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IJPSM 5 (2003) 217

Tolerance and pragmatism in the Netherlands: Euthanasia, coffeeshops and prostitution in the 'purple years’, 1994–2002
Francis Pakes

The Netherlands is traditionally regarded as a tolerant nation. In criminal justice matters such tolerance was usually evidenced by low prison rates, and a rehabilitation and social welfare oriented criminal justice system. In other words, the tolerance had a focus on wrongdoers. During the 'purple years’ (1994–2002) when a neoliberal government that consisted of the Labour Party and two liberal democratic parties, took office, a shift in tolerance emerged. New legislation included the legalisation of euthanasia and of brothels, and same sex marriages were authorised too. Meanwhile the policy of soft drugs decriminalisation via coffee shops has remained intact. In a climate of rising prisoner numbers, we observe an increased level of tolerance towards certain lifestyles or life choices. This article discusses the causes and effects of these developments.

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IJPSM 5 (2003) 229

Police peacekeeping: health risks and challenges in a post-conflict environment
Edward N. Drodge and Yolande Roy-Cyr

This study addressed the issue of negative out comes experienced by police peacekeepers following work in a post-conflict environment. Responses from nearly 600 active and retired police officers who had participated in at least one peacekeeping mission, were analysed to determine baseline data on a range of work, inter-personal, and family issues experienced by police peacekeepers. The data from the present survey were also compared with previous sick-leave data collected as part of a work attendance management project. The results suggest that police peacekeepers have relatively few negative outcomes following the mission, that the level of extended sick leave is lower for peacekeepers than for personnel who have not been on a peacekeeping mission, and that the average number of sick days taken by peacekeepers does not change significantly following a peacekeeping mission. While alcohol consumption increases for peacekeepers during the mission, it returns to normal rates for most individuals following repatriation. The study concludes that participating in a peacekeeping mission does not pose an inordinate risk for police officers, and is a positive experience for many. In general, the screening and selection process appears to be working very well.

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IJPSM 5 (2003) 245

Community-oriented policing in a multicultural milieu: the case of loitering and disorderly conduct in East Arlington, Texas
Raymond A. Eve, Daniel G. Rodeheaver, Susan Brown Eve, Maureen Hockenberger, Ramona Perez, Ken Burton, Larry Boyd, Sue Phillips and Sharon Walker

For the past several decades, an innovation in policing, often controversial, has been emerging in the US. Specifically, community-oriented policing has been used to supplement more traditional forms of police work in preventing and reducing crime. This paper examines a community oriented policing programme implemented in Arlington, Texas. A national demonstration grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The purpose of the COPS project reported here was to assess a policing problem that, rather than actual crime, was ultimately about (1) multicultural conflict, (2) fear of crime and (3) the effectiveness of this community policing programme in combating both actual incidences and perceptions of crime. We draw several conclusions about the ability to utilise and apply the community policing model and our research findings in other locations. Furthermore, the findings of this paper should have broad utility of international scope.

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IJPSM 5 (2003) 265

Modus operandi modelling of group offending: a data-mining case study
Richard Adderley and Peter Musgrove

This article looks at the application of datamining techniques, principally the multi-layer perceptron radial basis function and self organising map, to the recognition of burglary offences committed by a network of offenders. The aim is to suggest a list of currently undetected crimes that may be attributed to one or more members of the network and improve on the time taken to complete the task manually and the relevancy of the list of crimes. The data were drawn from four years of burglary offences committed within an area of the West Midlands police. They were encoded from text by a small team of specialists working to a well-defined protocol and analysed using the above techniques contained within the data-mining workbench of SPSS/Clementine. Within minutes, three months of undetected crimes were analysed through the Clementine stream, producing a list of offences that might be attributed to the network of offenders. The results were analysed by two police sergeants not associated with the development process who determined that 85 per cent of the nominated crimes could be attributed to the network of offenders. To produce a manual list would take between one-and-a-half and two hours and be between 5 per cent and 10 per cent accurate.

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IJPSM 5 (2003) 277

Pre-employment psychological testing of police officers: the MMPI and the IPI as predictors of performance
Kimberly D. Simmers, Thomas G. Bowers and James M. Ruiz

There are strong and compelling reasons for the careful selection of police officers, and careful assessment of candidates includes psychological assessment. The most commonly used instruments include the MMPI, MMPI-2 and the IPI. To assess the relative relationship of validity findings for the respective tests, 18 studies, which empirically related test findings to later police functioning, were reviewed in this study. The findings indicated both MMPI versions and the IPI provide modest correlations and effect size relationships to police behaviour (rs = 0.17 and 0.28, respectively). In addition, the IPI scores provided significantly higher findings along these lines. There continues to be a need for additional studies, as these results are based on only 18 studies, but the findings to date indicate better prediction of police job performance with the IPI. These results argue for increased use of the IPI, at times in combination with the MMPI-2, with increased attention to the normative samples and with increased assessment of the police, academy and corrections populations.

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Links to other issues

Volume 4 (2002) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 5 (2003) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 6 (2004) :   1   2   3

Volume 7 (2005) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 8 (2006) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 9 (2007) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 10 (2008) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 11 (2009) :   1   2   3   4

Volume 12 (2010) :   1   2   3

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