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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the temporary disbandment of a gang unit on collecting gang intelligence and arresting gang members in one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Policing Areas.

An interrupted time series methodology (ARIMA) is utilised to examine 1,429 field interview cards and 1,174 arrests of gang members that occurred from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2011 within one police division.

Results indicated that the dismantling of the gang unit negatively impacted the collection of intelligence on gang members by officers, regardless of whether the officers were officially serving in the gang unit. Suppression efforts by gang unit officers also resulted in a sustained decline.

Given that many urban centres have specialised gang units, this study demonstrates how organisational turnover or disbandment of a gang unit negatively impacts a department’s ability to deal with local gang issues. Furthermore, these finding suggest that police organisations should consider such ramifications on intelligence-based policing activities.

Alternative education settings (AES; i.e., self-contained alternative schools, therapeutic day treatment and residential schools, and juvenile corrections schools) serve youth with complicated and often serious academic and behavioral needs. The use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) and practices with Best Available Evidence are necessary to increase the likelihood of long-term success for these youth. In this chapter, we define three primary categories of AES and review what we know about the characteristics of youth in these schools. Next, we discuss the current emphasis on identifying and implementing EBPs with regard to both academic interventions (i.e., reading and mathematics) and interventions addressing student behavior. In particular, we consider implementation in AES, where there are often high percentages of youth requiring special education services and who have a significant need for EBPs to succeed academically, behaviorally, and in their transition to adulthood. We focus our discussion on: (a) examining approaches to identifying EBPs; (b) providing a brief review of EBPs and Best Available Evidence in the areas of mathematics, reading, and interventions addressing student behavior for youth in AES; (c) delineating key implementation challenges in AES; and (d) providing recommendations for how to facilitate the use of EBPs in AES.

Black fathers, and specifically fathers who identify as African American, represent a group of parents who are at once not well understood and pervasively stereotyped in negative ways. In this chapter, we describe the risks and resilience of Black fathers and their children, with a special focus on mental health and coping with stress. We emphasize a cultural practices approach that takes into account both the risks specific to Black fathers’ capacity to parent their children and a theoretical foundation for understanding the inherent strengths of Black men and their families. Finally, we address the need for early childhood educators to partner with Black fathers as a means to best support children and their families.

The aim of this chapter is to apply a Feminist Social Constructionist (FSC) epistemological stance to the analysis of the literature on sexual harassment and aggression in the workplace. Research demonstrates that institutions and their policies are ineffective in addressing sexual harassment and that, for the most part, perpetrators are not sanctioned. This chapter deconstructs the ways in which Canadian policies and systemic variables serve to silence victims of workplace abuse and, consequently, protect perpetrators. To this end, we review the definition, legislation and policies related to sexual harassment. Next, factors that lead to risk, reporting and silencing are assessed. As well, organizational responses are analysed to identify institutional factors that result in creating environments that serve to perpetuate sexism, and the resulting victimization of workers with little to no change in the number of perpetrators being implicated.

This review integrates and builds linkages among existing theoretical and empirical literature from across disciplines to further broaden our understanding of the relationship between inequality, imprisonment, and health for black men. The review examines the health impact of prisons through an ecological theoretical perspective to understand how factors at multiple levels of the social ecology interact with prisons to potentially contribute to deleterious health effects and the exacerbation of race/ethnic health disparities.

This review finds that there are documented health disparities between inmates and non-inmates, but the casual mechanisms explaining this relationship are not well-understood. Prisons may interact with other societal systems – such as the family (microsystem), education, and healthcare systems (meso/exosystems), and systems of racial oppression (macrosystem) – to influence individual and population health.

The review also finds that research needs to move the discussion of the race effects in health and crime/justice disparities beyond the mere documentation of such differences toward a better understanding of their causes and effects at the level of individuals, communities, and other social ecologies.

How rural libraries influence their communities’ development is shown in a number of studies, and many of those rural libraries have focused on their roles in increasing the accessibility of technology for their local community. However, few focused on how rural libraries are immersed in their surrounding natural environment to empower the community members’ learning about and with nature. Also, there have been rare examples of rural libraries that support not only their local community but also another country’s sustainable development. The Baramsup Picturebook Library, located in a rural area in South Korea, is an exemplary case because it has provided a large range of programming and services for diverse groups of people (i.e., from children to older adults) from diverse levels of communities – from the local communities around the library to the global communities of a developing country, Laos. Through qualitative content analysis of an interview with the library’s director as well as their official blog and articles and reports from magazines, this chapter presents a case study of this library. The library’s services and programs are demonstrated under three themes: (1) rural, local communities: cultivating the book culture; (2) local and regional communities: empowering children’s ecological sensitivity; (3) with global communities: building school libraries for children in Laos. This case study of the Baramsup Picturebook Library provides conceptual and practical insights into how rural and small libraries initiate changes in people and communities, thereby impacting sustainable social changes in larger communities.

For much of its 43-year history, the community college sector in Jamaica has been plagued by perceptions of inferior status and mediocre tertiary education offerings. The Jamaican colleges have responded to the criticisms by aggressively pursuing quality assurance initiatives such as program accreditation, expanded course offerings, and ongoing curriculum review. This chapter traces the birth and development of the community college movement in Jamaica and the Caribbean and acknowledges the significant achievement of the Jamaican colleges in increasing access to tertiary education. The chapter also examines threats to the open access policy that may have serious implications for education equity and quality. These include inadequate funding, limited infrastructure to support the curriculum, low enrolment of specialized groups, and unsatisfactory completion and graduation rates. Recommendations for policy and practice are proposed.

This study evaluated and compared the abilities of women (n = 50) between the ages of 25 and 45 residing in the UK to locate and manipulate information on nutrition labels prepared in accordance with US regulations (i.e. Nutrition Facts labels) and those prepared in accordance with the EU Directive and UK Food Labelling Regulations 1996. It also assessed their ability to assess the accuracy of nutrient content claims. Study findings indicate that the women could locate and manipulate information on both labels equally well. However, they were significantly more able to assess nutrient content claims using the Nutrition Facts label. The research findings suggest EU labelling changes that may facilitate consumer use of labels in making dietary planning decisions.