Immigrants into Citizens

This paper examines the citizenship test which is part of the UK naturalisation process. The test is based on the government publication Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship. A detailed analysis of its two editions (2004 and 2007) reveals that the conception of the citizen, and the picture of British government and society underlying each are very different. There is, additionally, a mismatch between the rationale offered for the Life in the United Kingdom test and what the latter can in fact test: the attitudes and civic virtues mentioned in the rationale are untestable on-line. A society which aspires to be a democracy, it is argued, needs to scrutinise carefully the fairness and democratic appropriateness of its procedures for admitting new citizens.     

GENDER AND ADOLESCENT RELATIONSHIP VIOLENCE: A CONTEXTUAL EXAMINATION*

A growing body of research examines the problem of adolescent dating violence. In these studies, fairly high rates of female‐to‐male violence have been documented, leading to considerable debate about the role of gender in dating and other partner violence. Drawing from a broader qualitative study of violence in the lives of African‐American youths from a distressed urban community, we weigh in on this debate by providing a contextual examination of the nature, circumstances, and meanings of adolescent dating violence. Our research shows that the meanings and consequences of girls ‘violence are strikingly different than those of boys’, and that both are grounded in gender inequalities. We conclude by discussing the significance of these findings for both feminist and general research on dating violence.     

Violence in and around Entertainment Districts: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Late‐Night Lockout Legislation

Violence in entertainment districts is a major problem across urban landscapes throughout the world. Research shows that licensed premises are the third most common location for homicides and serious assaults, accounting for one in ten fatal and nonfatal assaults. One class of interventions that aims to reduce violence in entertainment districts involves the use of civil remedies: a group of strategies that use civil or regulatory measures as legal “levers” to reduce problem behavior. One specific civil remedy used to reduce problematic behavior in entertainment districts involves manipulation of licensed premise trading hours. This article uses generalized linear models to analyze the impact of lockout legislation on recorded violent offences in two entertainment districts in the Australian state of Queensland. Our research shows that 3 a.m. lockout legislation led to a direct and significant reduction in the number of violent incidents inside licensed premises. Indeed, the lockouts cut the level of violent crime inside licensed premises by half. Despite these impressive results for the control of violence inside licensed premises, we found no evidence that the lockout had any impact on violence on streets and footpaths outside licensed premises that were the site for more than 80 percent of entertainment district violence. Overall, however, our analysis suggests that lockouts are an important mechanism that helps to control the level of violence inside licensed premises but that finely grained contextual responses to alcohol‐related problems are needed rather than one‐size‐fits‐all solutions.     

BODY‐WORN CAMERAS AS A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF DEPOLICING: TESTING FOR CAMERA‐INDUCED PASSIVITY

Contentious debate is currently taking place regarding the extent to which public scrutiny of the police post‐Ferguson has led to depolicing or to a decrease in proactive police work. Advocates of the “Ferguson effect” claim the decline in proactive policing increased violent crime and assaults on the police. Although police body‐worn cameras (BWCs) are touted as a police reform that can generate numerous benefits, they also represent a form of internal and public surveillance on the police. The surveillance aspect of BWCs suggests that BWCs may generate depolicing through camera‐induced passivity. We test this question with data from a randomized controlled trial of BWCs in Spokane (WA) by assessing the impact of BWCs on four measures: officer‐initiated calls, arrests, response time, and time on scene. We employ hierarchical linear and cross‐classified models to test for between‐ and within‐group differences in outcomes before and after the randomized BWC rollout. Our results demonstrate no evidence of statistically significant camera‐induced passivity across any of the four outcomes. In fact, self‐initiated calls increased for officers assigned to treatment during the RCT. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of the findings for the ongoing dialogue in policing.