as a control group that received a version of the medical documentation but contained no information about the disability diagnosis.

Compared with employees without stated disabilities, employees with a psychiatric disability were evaluated as more aggressive toward other employees, less trustworthy and less committed to the organization. Compared to employees with either physical disabilities or pending diagnoses, employees with psychiatric disabilities were rated as less committed to the organization. The authors discuss implications for future research and the trade-offs inherent in disability labeling and disclosure.

The current study extends prior research by examining a broader range of outcomes (i.e. perceived aggressiveness, trustworthiness and commitment) and moving beyond performance evaluations of employees with disabilities. The authors also assess the relative status of a “pending diagnosis” category—a type of disclosure often encountered by managers in many jurisdictions as part of accommodating employees returning to work from medical-related absence.

Race scholars often refer to the colonization of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and the enslavement of Africans as a founding moment in the making of today's racial hierarchies. Yet their narrative of this initial moment often mischaracterizes early European states, erases Indigenous and African states, and naturalizes racial group belonging. Such practices are counterproductive to the antiracist project. Following the lead of decolonial scholarship, much recent work by historians has sought to recover and reconstruct the institutions, social structures, and agency of African and Indigenous peoples, as well as revisit assumptions about European power, institutions, and agency in their historical encounters with their continental “others.” I highlight the potential of this approach for sociologists of “race” by narrating two significant historical events in the making of the modern Atlantic world: the conquest of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire, and the transatlantic enslavement of subjects of the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo (in today's Angola) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I analyze how particular European, Indigenous, and African actors made decisions in the context of their own and others' historically situated and dynamic political and social structures. I read these historical events through the lens of decolonial scholarship, and sociological literatures on group-making, state formation, and the emergence of capitalism, to make sense of the violent social process that led to the breakup of African, Indigenous, and European political and social structures and the making of colonial and racially hierarchical social structures in the Atlantic world.

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.