Violence is a considerable burden on society; the costs incurred through treating victims and apprehending the perpetrators combine with economic costs, the emotional victim costs and costs to the community through increased fear of crime to suggest the costs of violence are significant. A growing number of studies seek to quantify the economic and social impact of crime by assessing the aggregate social costs incurred by criminal offending or by examining the consequences of crime at the individual level, focusing on its effect on the general welfare. Regardless of the approach, tangible and intangible costs are always identified, with the first referring to those directly observable and the latter to the unobservable costs that refer to the physical and emotional impact on crime victims. Despite the importance of both, the available estimates of the intangible costs of violence are very limited, especially in the UK context. This research set out to investigate this gap and provide a new insight into violence costs with a special focus to the intangible losses incurred by pain and suffering. Stated preferences techniques were developed and applied for this purpose, aiming to determine the monetary values of risk reduction of assault-related injuries as assigned by a UK sample to victimisation risks, contingent on the injury severity and psychological outcome. Novel epidemiological research carried out with British Crime Survey and Accident and Emergency data assisted this application, as the drawn evidence formed the basis for constructing plausible scenarios with a representative description of violent victimisation outcomes. The analyses identified that socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity), quality of life indicators (self-rated health, income, marital status, educational qualifications) and offence-specific characteristics (use of force/violence, sustained injuries, injury severity, severity of the emotional effect, alcohol consumption prior to the incident) were not only linked to victimisation risks but also predicted severe emotional responding. Altogether, results suggested a two-dimensional structure underlying victims’ emotional reaction and a similar two-dimensional severity-based structure underpinning the physical aftermath of a violent assault. This research concluded with an array of comparable values that denote public's perception of victimisation risks in monetary terms while it highlighted the issues emerging from such an application. The estimation exercise showed that WTP varied extensively across respondents: women were willing to pay more to reduce victimisation related risks and WTP increased with education, age, income and fear of crime. Previous victimisation and difficulty in answering the valuation questions were negative influences on WTP. The numerical findings reflect the importance of victims' costs and provide metrics useful in assessing the cost-effectiveness of crime interventions. Although the contingent valuation method was effective for analysing intangible victim costs providing support for continuing this line of research, further work is required to substantiate its application and strengthen its methodology within the crime context.

Situation awareness is a key requirement in managing civil contingencies, since major incidents, accidents and natural disasters are by their very nature highly unpredictable and confusing situations. It is important that those responsible for dealing with them have the best available information. The mash-up approach brings together information from multiple public and specialist sources to form a synoptic view, but the controller is still faced with multiple, partial and possibly conflicting reports from untrusted sources. The aim of this research is to investigate how the varying provenance of the data can be tracked and exploited to prioritise the information presented to a busy incident controller, and to synthesise a model or models of the situation that the evidence pertains to. The approach in this research is to develop a system involving novel approach and techniques to allow incident controllers and similar decision makers to augment official information input streams with information contributed by the wider public (either explicitly submitted to them or harvested from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter), and to be able to handle inconsistencies and uncertainty arising from the unreliability of such sources in a flexible way. The system takes in situational data in a structured format, such as the Tactical Situation Object (TSO) proposed by OASIS, a project funded by the European Framework Programme 6 (FP6) and performs an automated logical consistency checking in order to isolate inconsistent and absurd messages, identify the inconsistency between messages and cluster the consistent messages together. Each cluster of consistent messages that gives a possible view of a situation that the evidence pertains to is referred to as a `World View'. The logical consistency checking is performed using Alloy and Alloy Analyzer (sic). Finally, the system presents a set of possible world views, each internally consistent, which are ranked based upon an initial information provenance and quality metric (configured by the user) which is used to score the individual data items. The provenance and quality metric includes those factors that influence trust in information such as identity and location of informant, reputation, corroboration, freshness of information, etc. The result is a set of world views prioritised according to the provenance, trust and information quality metric. This thesis also presents some experimental results as proof of the concept. The experimentation has been carried out with a very small set of data to make the automation (automatic experimentation) feasible. However, a theoretical proof is offered to demonstrate the viability of the concept. Future work includes testing the system in real-life cases, in order to understand the utility of the system.

This thesis enacts a discursive approach to surveillance in the UK, revealing implications for surveillance theory, governmentality theory, and for political and social identity theories. It demonstrates the importance of a discursive approach to surveillance, as an expansion of assemblage models of surveillance. It finds convergence between government, governance, finance and media discourses, sufficient to conceive of these as forming a shared governmental discourse of surveillance. Governmental, financial and media discourses tend to privilege the assumption that surveillance systems are effective and accurate. This ideological function elides the contingent nature of surveillant practices, presenting them as non-political technological functions. Governmentality accounts of surveillance are supplemented by an expanded understanding of identity as a contested concept, or floating signifier, articulated in particular ways in governmental discourses. The discourse theory informed analysis in this thesis points to a distinct articulation of identity – the governmental surveillant identity – a political attempt to fix the meaning of identity, and construct a surveillance-permeable form that draws upon the privileging of technological truth over human truth. Identity is articulated across many of the five discourses studied as socially vulnerable. The core articulation of the problem of governance is that identity is problematised; unreliable for the proper functioning of governance in society. Because identity is vulnerable and because identity’s ontological nature makes it possible, identity must be checked and secured.

This study explores children and mothers' perceptions of children's experiences of divorce in Botswana. To illuminate this complex topic, the study draws on two main overlapping theoretical perspectives. These are the social constructionist approach and the sociology of childhood approach. The concept of resilience as well as some concepts of feminist theory, social network theory and family stress theory were also used in the study. A few children believed their experiences had long-term effects on them. These were mainly children who experienced multiple stressors. For example, they perceived: their relations with mothers (who were their custodial parents) as negative, their relations with fathers were not close, they believed they experienced severe economic declines, they changed neighbourhoods and schools many times, witnessed and / or were victims of parental violence either for many years prior to the separation or continued to be exposed to violence even after the legal divorce. This study has explored an issue that remains largely unexplored in developing countries. Some of its findings are similar in broad terms to those of studies that have been conducted in developed countries, but they manifest themselves differently. For example, women in this study stayed in unhappy marriages for many years partly because of lack of services for them, customary laws that make divorce more difficult for women than for men, cultural expectations that require women to persevere in order to preserve their marriages and fear of stigma as well as economic hardships. Therefore when violence occurred, its impact on their children can be much more severe compared to their counterparts in developed countries. Findings of this study are also manifested differently from those of studies from developed countries in relation to children's experiences of economic hardship during the post-divorce period. Studies from both developing and developed countries attest to the low family income in maternal custody families following divorce. However, children in developing countries such as Botswana experience more severe economic hardships than their counterparts in developed countries because welfare programmes in the countries are less generous and the criteria used to determine eligibility exclude able-bodied unemployed mothers. The major policy implications arising from this study that need close attention therefore are: the need to improve the economic circumstances of children, the need to reduce if not eliminate children's exposure to parental violence, as well as the need to educate parents about how they can help their children to cope with the divorce process.

Through a re-examination of the issue of moral panics, with particular reference to sociological work around ideas of ‘risk’ and a ‘culture of fear’, this thesis attempts to examine the emergence of the social problem of ‘antisocial behaviour’. Situated in part within the changing political terrain of the 1990s, the emergence of the politics of behaviour is related to the diminution of the human subject and the development of a therapeutic culture - both trends helping to lay the basis for an engagement by the political elite with the ‘vulnerable public’. These developments are traced through the 1980s and 1990s to illustrate the construction of the problem of ‘antisocial behaviour’, with particular reference made to the shift in left-wing thought from radical to ‘real’. Using the example of the Hamilton curfew in the west of Scotland, empirical research with adults and young people, and media coverage of this safety initiative, are examined to explore the idea of a ‘culture of fear’. The legitimation of the curfew justified by various claimsmakers is examined to indicate the emergence of the new ‘amoral’ absolute of safety. The experience of the curfew for the local people is also analysed and the contradictions between local concerns and those of the authority are contrasted. Finally, through exploring the changing meaning of the term ‘antisocial behaviour’ and its growing politicisation, the emergence of this social problem is related to the deterministic and managerial form of politics that emerged at the end of the 20th century.

No description available.

Previous analyses of homelessness have been accused of lacking theoretical and conceptual clarity. This study aimed to rectify this through an analysis of data collected using a qualitative longitudinal research methodology on the transitions through homelessness made by twenty-eight people in a Scottish city. Three key factors were found to influence the transitions the participants made – the access to different forms of capital (the resources) they had; their social networks and relationships; and experiences of ‘edgework’ (experiences of traumatic risk situations, such as domestic violence; or of voluntary risk taking such as drug use; that encapsulate the need to negotiate risk on both emotional and physical levels). These factors may affect anyone’s lives, but only when their resources are depleted to the point they have to rely on the state in this way do they become ‘homeless’ and enter the material and emotional ‘reality ‘ of homelessness. This is the new theory on homelessness, causation and individual actions, developed here – the ‘stressed’ theory. By the end of the research the majority of the participants (nineteen) were living in their own tenancies. It may have appeared that those who had their own tenancy had made integrative transitional passages out of homelessness, however the majority of the participants were actually found to be ‘flip-flopping’ on the edge of society, whether still homeless or not. When the fundamental structural reality they operated in had not changed, their risk of homelessness and the motivation for actions that appeared to have led to their homelessness, remained. Actions they engaged in to assert their agency were also actions that were motivated by, and then recreated, the structural reality they operated within – a reality of marginality and a poverty of resources. This was also what provided the rationale for actions that may appear irrational, such as drug use, in the face of making a transition out of homelessness. A key aspect of these transitions however was that desp

No description available.

An investigation was carried out into all drug-related deaths that occurred within the Strathclyde Police region of Scotland over the 17-year period, 1985-2001. Deaths involving heroin, methadone, dihydrocodeine or cocaine were the focus of this thesis. In total, more than 1,000 cases were reviewed. By extracting data from the toxicology report and police sudden death report, changes in patterns and trends of drug misuse were highlighted which coincided with concurrent changes to legislation and medical care. This is a novel approach to the investigation of drug-related deaths within this jurisdication. Over the study period 869 heroin positive drug-related deaths were identified, in 95% of which what drug was the sole or the major contributory causal factor. The majority of these deaths involved males. The average age of all individuals increased slightly from 26 years to 29 years over the study period. The individual had a history of drug misuse in 95% of cases and of those, 92% were known to abuse drugs intravenously. Approximately one quarter of individuals resided alone and over one-half resided with other people, primarily their parents or (common law) partners/spouses. The individual was homeless in 14% of cases. Of this group, 70% resided in a hostel. The remainder had no fixed abode. Of cases where the postal code was known, 74% resided within the Greater Glasgow Health Board area. In the last year of the study deaths of individuals residing in the Ayrshire and Arran Health Board area increased sharply compared to a decrease in deaths reported in all other areas. Approximately two-thirds of individuals resided in areas of high deprivation (categories 6 and 7). The locus where the body was found was primarily in a dwelling (73%), usually the individual’s own home. From the circumstances surrounding the deaths it was ascertained that the individual was alone at the time of death in just under half the cases, highlighting the risk of taking drugs in isolation.

Why do public policy systems sustain chronic conditions despite general consensus that these conditions are detrimental to overall performance? The answer is because they are, in one way or another, sustainable. Systems find ways of sustaining manageable and acceptable equilibrium between demand for their services and their supply. Yet in doing so, they develop ways of coping with and normalizing situations of chronicness. This research is about chronic capacity stress (CCS) in a large and complex public policy system. CCS may be caused by excessive demand for services. It may also be caused by inadequate supply. Either way, it is a property of sustainable equilibrium between the two, and therefore must be understood in these dynamic terms rather than as just the product of one or the other. I examine overcrowding in the England and Wales prison system as an archetypal case of CCS. It starts with the assumption that the prison system should in theory be set up to deal with the demands made upon it. In doing so, it examines the way in which the system itself has coped with, normalized, and sustained crowding over the years. I have conducted in-depth interviewing with former ministers, top officials, governors, and other key actors, as well as extensive quantitative analysis covering three decades. I develop four inter-related themes as a part of a ‘problematique’ which explains why CCS is sustained: ambivalence towards rehabilitation, coping and crisis culture, benign resistance, and obsolescence and redundancy. Constrained autonomy of actors and their adaptive behaviours are key to understanding how the system sustains CCS, and how it is able to function despite CCS. Ultimately, I show how three groups of public policy theory – public choice, cultural theory, and governance - are vital aspects of an overall explanation, but that independently they are insufficient to explain why chronicness sustains, and therefore must be integrated into a more holistic, governance-style explanation. CCS can be seen as a function of governance dysfunction.