If titan prisons are back on the agenda, we must know more about the one we already have

Last week the government announced plans to conduct feasibility work on what would be Britain’s largest prison, citing a need for new capacity and a concern to close older and more expensive facilities. The government is pointing to HMP Oakwood, the 1600 place G4S prison which opened last year, as an illustration of the efficiencies achieved by prisons of this size. However Rob Allen questions whether the data for Oakwood is as clear as the government has tried to suggest

Without a pause in UK justice reforms there is a risk that enormous damage will be done to the day-to-day functioning of criminal justice in England and Wales

Last week Tim Newburn argued that Cameron’s crime speech was a delicate balancing act between different constituencies within the Tory party. In this post Rob Allen takes further issues with the government’s rhetoric, suggesting that writing what is seemingly an open cheque for prison expansion is something Cameron may come to regret

City of Milwaukee's Fiscal Condition: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

This report presents an analysis of the fiscal condition of the City of Milwaukee government, applying a professional financial evaluation system of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). The city conducted this type of analysis internally during the 1990s, but it has done nothing similar this decade. In March 2009, the Forum released an evaluation of the finances of Milwaukee County also using the ICMA methodology. Milwaukee's city government currently is experiencing serious financial difficulties. The recession hit Milwaukee hard, as it has the region and state, and the negative impact on Milwaukee's businesses and property values has had financial repercussions on city coffers. In addition, the massive decline in stock prices has devalued pension investments. While ranked the second most secure public pension fund in the nation prior to the economic downturn, Milwaukee's pension fund now has an unfunded liability of more than $700 million

Wholesale changes to the probation system should be slowed down and piloted

The coalition government is pressing ahead with the privatisation of the probation service in England and Wales in the hope of reducing re-offending rates despite serious concerns about the scale, pace and complexity of the changes. Noting the hitherto tepid political response, Rob Allen examines how the reforms are progressing and what they mean in practice, arguing that the validity of the MoJ’s expectations should have been subjected to much more testing than it has been

Should It Stay or Should It Go?: Exploring the potential for structural reform in Milwaukee County government

Milwaukee County government faces immediate and substantial fiscal and programmatic challenges. The county's structural deficit -- defined as the gap between expenditure needs and anticipated revenues -- is projected to grow from $48 million in 2011 to more than$106 million by 2014, despite several successive years of significant expenditure and staff reductions and anticipation of significant wage and benefit concessions in 2010. This projection is the clearest indication yet that the county's finances are crumbling and that valued services in areas like parks, transit, mental health and public safety face severe degradation without prompt and concerted action. This action could take any of several forms, including the complete elimination of Milwaukee County government. This report, commissioned by the Greater Milwaukee Committee, provides detailed analysis and perspective on the complex issues surrounding that option, as well as other potential structural changes

The Future of Time: UTC and the Leap Second

Before atomic timekeeping, clocks were set to the skies. But starting in 1972, radio signals began broadcasting atomic seconds and leap seconds have occasionally been added to that stream of atomic seconds to keep the signals synchronized with the actual rotation of Earth. Such adjustments were considered necessary because Earth's rotation is less regular than atomic timekeeping. In January 2012, a United Nations-affiliated organization could permanently break this link by redefining Coordinated Universal Time. To understand the importance of this potential change, it's important to understand the history of human timekeeping

Durrington Walls to West Amesbury by way of Stonehenge: a major transformation of the Holocene landscape

A new sequence of Holocene landscape change has been discovered through an investigation of sediment sequences, palaeosols, pollen and molluscan data discovered during the Stonehenge Riverside Project. The early post-glacial vegetational succession in the Avon valley at Durrington Walls was apparently slow and partial, with intermittent woodland modification and the opening-up of this landscape in the later Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic, though a strong element of pine lingered into the third millennium BC. There appears to have been a major hiatus around 2900 cal BC, coincident with the beginnings of demonstrable human activities at Durrington Walls, but slightly after activity started at Stonehenge. This was reflected in episodic increases in channel sedimentation and tree and shrub clearance, leading to a more open downland, with greater indications of anthropogenic activity, and an increasingly wet floodplain with sedges and alder along the river’s edge. Nonetheless, a localized woodland cover remained in the vicinity of DurringtonWalls throughout the third and second millennia BC, perhaps on the higher parts of the downs, while stable grassland, with rendzina soils, predominated on the downland slopes, and alder–hazel carr woodland and sedges continued to fringe the wet floodplain. This evidence is strongly indicative of a stable and managed landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age times. It is not until c 800–500 cal BC that this landscape was completely cleared, except for the marshy-sedge fringe of the floodplain, and that colluvial sedimentation began in earnest associated with increased arable agriculture, a situation that continued through Roman and historic times

Changes in co-existence mechanisms along a long-term soil chronosequence revealed by functional trait diversity

1. Functional trait diversity can reveal mechanisms of species co-existence in plant communities. Few studies have tested whether functional diversity for foliar traits related to resource use strategy increases or decreases with declining soil phosphorus (P) in forest communities. 2. We quantified tree basal area and four foliar functional traits (i.e. nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), thickness and tissue density) for all woody species along the c. 120 kyr Franz Josef soil chronosequence in cool temperate rainforest, where strong shifts occur in light and soil nutrient availability (i.e. total soil P declines from 805 to 100 mg g–1). We combined the abundance and trait data in functional diversity indices to quantify trait convergence and divergence, in an effort to determine whether mechanisms of co-existence change with soil fertility. 3. Relationships between species trait means and total soil N and P were examined using multiple regression, with and without weighting of species abundances. We used Rao’s quadratic entropy to quantify functional diversity at the plot scale, then compared this with random expectation, using a null model that randomizes abundances across species within plots. Taxonomic diversity was measured using Simpson’s Diversity. Relationships between functional and taxonomic diversity and total soil P were examined using jackknife linear regression. 4. Leaf N and P declined and leaf thickness and density increased monotonically with declining total soil P along the sequence; these relationships were unaffected by abundance-weighting of species in the analyses. Inclusion of total soil N did not improve predictions of trait means. All measures of diversity calculated from presence/absence data were unrelated to total soil N and P. There was no evidence for a relationship between Rao values using quantitative abundances and total soil P. However, there was a strongly positive relationship between Rao, expressed relative to random expectation, and total soil P, indicating trait convergence of dominant species as soil P declined. 5. Synthesis: Our results demonstrate that at high fertility dominant species differ in resource use strategy, but as soil fertility declines over the long-term, dominant species increasingly converge on a resource-retentive strategy. This suggests that differentiation in resource use strategy is required for co-existence at high fertility but not in low fertility ecosystems

SSCR Scoping Review: The role of the third sector in delivering social care

Third sector providers have been important in the delivery of social care services for some time. Long before the advent of the ‘contract culture’ that started to emerge in the 1980s, third sector organisations have been involved in the delivery of what we would today define as social care. But this role is changing as the personalisation agenda takes hold and there is a push for closer integration between health and social care services within a context of constrained financial resources

Determining the effects of cattle grazing treatments on Yosemite toads (Anaxyrus [=Bufo] canorus) in montane meadows.

Amphibians are experiencing a precipitous global decline, and population stability on public lands with multiple uses is a key concern for managers. In the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California, USA), managers have specifically identified livestock grazing as an activity that may negatively affect Yosemite toads due to the potential overlap of grazing with toad habitat. Grazing exclusion from Yosemite toad breeding and rearing areas and/or entire meadows have been proposed as possible management actions to alleviate the possible impact of cattle on this species. The primary objective of this study was to determine if different fencing treatments affect Yosemite toad populations. We specifically examined the effect of three fencing treatments on Yosemite toad breeding pool occupancy, tadpoles, and young of the year (YOY). Our hypothesis was that over the course of treatment implementation (2006 through 2010), Yosemite toad breeding pool occupancy and early life stage densities would increase within two fencing treatments relative to actively grazed meadows due to beneficial changes to habitat quality in the absence of grazing. Our results did not support our hypothesis, and showed no benefit to Yosemite toad presence or early life stages in fenced or partially fenced meadows compared to standard USDA Forest Service grazing levels. We found substantial Yosemite toad variation by both meadow and year. This variation was influenced by meadow wetness, with water table depth significant in both the tadpole and YOY models