Researching the use of force: The background to the international project

This article provides the background to an international project on use of force by the police that was carried out in eight countries. Force is often considered to be the defining characteristic of policing and much research has been conducted on the determinants, prevalence and control of the use of force, particularly in the United States. However, little work has looked at police officers’ own views on the use of force, in particular the way in which they justify it. Using a hypothetical encounter developed for this project, researchers in each country conducted focus groups with police officers in which they were encouraged to talk about the use of force. The results show interesting similarities and differences across countries and demonstrate the value of using this kind of research focus and methodology

Innovations in Criminal Justice Research

ARTICLES: : 1. Editorial 2. A report on the Fourth colloquium on crime and criminal policy in Europe - M. Joutsen 3. Victimization surveys: recent developments and perspectives - P. Wetzels, T. Ohlemacher, C. Pfeiffer and R. Strobl 4. Comment on 'Victimization surveys' - P. Mayhew 5. the influence of the specific formulation of questions on the results of victim studies - H. Kury 6. Medical prescription of narcotics in Switzerland: basic issues and research plan - M. Rihs-Middel 7. Comment on 'Medical prescription' - A. Kreuzer 8. The custodial crisis in Europe: inflated prison populations and possible alternatives - P. Tournier 9. What can we do about prison overcrowding? - A. Kuhn 10. Overcrowding - not the only crisis in the custodial system - K. Sessar 11. Varia: M. Joutsen on the Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice System; 12. K. Boers on crime, fear of crime and social transition in Germany; 13. E. Leuw on two 'Occasional papers' 14. Crime institute profile: Research Unit on Criminology and Criminal Investigation within the Federal Criminal Police Offic

Linking optical and infrared observations with gravitational wave sources through variability

Optical and infrared observations have thus far detected more celestial cataclysms than have been seen in gravity waves (GW). This argues that we should search for gravity wave signatures that correspond to flux variability seen at optical wavelengths, at precisely known positions. There is an unknown time delay between the optical and gravitational transient, but knowing the source location precisely specifies the corresponding time delays across the gravitational antenna network as a function of the GW-to-optical arrival time difference. Optical searches should detect virtually all supernovae that are plausible gravitational radiation sources. The transient optical signature expected from merging compact objects is not as well understood, but there are good reasons to expect detectable transient optical/IR emission from most of these sources as well. The next generation of deep wide-field surveys (for example PanSTARRS and LSST) will be sensitive to subtle optical variability, but we need to fill the ``blind spots'' that exist in the Galactic plane, and for optically bright transient sources. In particular, a Galactic plane variability survey at 2 microns seems worthwhile. Science would benefit from closer coordination between the various optical survey projects and the gravity wave community.Comment: 14 pages, no figures. Contribution to 12th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshop. Submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit

The Forgotten Nonvictim

One main target of victim surveys is to draw a more realistic picture of crime by asking people whether they had suffered a criminal incident during a given reference period (mostly twelve months). The same instrument is usually employed for the study of the causes and consequences of victimization as well. This leads to some serious methodological and substantive problems. The differentiation between victims and nonvictims might be erroneous because by using short reference periods victims are excluded and thereby turned into nonvictims, although they may display the behavior and attitudes of victims. On the other hand, the commonly observed memory decay is treated as a methodological bias although forgetting can be a decision not to accept the role of a victim as well. Thus, the victim in a legal sense is ‘in fact’ a nonvictim. These problems will be discussed by using some empirical data from a German study on restitution and punishment, with victimization as one of the independent variables. </jats:p