The culture of honor theory proposed by Nisbett and Cohen (1996) addresses the historically higher rates of violent crime in the Southern United States, as well as the disparities that can be observed in the laws, beliefs, and social expectations between the South and other regions. Previous research has reported significant differences between the beliefs of acceptable violence among Southerners compared to non-Southerners; however, no research has been conducted comparing different demographic groups of Southerners. The current study sought to evaluate whether there were observable differences between various demographic attributes such as gender, race, age, educational attainment, political affiliation, prior law enforcement or military experience, and adherence to the culture of honor. It was found that there is a statistically significant relationship between experience in the military/law enforcement and culture of honor adherence, as well as statistical significance between an individual’s political affiliation and adherence to culture of honor beliefs.

No / This article explores the implications for human rights and human security arising from the development and use of weapons employing certain toxic chemicals, termed incapacitating chemical agents (ICAs), ostensibly intended for law enforcement operations. Publicly accessible information clearly indicates that China, Israel and the Russian Federation have acquired or developed ICA weapons, and that such weapons are either in the possession, or have been used by law enforcement or security services, of those countries since the coming into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1997. Although there is evidence of potentially applicable dual-use research in additional states, the full nature and purpose of such research, in certain states, is unclear as are the intended applications to which it will be put. Following a survey of state practice, existing obligations upon states derived from relevant international law are examined, specifically the CWC and applicable human rights instruments. Whilst existing international law certainly severely constrains and arguably prohibits the development, acquisition and use of such weapons for law enforcement, there are areas of contested interpretation, which need to be urgently addressed by the international community.

Yes / The analysis of potentially large volumes of crowd-sourced and social media data is central to meeting the requirements of the ATHENA project. Here, we discuss the various stages of the pipeline process we have developed, including acquisition of the data, analysis, aggregation, filtering, and structuring. We highlight the challenges involved when working with unstructured, noisy data from sources such as Twitter, and describe the crisis taxonomies that have been developed to support the tasks and enable concept extraction. State-of-the-art techniques such as formal concept analysis and machine learning are used to create a range of capabilities including concept drill down, sentiment analysis, credibility assessment, and assignment of priority. We ground many of these techniques using results obtained from a set of tweets which emerged from the Colorado wildfires of 2012 in order to demonstrate the applicability of our work to real crisis scenarios.

As public confidence in policing has dropped, demand for ethical behavior from law enforcement officers has grown, and correspondingly, a better understanding of ethics training and ethical acquisition processes has become paramount. Though much literature exists on related topics, understanding of the ethics training for law enforcement officers as it currently exists, has remained murky. This research aimed to gain a better understanding of ethics training for law enforcement in the United States, and as such, to fill the aforementioned gap in the literature. Four research questions were explored in this study including the understanding of current pre-service and in-service ethics training for law enforcement, teaching strategies and instructional methods, and the feasibility of scenario-based ethics training. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 law enforcement training instructors located across the United States. Finally, unique findings, limitations, and directions for further research were discussed.

There is "no one-size-fits-all solution" to school safety (Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, 2022. p. 7). The growing number of school shootings and health problems at schools raise serious questions about the dimensions of school safety that should be measured. Prior extensive surveys measuring elementary student's views of safety in relation to relevant safety issues have not been conducted. There were four objectives for this study: 1) to investigate relevant dimensions of school safety and understand safety procedures that are currently in use; 2) to formulate and organize questions that would be approved to gauge elementary students' perceptions about school safety; 3) to assess validity and reliability of expert's perceived school safety relevancy scores of the SPSS Scale's items and theoretical dimensions of school safety; and 4) to determine whether school guardians and law enforcement share the same concerns about school safety. A preliminary analysis using Q-Method was run which led to approximately 27% reduction of items; differences in officer and teacher ratings were found. The primary task called for law enforcement and school guardians' expert judgement on relevancy and suitability of the SPSS Scale. A series of tests were performed to examine the scores to assess the validity and reliability of the safety expert's ratings. A Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to evaluate target hardening to ascertain whether the safety experts have similar concerns regarding school safety. Findings concluded that there were no statistically significant differences among the experts' ratings of the items; they share the same view. Strong reliability was shown in the close correlation between the expert's judgments of the scale items and the theoretical constructs of school safety. The SPSS Scale's applicability to comprehensively evaluate school safety was raised by agreement over themes discovered on the relevant but unreported school safety issues.

No description available.

No description available.

Reported is an exploratory study of problems and conditions within the organizational work context that influence posttraining use of training outcomes. Training is widely perceived and supported as an effective means for facilitating planned change in organizational performance. Little empirical evidence is available to support such supposition. Of the several studies of training impact, few have focused on why training does or does not produce behavioral change back on-the-job. Accordingly, training management is often incomplete and ineffective. This study employed a questionnaire methodology, directed to a national sample of 391 local, county, and state law enforcement personnel who graduated from a two-week accident investigation training program. Questions elicited ratings on 29 problem/conditions hypothesized within the literature as influential to organizational work behavior. A Likert type scale was used to rate the perceived influence of each problem/condition on the application of specific training outcomes during investigation of a recent most serious accident. An index was used to measure level of training use. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Scheffe's comparisons test, and multiple regression analysis were used to answer study questions. Problem/conditions identified by more than 30% of the respondents as a Moderate or Major impediment to their use of training outcomes were: lack of rewards or incentives to conduct thorough investigations or to use knowledge and skill acquired through training; lack of time to apply investigative techniques by training; lack of resources and equipment necessary to apply training; lack of follow through by agency decision makers to see that training was put into use; and, lack of communication from top administrators indicating how the training was to be used. Isolated as predictors of training use were: the relative seriousness of the situational context within which training was applied; the trainee's opinion of the course; level of specialized training received; relative frequency of investigative assignment; and, level of conflict perceived to exist between behaviors specified by training and agency standard operating procedures. / Ed. D.

The Japanese law Fūzoku eigyō tō no kisei oyobi gyōmu no tekiseika tō ni kansuru hōritsu (風俗営業等の規制及び業務の適正化等に関する法律), commonly known as fūeihō prohibited dancing in nightclubs after midnight (or 1 A.M.). This law was rarely enforced at least between the late 1980s to 2010, but suddenly police began to crack down on nightclubs nationwide for violating the law in the early 2010s. This led to a civil society campaign and eventually to a revision of the law in 2016, seemingly letting nightclubs operate freely in the future. However, studies by Ryan Hartley, for example, point out that the law still poses many difficulties for nightclubs and reports show that nightclub crackdowns have continued after the revision (Hadfield 2018). This research aims to identify, analyse and compare discourses in Japanese and international news articles in the 2010s concerning fūeihō crackdowns, the civil society campaign and the revision, following the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and previous research on the environment in which nightclubs operate in Japan. Four main areas of interest in the articles are: 1) What is the reason mentioned for the 2010s crackdowns, 2) what led to the 2016 revision of the law, 3) fūeihō & the crackdowns in international context, and 4) what does the future look like for Japanese nightclubs. Many of the international articles studied exhibited a lack of researching or possibly deliberate oversimplification of the issue, especially by often stating that the revision has eliminated the “war on dance”. Japanese articles occasionally brought up concerns over issues that the revision of the law could bring including noise pollution and drug trafficking, from which it can be understood that a discourse of nightclubs being apotential source of problems exists. Despite this, all of the articles in one way or another expressed that revising the law is important or would at least bring positive outcomes, for example by increasing tourism.

Job attitudes of rangers play a key role in the implementation and effectiveness of conservation initiatives. As such, scholars have begun to examine the attitudes rangers hold towards their role, organization, and external working environment. However, little is known about work motivation among rangers. Work motivation is a key predictor of employee performance, job attitudes, and well-being. The relationship between work motivation and ranger occupational attitudes may offer insight that conservation agencies can leverage to improve positive job attitudes. Guided by self-determination theory and the criminal justice literature, this study examines the relationship between ranger work motivation and attitudes towards self-legitimacy, job satisfaction, and turnover intent. Using survey data collected from a large, international sample of rangers, path analysis is employed to calculate the effects of different forms of work motivation on job attitudes. Results indicate that autonomous motivation (i.e., intrinsic and identified regulation) are significantly and positively associated with ranger perceptions of self-legitimacy and job satisfaction. Additionally, job satisfaction is significantly and negatively associated with turnover intent. Implications include organizational strategies for enhancing autonomous motivation, such as managerial autonomy support as well as implementing organizational justice in the workplace in both ranger and broader policing contexts. Future research should account for the role of work motivation when examining occupational attitudes and consider integrating self-determined work motivation into existing theories.