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The abuse of older people, often perpetrated by family and friends, is a complex multidimensional social problem. In most Australian jurisdictions, responses are currently limited to either primary...

Objectives We report the results of a randomized controlled trial of police body-worn video (BWV) cameras in an Australian context, with a focus on how cameras influence evidence gathering, court processes/outcomes, and police/public behavior. Methods The 6-month trial undertaken by the Western Australia Police Force involved a sample of officers (N = 498) acting as their own controls with camera use (“treatment”) randomly allocated across shifts. A range of parametric and non-parametric tests were conducted to explore the influence of BWV on interview efficiency, rate/timing of guilty pleas, conviction rates, sanction rates, police use-of-force, assaults against police, and citizen complaints against police. Results The trial generated mixed results in support of this technology within this Australian context. BWV recordings did result in evidence-gathering benefits by producing cost/time efficiencies when taking field interviews. BWV footage had limited impact on court processes/outcomes, with indication that camera evidence encouraged earlier guilty pleas but no corresponding increase in the rate of guilty pleas or convictions. BWV did influence police operational decision-making, with increased sanction rates and use-of-force on treatment days. The extent to which officers engaged with the trial compounded these patterns. There was no evidence that BWV prevents problem behavior, with citizens’ complaints increasing on treatment days and no influence of BWV on rates of assaults against police. Conclusions These findings highlight the need for additional context-specific clarity about why police use BWV cameras. In particular, BWV users should clearly specify the causal mechanisms through which cameras will achieve administrative, evidentiary, operational, and/or problem-prevention goals.

Crime is a complex phenomenon. To understand the commission of crime, researchers must map both the temporal and the spatial processes involved. The current research combines a temporal method of analysis, Behaviour Sequence Analysis, with geospatial mapping, to outline a new method of integrating temporal and spatial movements of criminals. To show how the new method can be applied, a burglary scenario was used, and the movements and behaviours of a criminal tracked around the property. Results showed that combining temporal and spatial analyses allows for a clearer account of the process of a crime scene. The current method has application to a large range of other crimes and terrorist movements, for instance between cities and movements within each city. Therefore, the current research provides the foundation framework for a novel method of spatio-temporal analyses of crime.

This article analyzes police, public, and arrestee survey responses from a single jurisdiction to give a multiple-perspective insight into the use of body-worn video (BWV) cameras by police. Police attitudinal data were collected from before ( n = 190), during ( n = 139), and at the conclusion ( n = 221) of a BWV implementation trial. Public attitudes were collected at the conclusion of the BWV implementation trial via online survey ( n = 995 respondents) and intercept survey ( n = 428 respondents). Arrestee attitudes ( n = 302) were collected for detainees in police custody over a 6-month period immediately preceding the BWV trial. Results showed (a) all three perspectives were supportive of the use of BWV, (b) the extent to which police felt BWV influenced their behavior tempered during the trial, (c) the public who had encountered BWV-wearing officers and the arrestee sample indicated limited belief that BWV would reduce bad behavior, and (d) there was clear contention about the policy and practice decisions around recording. These findings have significance for BWV trials, commenting on the importance of collecting police attitudes at multiple points, separating the attitudes of public who did encounter police-wearing BWV, and data collection/policy for evaluation outcomes.

Students buying custom-written assignments and submitting these as their own – or contract cheating – is a particularly serious form of academic misconduct. However, compared with other forms of plagiarism and cheating, comparatively few students engage in contract cheating. This chapter discusses two main perspectives that may explain why students do not engage in contract cheating: criminological theories, and the role of psychological individual differences. The authors present a modified routine activity theory of crime, which suggests that barriers to contract cheating will make it a low-frequency event to begin with, and that strengthening those barriers may reduce its incidence further. In addition, the rational choice theory of crime proposes that people’s reasons for engaging in crime-like behaviours are important. The authors outline the findings of their research on the reasons why students do not engage in contract cheating, including how individual differences in students’ psychological profiles are related to their reasons for not cheating. Compared with research that seeks to explain why students cheat, research examining why students do not cheat is scant. Thus, this chapter concludes by pointing to some of the many possible directions for future research on this topic.

In an applied criminology context, recent meta-analyses and randomized control trials have demonstrated the benefits of targeting police patrols at hot spots or concentrations of street level crime...

The Western Australian Police piloted an 8-month small-scale targeted burglary prevention initiative involving distribution of crime prevention pamphlets to burglary victims and their immediate neighbors in the few days directly after victimization. External researchers then undertook a post hoc evaluation of this intervention, examining the impact with a pre- and post-comparison using Ratcliffe’s (Near-repeat calculator (version 1.3), Temple University, Philadelphia, 2009) near-repeat calculator (using 50 m and 5-day intervals for space and time, respectively), analysis of police records relating to the implementation of the intervention, and an online survey of residents who had been scheduled to receive the burglary prevention information. Relative to the pre-intervention period, the near-repeat calculator demonstrated a significant reduction in near-repeat residential burglary (within 0–5 days and 1–200 m from the victim) but no corresponding reduction in same-address repeat victimization (within 0–5 days). Analysis of police records explained this unexpected pattern, revealing an implementation issue had resulted in only 23% of victim addresses receiving the treatment pamphlet. Despite low-response rates to the online survey limiting the strength of the conclusions possible from this data source, trends were indicative of the pamphlet changing residents’ behaviors to reduce the opportunity for burglary. These results add support to prior findings demonstrating police can use victimization information to work in a targeted, timely manner and reduce the risk of burglary. It also emphasizes the importance of good data management practices when undertaking prevention initiatives to ensure programs are delivered as intended.

Contract cheating is a critical emerging threat to academic integrity in higher education. Although some situational predictors of student engagement in contract cheating are known, little is known about the psychological predictors of contract cheating. Intentions are a key predictor of future behavior. Thus, in this study, students' (N = 459) intentions to engage in contract cheating were examined in an extended Theory of Reasoned Action (TPR) model via a cross-sectional survey. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism were included in the TRA model as precursors of attitudes and subjective norms, and anticipated guilt and shame were included as mediators between attitudes and norms, and intentions. Structural equation modeling and analysis of mediation paths revealed that psychopathy and Machiavellianism did not directly predict contract cheating intentions. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism predicted contract cheating intentions via simple and serial mediation paths. These results suggest that contract cheating intentions may be reduced by modifying students' attitudes, subjective norms, or their anticipated moral emotions.

In June 2017, the Australian Law Reform Commission (‘ALRC’) released the Inquiry on Protecting the Rights of Older Australians from Abuse. A national elder abuse prevalence study was a key recommen...

Independent analysis of police, fire, and ambulance calls for service demonstrates common patterns in emergency service activity. Targeted, place-focused interventions have been demonstrated to prevent future problems for emergency services. This research builds on these findings to examine the spatial and temporal intersection of police, fire, and ambulance incidents to explore the potential utility of enhanced collaboration between emergency-first responders. Using police and fire data from Surrey, BC, Canada, from 2011 to 2013, spatial and temporal patterns of police-, fire-, and ambulance-related incidents were examined. Initial analyses demonstrate that 36% of the City’s area experienced 72% of incidents responded to over this 3-year study period. Focusing on this high-volume area, the spatial and temporal intersection of these incident types was explored. Spatially, lattices of varying cell sizes (250 m, 500 m, and 1,000 m) were placed over the study area. Temporally, incident volume was examined across the entire 3-year study period, and at yearly and monthly intervals. Incidents were placed within these spatial and temporal frameworks and visual inspection was utilized to assess the convergence of service demand. Regardless of the cell grid size, police, fire, and ambulance incidents were spatially and temporally concentrated, with the top 10% of cells accounting for approximately 50% of all incidents across all services. Furthermore, there was considerable spatio-temporal convergence in cells which account for the top decile of call volume for all incident types. A 2 × 2 typology is proposed to classify locations (in this case grid cells) based on (1) the frequency at which they generate high demand for services (sporadic versus persistent), and (2) the combination of agencies required to respond to high demand problems (single versus convergent). The spatial and temporal convergence of emergency service problems observed in this study suggests that an interagency approach to problem identification will enhance problem analysis processes. Working in conjunction with established problem-focused intervention strategies (such as problem-oriented policing), the volume-service typology provides a framework that can contribute to the development of appropriate problem-responses. This, we hope, will support emerging efforts to increase the extent to which emergency-first responder agencies collaborate to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce harm.

Contract cheating, or plagiarism via paid ghostwriting, is a significant academic ethical issue, especially as reliable methods for its prevention and detection in students’ assignments remain elusive. Contract cheating in academic assessment has been the subject of much recent debate and concern. Although some scandals have attracted substantial media attention, little is known about the likely prevalence of contract cheating by students for their university assignments. Although rates of contract cheating tend to be low, criminological theories suggest that people who employ ghostwriters for their assignments are likely to re-offend, and little is known about re-offence rates in this form of academic misconduct. We combined previously-collected datasets (N = 1378) and conducted additional, and previously-unreported, analyses on self-report measures of contract cheating prevalence. We found that few students (3.5%), on aggregate, ever engaged in contract cheating but this varied substantially among samples (from 0.3% to 7.9%). Of those who ever engaged in contract cheating, 62.5% did so more than once. The data also suggested that engagement in contract cheating is influenced by opportunity. These figures may help policy makers, and researchers who are creating contract cheating detection methods, to estimate base rates of contract cheating and the likelihood of re-offence.

Objectifs : La production illicite de cannabis sur des proprietes residentielles cree des problemes de sante et de securite importants. Sante Canada accorde des licences individuelles pour la production de cannabis medical a usage personnel, a condition que ces personnes respectent tous les reglements pertinents. Sante Canada n’inspecte pas les activites des titulaires de licences pour assurer leur respect des reglements, et les lois sur la protection de la vie privee empechent Sante Canada de donner des renseignements sur les titulaires de licences a des tiers. Cette etude examine l’efficacite de cette structure administrative a prevenir la production de cannabis medical dans des residences par des titulaires de licence. Methodes : La production interieure de cannabis necessite une quantite importante d’electricite. A partir de 2005, les adresses de Surrey, en Colombie-Britannique, ayant une consommation energetique particulierement haute ont ete donnees au gouvernement municipal afin d’entreprendre des visites preventives contre l’incendie. Cette etude examine les resultats de ces inspections, lesquelles ont decouvert 1 204 sites de production de cannabis (n = 252 medicale, n = 952 illicite) afin de voir si le processus des licences empeche la production de cannabis dans des residences. Les sites de production illicite inspectes par la ville sont utilises en tant que groupe temoin non aleatoire pour les sites de production medicale. Resultats : Ce processus d’inspection a permis d’identifier un nombre croissant de sites de production medicale (par opposition a illicite) au cours des dernieres annees. Les operations de production medicale avaient moins de chance de se trouver dans une residence. Par contre, les sites residentiels de production medicale detectes se trouvaient dans les memes quartiers de la ville que les sites residentiels de production illicite. Les sites residentiels de production medicale presentaient moins de problemes de securite electrique et biologique que les sites de production illicite. Par contre, tous les sites residentiels de production medicale enfreignaient aux exigences reglementaires et de zonage en ce qui concerne l’utilisation du terrain, la securite de l’immeuble et l’integrite de la structure. Conclusions : La structure administrative actuelle pour octroyer des licences de production de cannabis medical n’empeche pas l’utilisation des residences en tant que sites de production. La theorie des opportunites criminelles est utilisee comme plateforme pour expliquer comment des mecanismes additionnels de prevention situationnelle pourraient etre utilises pour empecher les titulaires de licences de creer des problemes de sante et de securite lies au bâtiment. Abstract: Objectives: Illicit production of marijuana on residential properties creates significant health and safety problems. Health Canada grants licences to individuals to produce medicinal marijuana for personal use, conditional on their compliance with all appropriate regulations. Health Canada does not inspect licensees’ activities to monitor regulatory compliance, and privacy legislation prevents Health Canada from sharing licence holders’ details with third parties. This research examines how effective this administrative structure is at preventing medicinal marijuana from being produced in residential buildings by licence holders. Methods: The indoor production of marijuana requires substantial amounts of electricity. From 2005, addresses in Surrey, British Columbia, with exceptionally high power consumption have been provided to the municipal government for the purposes of undertaking fire safety inspections. This paper examines the outcome of inspections at 1,204 marijuana-production sites ( n = 252 medicinal, n = 952 illicit) to see whether the licensing process prevents marijuana production in residential buildings. The illicit-production sites inspected by the city are used as a non-random comparison group for the medicinal sites. Findings: This inspection process has identified an increasing number of medicinal- (relative to illicit-) production sites in recent years. Medicinal-production operations were significantly less likely to be located in residential buildings. However, the medicinal residential sites that were detected were located in equivalent parts of the city to the illicit residential operations. Residential medicinal-production sites presented fewer electrical and biological safety problems relative to illicit-production sites, but all residential medicinal-production sites breached zoning and legislative requirements relating to land use, building safety, and structural integrity. Conclusions: The current administrative structure for licensing medicinal marijuana production does not prevent residential buildings from being used as marijuana-production sites. Routine activity theory is used as a platform to explain how additional situational prevention mechanisms can be used to prevent licensed medicinal marijuana production from creating building-related health and safety problems in the future.

Environmental criminology theory has established that crime is non-random across time and space, instead clustering in specific, predictable ways. This has resulted in the development of theories that have helped generate a suite of highly effective, targeted crime prevention tools. Although access to high-quality temporal and spatial fire event data has improved in recent decades, the nexus between spatial/temporal clustering, theory, and targeted fire prevention remains largely unexplored. To address this, the current paper compares the temporal and spatial distributions of residential structure fire and residential burglary within a North American city over a three year period. This analysis reveals (a) overlapping spatial clustering for these two incident types, and (b) distinct temporal patterns; all of which can be explained by the logic underpinning environmental criminology theory. The extrapolation of these findings to targeted fire prevention is discussed with respect to the opportunity this presents for the fire service.

Introduction In 2008, Surrey Fire Services, British Columbia, commenced a firefighter-delivered, door-to-door fire-prevention education and smoke alarm examination/installation initiative with the intention of reducing the frequency and severity of residential structure fires in the City of Surrey. Method High-risk zones within the city were identified and 18,473 home visits were undertaken across seven temporal delivery cohorts (13.8% of non-apartment dwellings in the city). The frequency and severity of fires pre- and post- the home visit intervention was examined in comparison to randomized high-risk cluster controls. Results Overall, the frequency of fires was found to have reduced in the city overall, however, the reduction in the intervention cohorts was significantly larger than for controls. Furthermore, when fires did occur within the intervention cohorts, smoke detectors were activated more frequently and the fires were confined to the object of origin more often post-home visits. No equivalent pattern was observed for the cluster control. Impact on Industry On-duty fire fighters can reduce the frequency and severity of residential fires through targeted, door-to-door distribution of fire prevention education in high-risk areas.

To utilize a “human-in-the-loop” simulation methodology to examine the impact of high-risk environmental contexts on perceptions of victimization risk. Fifty-nine participants navigated a virtual environment and encountered five two-alternative forced-choice decision points, with one alternative representing a high-risk environmental context in each case. Participants risk-aware decision-making was examined as a function of sex and age, both for their decisions overall and also at each specific decision point. Overall differences in total risk-aware decisions were observed for sex (with females more risk-aware) but not age. In addition to this, variation in perceived risk was also observed across the range of high-risk environmental contexts and there was also some indication of varying influence of age and sex on specific types of risk-aware decisions. These results have interesting implications for research into context-specific perceptions of risk. These findings also support a stance that “human-in-the-loop” simulation modeling has good potential to contribute to criminology more broadly.

This research examines systematic variations in residential burglars' domain-specific perceptual and procedural skills. Utilising a formula incorporating frequency of offending, generation of offending-related income, burglary charges, and estimated duration of burglary career, 53 experts and 53 novices were objectively identified from a sample of 209 interviews conducted with incarcerated burglars. The perceptual and procedural burglary skills of these two groups were compared and the results demonstrated important differences indicative of superior domain-specific performance for objectively classified experts. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, along with suggestions for application of this knowledge to crime prevention initiatives.

Previous research evaluating burglars' offending location choices has produced mixed findings about the influence of physical barriers and connectors on offender movement patterns. Consequently, this article utilises the discrete spatial choice approach to formally evaluate the impact of barriers and connectors on residential burglars' macro-level offending location choices. Data from Perth, Western Australia, demonstrated that physical barriers and connectors exert significant influence on offender decision-making at this level, and that the influence of impermeable barriers increases with proximity of these obstacles to the offender's point of origin. These findings provide formalised evidence for the independent importance of physical barriers and connectors in offender movement and are discussed with respect to current environmental criminology theory.

A research team completed an exercise to estimate relative rates of Indigenous Family Violence (IFV) which was conducted over a seven-week period at the end of 2004, undertaken for the Commonwealth Attorney General's Department on a national scale and utilised only quantitative information along with the triangulation methodology. The findings of this process supported the uneven distribution of Family Violence Prevention Legal Service units across States/Territories, and also identified a number of priority areas within each State/Territory, which would benefit from additional legal resources.

This chapter provides a summary of three key findings from an evaluation of the Children’s Court in Western Australia (WA). The key findings emerged from an analysis of interviews and focus group discussions with a total of 74 participants (12 Judicial Officers and 62 key stakeholders). The first key finding is that the legislation is being hampered by two interrelated factors: (a) elements of cultural slippage in youth justice policy and practice and (b) system-wide resource impoverishment. The second key finding is that resources are particularly scarce in rural and country regions of WA and this compounds the challenges faced by the Children’s Court with respect to ensuring successful outcomes for Aboriginal children, their families and communities. The third key finding is that there was a general consensus amongst Judicial Officers and stakeholders that multisystemic reform of the youth justice and care and protection jurisdictions is needed to address the issue of over-representation of young Aboriginal people, their families and communities in WA.

This article investigated the role of the recognition criterion in the verbal overshadowing effect (VOE). In 3 experiments, people witnessed an event, verbally described a perpetrator, and then attempted identification. The authors found in Experiment 1, which included a “not present” response option and both perpetrator-present (PP) and perpetrator-absent (PA) lineups, an increased reluctance to identify a person from both lineup types after verbalization. Experiment 2 incorporated a forced-choice procedure, and the authors found no effect of verbalization on identification performance. Experiment 3 replicated the essential aspects of these results. Consequently, the VOE may reflect a change in recognition criterion rather than a changed processing style or alteration of the underlying memory trace. This conclusion was confirmed by computational modeling of the data. The veracity of eyewitness memory is of obvious importance, and the search for ways in which eyewitness accuracy can be improved has focused on the conditions at retrieval, which are under the control of police and other practitioners (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992; Gwyer & Clifford, 1997; Kebbell, Milne, & Wagstaff, 1999; Krafka & Penrod, 1985). A common task of eyewitnesses to crimes is to generate a verbal description of the perpetrator, which in turn may lead to apprehension of a suspect for subsequent identification from a lineup or photospread. Although providing a description is standard police procedure, recent research has suggested that this process can adversely affect subsequent identification performance. Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) first reported an adverse side effect of verbal descriptions. Witnesses viewed a staged crime and then either provided a verbal description of the perpetrator (verbalization condition) or completed an irrelevant filler task (control condition). Following this manipulation, witnesses attempted to identify the perpetrator from a photospread. Witnesses who described the perpetrator were found to make significantly fewer correct identifications than control participants. Schooler and Engstler-Schooler termed the negative influence of verbalization on identification the verbal overshadowing effect (VOE). The initial studies by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) were followed by much research that has replicated the VOE numerous times (e.g., Dodson, Johnson, & Schooler, 1997; Fallshore & Schooler, 1995; Ryan & Schooler, 1998; Schooler, Ryan, & Reder, 1996) and across several domains (e.g., basic color memory; Brandimonte, Schooler, & Gabbino, 1997; wine identification, Melcher & Schooler, 1996; and insight problem solving, Schooler, Ohlsson, & Brooks, 1993). Although the effect has on occasion proved difficult to replicate, a meta-analysis of most published and unpublished VOE research by Meissner and Brigham (2001) confirmed the pervasive presence of a small but significant negative effect of verbalization on identification accuracy. This article investigated the processes underlying the VOE. We first identified and compared the two leading explanations for the effect. This comparison revealed two unresolved empirical issues that, in turn, suggested an alternative explanation for the VOE based on a shift in people’s recognition criterion; that is, an increased reluctance to choose someone from the lineup. This criterion explanation is explored in three experiments that manipulated (a) whether witnesses were able to respond “not present” to a lineup and (b) whether the perpetrator was present. When the “not present” option was available (Experiments 1 and 3), witnesses were less likely to choose someone from a lineup after verbalization, irrespective of whether the perpetrator was present. By contrast, when participants were forced to select someone (Experiments 2 and 3), accuracy of identification was unaffected by verbalization. Taken together, the experiments support the idea that verbalization leads witnesses to adopt a more stringent recognition criterion, thus reducing identification rates. Further support for this conclusion is provided by the application of a computational model, WITNESS (Clark, 2003). The model handled the results from all experiments and showed that the VOE, when present, could be captured by a shift in recognition criterion. A competing implementation that modeled the VOE by degrading the memory trace failed to accommodate the data.

Terrorism and torture are twin evils that have dominated news headlines - particularly since the horrifying events of 9/11. In this thought-provoking volume, scholars from a diverse range of disciplines examine the complex motivational and situational factors contributing to terrorist acts and state-sponsored torture, and the potential linkage between those two heinous human behaviors. They also consider the strategies that might reduce the threat of future terrorist acts, and the perceived necessity to engage in morally reprehensible - and often illegal - torture practices. With its integrated synthesis of contemporary theories and research on the complex dynamics of the terrorism-torture link, this is an authoritative source for scholars and students of psychology, criminal justice, law, media, communication studies, and political science. It will also appeal to students of other disciplines with an interest in the study of terrorism and torture.

Computational criminology is an area of research that joins advanced theories in criminology with theories and methods in mathematics, computing science, geography and behavioural psychology. It is a multidisciplinary approach that takes the strengths of several disciplines and, with semantic challenges, builds new methods for the analysis of crime and crime patterns. This paper presents a developing algorithm for linking the geographic and cognitive psychology sides of criminology research with a prototype topology algorithm that joins local urban areas together using rules that define similarity between adjacent small units of analysis. The approach produces irregular shapes when mapped in a Euclidean space, but which follow expectations in a non-Euclidean topological sense. There are high local concentrations or hot spots of crime but frequently there is a sharp break on one side of the hot spot and with a gradual diffusion on the other. These shapes follow the cognitive psychological way of moving from one location to another without noticing gradual changes or conversely being aware of sharp changes from one location to the next. This article presents a pattern modeling approach that uses topology to spatially identify the concentrations of crime and their crisp breaks and gradual blending into adjacent areas using the basic components: interior, boundary and exterior. This topology algorithm is used to analyze crimes in a moderate sized city in British Columbia.