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Police procedural justice is essential in shaping police legitimacy and public willingness to cooperate, yet factors that affect police fair treatment of citizens are not fully understood. Using the data of the National Police Research Platform (NPRP), Phase II, this study examines the effects of three key organizational factors (i.e. effective leadership, supervisory justice and department process fairness) on officers’ procedural justice in police stops.

Innovatively, this study links police data with citizens’ data and conducts multilevel analyses on the effects of a host of citizen, officer, incident, and, importantly, agency characteristics on officer behaviors during over 5,000 police stops nested within 48 police agencies.

The results showed that the fairness of the departmental process had a positive effect on officer procedural justice, while the fairness of the supervisor was inversely associated with procedural justice on the street.

The linked data demonstrated that organizational fairness affected street procedure justice.

First-line leaders across the emergency services are instrumental in leading the development of a workforce fit to face current and future challenges. As such in addition to utilising their specific craft, leaders need to be equipped to understand and apply evidence-based practices. With a focus on first-line leadership in policing, this paper will have both national and international resonance for those organisations attempting to embed an evidence-based culture.

The paper utilises a review of literature to develop a viewpoint identifying challenges and benefits of the adoption of evidence-based policing (EBP) by first-line leaders.

First-line leaders, whether police officers, police staff or volunteers, require opportunities to develop their own knowledge, understanding and skills of applying EBP in the workplace. Acknowledging challenges exist in the widespread adoption of EBP, such learning, at the appropriate educational level, will enable leaders to effectively champion the adoption of EBP, informing both their own decision-making and professional practices as well as those across their teams.

The first-line leader role is highly influential, as such, it is essential that these leaders develop their knowledge, understanding and application of EBP in the workplace in order to lead the expected cultural change.

This paper provides a current framework for the understanding of the context and potential impact of educationally levelled formal leadership learning required to champion the broad adoption of EBP across policing.

The purpose of this paper is to give an account for preparative collaboration between the police and municipal eldercare in Sweden concerning missing persons with dementia.

Design/methodology/approach used was a qualitative case study design, consisting of one focus group with representatives for the participating organisations, followed by directed content analysis.

The findings showed a lack of current collaboration and reluctance to new collaborative initiatives. However, when focussing on preparative collaboration of coordinated responses to missing incidents, possibilities for improvement could be identified. The improvements concerned updated personnel response checklists, along with suggestions for an elaborate life story document in eldercare, with police access. Finally, better coordination of the return of the found person and a follow up were proposed.

It is suggested that collaboration must be given different meanings and use different approaches adapted to the different phases in a rescue operation. In the preparation and the response phase, the focus should be on coordination of the resources available. In the pre-planning and prevention phases, as well as in evaluation and learning, horizontal collaboration is more suitable. The amount of data in this study is a research limitation which calls for further research.

It is suggested that collaboration must be given different meanings and use different approaches adapted to the different phases in a rescue operation. In the preparation and the response phase, the focus should be on coordination of the resources available. In the pre-planning and prevention phases, as well as in evaluation and learning, horizontal co-operation is more suitable.

The originality/value of this paper can be found in the novelty of missing person research in Sweden, and in practical suggestions for preparative collaboration concerning persons with dementia who go missing. Finally, it can be found in the suggested need for a more dynamic and process-sensitive view of collaboration in SAR or rescue operations.

Public safety (communicators; e.g. 9-1-1, police, fire and ambulance call-takers and dispatchers), like many other public safety personnel (e.g. police, paramedics), (re)suffer operational stress injuries (OSIs) that are too often hidden and at a prevalence higher than the general population. Unfortunately, there are very little data for OSI rates in Canadian communicators. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the only pan-Canadian study focusing on organizational culture, and its potential influence on OSIs, within the communicator context.

The authors conducted a 179-item online survey of Canadian communicators comprising 17 validated screenings for occupational stress injuries and symptoms and four open-ended questions relating to their agency's organizational culture. The authors thematically analysed participants' open-ended responses and their screening scores.

A semi-grounded thematic approach revealed that managers and supervisors were significant contributors to negative perceptions (n = 165) of organizational culture, potentially resulting in or worsening existing OSIs. Specifically, leadership was viewed as ineffective, inconsistent, unsupportive, abusive and toxic, with limited understanding of communicator roles. Communicators described feeling devalued, particularly when leaders fail to recognize communicator OSIs, which can perpetuate stigma. Conversely, positive leaders (n = 24) were described as supportive, communicative and encouraging.

The findings suggest that while leadership behaviours are a key factor in employee well-being, it varies considerably across agencies, impacting treatment-seeking behaviours. The authors’ new understandings of leaders' roles in OSIs may help reduce the frequency and severity of communicator OSIs, helping ensure that emergency services are delivered to Canadians.

A significant number of criminal and deviant acts are investigated by nonpolice actors. These include private investigators who charge fees for their services, professional services firms such as firms of accountants who also charge fees, in-house investigators employed by private organisations and in-house investigators of public sector organisations who are not sworn police officers. Some of these investigators, such as private investigators, have been exposed in unethical activities such as illegal surveillance and blagging to name some. In this respect, this study aims to uncover the ethical orientations of investigators using cluster analysis.

This study is based upon an online survey of private investigators predominantly in the UK, i.e. investigators beyond the public police. An innovate statistical inferential analysis was used to investigate the sample which resulted in the development of three ethical orientations of such investigators.

Based upon a survey response from 331 of these types of investigators this study illustrates the extent they engage in unethical activities, showing a very small minority of largely private investigators who engage in such activities.

A unique feature of this study is the use of an innovative statistical approach using an unsupervised machine learning model, namely, TwoStep cluster analysis, to successfully group and classify respondents based on their ethical orientation. The model derived three types of ethical orientation: ethical, inbetweeners and risk takers.

Racial stigma and racial criminalization have been centralizing pillars of the construction of Blackness in the United States. Taking such systemic injustice and racism as a given, then question then becomes how these macro-level arrangements are reflected in micro-level processes. This work uses radical interactionism and stigma theory to explore the potential implications for racialized identity construction and the development of “criminalized subjectivity” among Black undergraduate students at a predominately white university in the Midwest. I use semistructured interviews to explore the implications of racial stigma and criminalization on micro-level identity construction and how understandings of these issues can change across space and over the course of one's life. Findings demonstrate that Black university students are keenly aware of this particular stigma and its consequences in increasingly complex ways from the time they are school-aged children. They were aware of this stigma as a social fact but did not internalize it as a true reflection of themselves; said internalization was thwarted through strong self-concept and racial socialization. This increasingly complex awareness is also informed by an intersectional lens for some interviewees. I argue not only that the concept of stigma must be explicitly placed within these larger systems but also that understanding and identity-building are both rooted in ever-evolving processes of interaction and meaning-making. This research contributes to scholarship that applies a critical lens to Goffmanian stigma rooted in Black sociology and criminology and from the perspectives of the stigmatized themselves.

Racism occurs in many ways and varies across countries, evolving and adapting to sociocultural history, as well as contemporary economic, political and technological changes. This chapter discusses the multilevel dimensions of racism and its diverse manifestations across multiracial societies. It examines how different aspects of racism are mediated interpersonally, and embedded in institutions, social structures and processes, that produce and sustain racial inequities in power, resources and lived experiences. Furthermore, this chapter explores the direct and indirect ways racism is expressed in online and offline platforms and details its impacts on various groups based on their intersecting social and cultural identities. Targets of racism are those who primarily bear the adverse effects. However, racism also affects its perpetrators in many ways, including by limiting their social relations and attachments, and by imposing social and economic costs. This chapter thus analyses the many aspects of racism both from targets and perpetrators' perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss impediments in the compilation of an application for a search and seizure warrant for digital evidence and the structure of such a warrant in South African criminal cases.

This paper provides a brief overview of international and local impediments, followed by a detailed discussion of the implications of these impediments and how it is approached in various jurisdictions. The methodology of this paper consists of a literature review.

Addressing the impediments in the compilation of the application and the warrant will be beneficial for forensic investigators, the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the administration of justice in South Africa.

Search and seizures for digital evidence form part of civil, regulatory and criminal search and seizures. This study focuses on the search and seizure of digital evidence in criminal matters pursuant to mainly the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 and the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020.

The originality of this paper lies in the approach to the drafting of applications for search and seizure warrants for digital information in South Africa. The contribution of the study is that, by using this approach, the SAPS can address the impediments during the application and compilation of the warrants, which would enhance the quality of investigations and contribute to the successful investigation and prosecution of crime in South Africa.