Dialogue Police,Decision Making,and the Management of Public Order During Protest Crowd Events

Following the major riots within England in August 2011, the efficacy of public order police decision making was brought into a sharp focus. None the less, the reform of this mode of policing within the UK was already underway with a strong emphasis upon policing through consent and the need to facilitate peaceful protest through dialogue and communication. This paper reports upon a critical ‘test case’ for this ‘new approach’ by analysing the policing of a series of protests against Government policy across 3 days that surrounded a Government party conference in Sheffield, a large city in the north of England. This paper draws out lessons to be learned from what proved to be a highly successful dialogue‐based approach to policing protests. We contend that dialogue and liaison were effective because they allowed for an ongoing dynamic risk assessment that improved command‐level decision making and enhanced police proportionality. The subsequent impact upon crowd dynamics allowed for an improved capacity for proactive public order management, encouraged ‘self‐regulation’ in the crowd, and avoided the unnecessary police use of force at moments of tension. The implications of the analysis for theory and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Post G20: The Challenge of Change,Implementing Evidence‐based Public Order Policing

In the wake of the 2011 ‘riots’, public order policing tactics in England and Wales have once again been brought into question. Yet, the riots came two years since police regulatory authorities in the UK called for fundamental reforms to the policing of public order. Questions are raised about why the change called for appears to have been so slow and what can be done to assist reform. This paper suggests that developing an evidence‐based policing approach within the field of public order policing to inform police decision‐making would provide the answers. By doing so, the paper addresses some of the possible barriers to implementing evidence‐based policing in public order and calls for police academic partnership to overcome these to make ‘change’ an ongoing reality. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Early Western Buddhists: Beachcombers, ‘Going Native’ and Dissident Orientalism

Recent research on the life of U Dhammaloka and other early western Buddhists in Asia has interesting implications in relation to class, ethnicity and politics. ‘Beachcomber Buddhists’ highlight the wider situation of ‘poor whites’ in Asia—needed by empire but prone to defect from elite standards of behaviour designed to maintain imperial and racial power. ‘Going native’, exemplified by the European bhikkhu, highlights the difficulties faced by empire in policing these racial boundaries and the role of Asian agency in early ‘western’ Buddhism. Finally, such ‘dissident Orientalism’ has political implications, as with specifically Irish forms of solidarity with Asian anti-colonial movements. Within the limits imposed by the data, this article rethinks ‘early western Buddhism’ in Asia as a creative response to colonialism, shaped by Asian actors, marked by cross-racial solidarity and oriented to alternative possible futures beyond empire.     

Multiculturalism in Britain and the Political Identity of Europe

The United Kingdom has traditionally been united by culture not ethnicity. Immigration has started to threaten this identity because of racism, lack of forethought and ill-conceived multiculturalism. The storm over Archbishop Rowan Williams' Sharia speech revealed how Islam in particular poses a problem. Williams is right to advocate more political pluralism in the face of variegated religious identities which exercise strong social influence but this needs to be an ‘organicist’ rather than ‘liberal’ pluralism, if Britain's political and religious inheritance is not to be threatened. The Christian character of Britain actually protects a certain pluralist variety and the role of other faiths, because of the peculiar character of Christianity.     

Career guidance and therapeutic counselling: sharing ‘what works’ in practice with young people

Many young people in the UK and across the world, where austerity measures are biting deep, find themselves at a time of crisis and uncertainty in their lives. The assumptions previously held of clear and straightforward career paths are being challenged and ‘career’ has come to mean more than simply ‘work’ or ‘employment’. This has implications for career practice, where career advisers are engaging with a range of complex issues in their guidance interactions with clients. This article draws on research undertaken with therapeutic counsellors into ‘what works’ when counselling young people. It offers career practitioners the opportunity to reflect on four key emerging themes and to consider how the discipline of therapeutic counselling might inform guidance practice.     

Implicit Bias and Policing

In a time when racial prejudice is generally taboo and decision makers, including law enforcement officials, strenuously disavow the use of group‐based stereotypes to make judgments that affect others, one might expect discriminatory outcomes to be unusual. However, research repeatedly indicates that discrimination is pervasive across many domains, and specifically in policing. A major cause of biased policing is likely the implicit biases that operate outside of conscious awareness and control but nevertheless influence our behaviors. Implicit biases (e.g., stereotypes linking Blacks with crime or with related traits like violence or hostility) influence judgments through processes of misattribution and disambiguation. Although psychological science gives us good insight into the causes of racially biased policing, there are as yet no known, straightforward, effective intervention programs. Nevertheless, there are several strands of research that represent promising avenues for further exploration, including intergroup contact, exposure to counter‐stereotypic exemplars, and stereotype negation. Meanwhile, many police departments are adjusting their policies, trainings, and procedures to try to address biased policing and community complaints. Several common themes among those changes include banning racial profiling, collecting data, training officers, reducing discretion, and adopting new technologies. These adjustments are more likely to be successful if they incorporate the understanding that biased policing occurs in the absence of explicitly “racist” thoughts because of well‐documented, pernicious stereotypes that operate largely outside of conscious awareness and control.     

Are Adewale and Ngochi more employable than Jamal and Lakeisha? The influence of nationality and ethnicity cues on employment-related evaluations of Blacks in the United States

ABSTRACT

Previous research has consistently shown that racial bias can influence employers’ perceptions and evaluations of Black individuals in hiring and promotion decisions. However, within-race differences (e.g., skin tone, Afrocentric features) can lead to variation in these decisions. In addition to phenotypical variation, ethnicity cues (e.g., perceived country of origin, name) may be important within-race factors influencing the perception and evaluations of Black job applicants. Using a resume evaluation paradigm, participants evaluated one of three resumes in which the target applicant’s name provided cues about ethnicity (either Black American, Black African, or White American). Results suggest that Black Americans may experience more discrimination in hiring and are generally perceived less positively across several employment-related domains than both White and Black African applicants. Specifically, we find that Black Americans are less likely to be selected for an interview or offered a job and are evaluated more negatively overall relative to Black Africans.     

Variability in the collective behaviour of England fans at Euro2004: ‘Hooliganism’, public order policing and social change

This paper presents an analysis of collective behaviour among England football fans attending the European football championships in Portugal (Euro2004). Given this category's violent reputation, a key goal was to explore the processes underlying their apparent shift away from conflict in match cities. Drawing from the elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour (ESIM) data were obtained using semi‐structured observations and interviews before, during and after the tournament. Qualitative analysis centres first on three key incidents in match cities where the potential for violence was undermined either by ‘self‐policing’ among England fans, or by appropriately targeted police intervention. These are contrasted with two ‘riots’ involving England fans that occurred in Algarve during the tournament. A phenomenological analysis of England fans' accounts suggests that the contexts created by different forms of policing helped bring to the fore different understandings of what constituted proper and possible behaviour among England fans, and that these changes in identity content underpinned shifts toward and away from collective conflict. The implications of this analysis for the ESIM, understanding public order policing, social change and social conflict are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visible minority applicant concerns and assessment of occupational role in the era of community‐based policing

Attempts to recruit minority officers are an integral component of community‐based policing initiatives in Western democracies. To better understand how to optimize these initiatives, 80 African‐Canadian police applicants were surveyed for perceptions of occupational role, career aspirations and obstacles to minority recruitment. Although service to the Black community was a high priority, applicants reported this goal as secondary to providing service regardless of ethnicity. Further, applicants reported they would be as effective policing the White community and more effective policing the Black community than their White counterparts. Racial prejudice on the part of police officers and society were viewed as the most significant obstacles to minority recruitment. Two tests of potential perceptual distortions indicated that applicants perceived African‐Canadian acquaintances to be more frequent targets of police discrimination than they were as individuals, and perceived themselves as relatively less alienated from the police than were the police from their group. Discussion focuses on obstacles to minority recruitment, the fit between applicants' attitudes and the demands of modern policing, and the potential impact of a more ethnically diverse force for police–minority relations. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

UK and Spanish stranger sexual offenders crime scene behaviours and previous convictions: A cross-cultural comparison

International comparisons of previous convictions (PC) and crime scene behaviours (CSB) of stranger sexual offences can inform offender profiling strategies; especially the degree to which pragmatic models cross validate across countries. The present study compared PC and CSB of 474 UK and 418 Spanish cases. CSB and PC were analysed using Chi-square. UK stranger sexual offenders displayed a higher proportion of all CSB analysed. UK offenders also had a significantly higher proportion of PC with the exception of violence offences. There were no significant differences in sexual pre-convictions. In both the UK and Spain the CSB ‘reference to the police’ was significantly association with the PC ‘Criminal damage’ no other similar significant associations were found. Explanations for these findings include differences between the countries in regards to: legislation, crime recording processes, data coding processes, with additional consideration of any cultural, environmental and contextual factors.     

Ethnic Diversity and Differential Policing in Australia: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This paper focuses on three models of policing that have variously been exercised in relation to ethnic minority young people in Australia. As part of this, the paper critically explores policing that is primarily based upon coercion (‘the bad’), and, at its worst, explicitly discriminatory forms of zero tolerance (‘the ugly’), and compares these with police interventions that favour a more constructive and positive community-based approach (‘the good’). The paper provides a comprehensive review of literature on police–ethnic minority youth relations in the Australian context, as well as indicating recent strategic developments within police services around the country.     

Campus conspiracies: security and intelligence engagement with universities from Kent State to counter-terrorism

ABSTRACT

Security and intelligence agency concerns with universities range from the commissioning and protection of security-sensitive research, the ongoing recruitment of staff and students for covert security and intelligence work, as well as prominent counter-terrorist concerns. This is an ethically charged terrain of moral ambiguity which raises issues not only of academic freedom and freedom of speech but a less explored, cross-disciplinary complex of intelligence-led interactions from protection of campus property and personnel to ideological battles at the heart of the Academy itself. Current-day counterterrorism on campus agendas is, then, only an intensified aspect of an historical but ongoing and likely future interface between universities and security and intelligence agencies. Drawing on exemplars from the Kent State University shootings on 4 May 1970 at the height of the Vietnam War to the present era of globalised counter-terrorism, the article uses securitisation theory to conceptualise the historical, contemporary and future parameters of university engagements with the security and intelligence agencies as ‘Incidental’, ‘Incendiary’, and ‘Inevitable’.     

Perceptions of the Nature of Happiness: Cultural,but Related to the Dynamics of the Human Mind and the Gratification of General Needs

In her book ‘Happiness’ Laura Hyman identifies some discourses, as defined by Foucault, about happiness among 19 middle-class respondents in the UK. A discourse is a way of thinking and communicating about some issue, and comparable to a ‘perception’ or a’ view’. The dominant ‘Therapeutic Discourse’, is based on the view that happiness is an individual and normative challenge; it is to be worked on by selfcare and self-knowledge. A somewhat contradictory discourse puts more priority on social relations, as a condition for happiness. Hyman explains the co-existence of these discourses as a consequence of individualization. Individualization puts more priority on individual responsibility, but can easily lead to a neglect of social relations. It is difficult to assess the universality of these discourses, because the sample of respondents is very homogeneous. If individualization is an important factor we might expect different discourses in more collectivistic cultures. There are, however, theoretical reasons to believe that these discourses are rather universal. We may expect that the gratification of general needs is important. If certain needs are not gratified they will get more attention, and more priority, in a discourse about happiness. The ‘Therapeutic Discourse’, more in particular, is apparently a logical consequence of the dynamics of the human mind. The characteristics of the human consciousness clearly support this discourse. We need more empirical research, about discourses in different cultures, to find out for sure!     

The Structure of Frege's Thoughts

Fregean thoughts (i.e. the senses of assertoric sentences) are structured entities because they are composed of simpler senses that are somehow ordered and interconnected. The constituent senses form a unity because some of them are ‘saturated’ and some ‘unsaturated’. This paper shows that Frege's explanation of the structure of thoughts, which is based on the ‘saturated/unsaturated’ distinction, is by no means sufficient because it permits what I call ‘wild analyses’, which have certain unwelcome consequences. Wild analyses are made possible because any ‘unsaturated’ sense that is a mode of presentation of a concept together with any ‘saturated’ sense forms a thought. The reason is that any concept can be applied to any object (which is presented by a ‘saturated’ sense). This stems from the fact that Frege was willing to admit only total functions. It is also briefly suggested what should be done to block wild analyses.     

‘NEET’ believers? An analysis of ‘belief’ on an urban housing estate

This article explores the impact that the experience of deep-seated social exclusion amongst unemployed white young men on a large urban housing estate in Birmingham, UK has on the ways in which they talk about identity, meaning and ‘belief’. Arising from detailed ethnographic fieldwork, the article forwards an analysis of current debates about youth social exclusion and the deployment of the acronym ‘NEET’ with reference to these young men and others like them across the UK. Drawing upon conversations between the author and young men during fieldwork, the article seeks to bridge the gap between social-science-based examinations of youth social exclusion and theological analyses of youth spiritualities to critically interrogate current debates about the nature of ‘belief’ and ‘belonging’. In particular, the article raises a key critical question: is the word ‘belief’ ‘fit for purpose’ when considering the experience of socially excluded young men on urban housing estates?     

On the Connection between Normative Reasons and the Possibility of Acting for those Reasons

According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s (2007) example of Nate. I argue that this counterexample fails since it underestimates the range of cases where agents can act for their normative reasons. Moreover, I argue that a key motivation behind Williams’ claim is compatible with this ‘expansive’ account of what it is to act for a normative reason.     

Police responses to diversity: A social representational study of rural British policing in a changing representational context

In the first decade of the 21st century, British policing faced two new challenges in how it responded to social diversity: As well as instituting reforms in response to a highly publicized report describing the British police as ‘institutionally racist’ (Macpherson, 1999 ), they faced challenges associated with rapid increases in numbers of immigrants into the UK. Studying social representations at such times of change allows access into processes, themes and value systems that may otherwise remain hidden. This paper uses social representations theory to explore interview accounts provided by regular police officers of interactions with members of minority groups. Empirically, we focus on an area of diversity policing that has received relatively little previous attention: Police work in a rural context that has recently played host to large numbers of migrant workers. Our analysis shows that interviews operate as a site of resistance in which respondents attempt to rework hegemonic representations of the police as prejudiced and to re‐present themselves and their work as able to respond appropriately to diversity. Fairness as a defining characteristic of good police practice is a central representational theme that links identity construction processes to police work with minority groups. Recent immigrant groups are represented as both needing and deserving help to assimilate into British culture: Their lack of acculturation and language difficulties provide additional challenges to police work and to how this is judged as ‘fair’. We discuss the broader origins and implications of police officers' understandings of fairness and the use of social representations theory to study representational fields within organizational settings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consolidation,wider reflection,and policy: Response to ‘Super‐recognisers: From the lab to the world and back again’

Here, David Robertson and Markus Bindemann respond to a recent BJP Target Article on ‘super‐recognisers’ (SRs). They outline the need to consider human factors that could influence SR performance after selection and the need for a co‐ordinated effort to ensure best practice in the implementation of SRs in applied contexts.     

The Burden of Geopolitical Stigma: Iranian Immigrants and Their Adult Children in the USA

The overall aim of this paper is to add several dimensions missing from current debates and scholarship on Iranian immigrants, migration, and belonging: The power of global political dynamics in stigmatizing migrants’ identities, the impact of geopolitics on migrants’ quality of life, and the disruptions to belonging and membership as a result of anti-Iranian prejudice. Through the use of in-depth interviews, I examine the experiences of 32 immigrant and second-generation Iranians residing in northern and southern California. The findings of this research demonstrate that the geopolitical relationship between the Iranian government and the USA powerfully impacts the lives of Iranians in the USA. Specifically, global politics facilitate a context that helps stigmatize Iranians’ identities and makes them more prone to experiencing social marginality, anti-Iranian prejudice, racial/ethnic profiling, and discrimination. Ultimately, these experiences put an effective cap on Iranians’ abilities to access opportunity structures and limit their access to belonging and social membership in the USA. An examination of the lived experiences of Iranian immigrants and their adult children offers important empirical and theoretical insight for the impact of contentious global political context on immigrant belonging and membership.     

Cartesian Method and the Aristotelian-Scholastic Method

In book one of the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius is portrayed as a man who suffers because he forgot philosophy. Scholars have underestimated the significance of this portrayal and considered it a literary device the goal of which is simply to introduce the discussion that follows. In this paper, I show that this view is mistaken since it overlooks that this portrayal of Boethius is the key for the understanding of the whole text. The philosophical therapy that constitutes the core of the ‘Consolation’ can in fact be properly evaluated only if we recognize the condition it is designed to cure. Through the portrayal of Boethius's forgetfulness, the ‘Consolation’ illustrates that it is the very nature of philosophical knowledge that makes it susceptible to being forgotten. Philosophical knowledge can (i) turn into misology, when it appears unable to solve certain problems, and (ii) be overrun by strong emotions. The therapy offered in the ‘Consolation’ is designed to make Boethius aware of the ‘fragility’ of philosophical knowledge and show him how to ‘strengthen’ it. He is taught how to more fully embody philosophy's precepts and that philosophy's inability to solve certain problems reveals not its failures but its limits.