Search results

A structurally constrained discrete state space model is employed as the basis in the development of an identification and control procedure. System excitation is conditioned in accordance with a restricted minimization of a composite cost functional embodying a compromise legitimizing simultaneous identification and control. Alternative scalar measures of the system identified parametric transition matrices are combined with a state quadratic control measure in the composite cost, and an investigation of the effect of a scalar weighting in the functional (offsetting identification with control) considered. Tabular and graphical results are presented covering the likely range of the proposed systems applicability.

A linear‐model‐based adaptive control system is developed. Alternative identification techniques are combined with a suboptimal controller. Iterative and recursive algorithms are applied to produce minimum norm estimates of multivariable models, adequate over a range of plant operation. Parameter estimates are used to update the stage‐by‐stage suboptimal control algorithm. The techniques are applied to control a non‐linear chemical reactor model.

In this study, I explore what happens “after incarceration” from the perspective of private prison vendors. Using the experience of women prisoners in California in the aftermath of Brown vs Plata (2011) and Realignment, I trace the rise and growing popularity of carceral rehabilitation programs. Although rehabilitation was once considered an antidote to mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex, it now fuels the growth of private prison companies and provides a stable source of profitability. This analysis suggests the reconfiguration of mass incarceration in the US rather than its dissolution.

In order to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is essential that all industry sectors have the appropriate knowledge and tools to contribute. This includes agriculture, which is considered to contribute about a third of emissions globally. This paper reports on one such tool: IMPACCT: Integrated Management oPtions for Agricultural Climate Change miTigation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

IMPACCT focuses on GHGs, carbon sequestration and associated mitigation options. However, it also attempts to include information on economic and other environmental impacts in order to provide a more holistic perspective. The model identifies mitigation options, likely economic impacts and any synergies and trade-offs with other environmental objectives. The model has been applied on 22 case study farms in seven Member States.

The tool presents some useful concepts for developing carbon calculators in the future. It has highlighted that calculators need to evolve from simply calculating emissions to identifying cost-effective and integrated emissions reduction options.

IMPACCT has potential to become an effective means of provided targeted guidance, as part of a broader knowledge transfer programme based on an integrated suite of guidance, tools and advice delivered via different media.

IMPACCT is a new model that demonstrates how to take a more integrated approach to mitigating GHGs on farms across Europe. It is a holistic carbon calculator that presents mitigation options in the context other environmental and economic objectives in the search for more sustainable methods of food production.

The move towards a “person-centred” or “personalised” system of adult social care has been at the heart of policy debates in Great Britain. However, policy developments in Northern Ireland are more limited than in other parts of the UK, and less attention has been paid to reforming adult social care. The purpose of this paper is to examine the views and experiences of adult social care users who receive care at home, to explore if and how a person-centred approach might work for older adults in Northern Ireland.

Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 people aged over 70 years who receive social care provision at home.

The empirical findings show that social care users experienced limited involvement in their care planning process, reflecting a predominantly service-led approach. The importance of care worker continuity and consistency was crucial for all participants, particularly for maintaining discreet routines and promoting personal dignity. However many experienced different care workers which presented challenges caused by the inconsistency of carers.

The majority of participants in the study were women, despite attempts to achieve greater gender diversity. It was also difficult to recruit a range of ethnic groups for the study. It would be important for future studies to include these groups and to ensure their voices are represented in further work in this area. Nonetheless, the findings offer valuable insight into the views of adult social care users and can form a useful basis for future studies.

The findings provide a more nuanced understanding of what people want and expect in social care to generate future policy debates and discussions in planning long-term adult social care provision in Northern Ireland. It also provides important and timely contribution to this area, where there is currently limited research and information available.

This chapter defines and provides examples of activist criminology methods (ACM). Although many examples of ACM studies are provided, to date, no publications use this identification. The authors begin by questioning not only the feasibility but also the desirability of the ‘neutral scientist’. The authors then summarise the predecessors and contributors to ACM: ‘activist research’, participatory action research, and public criminology. The components of ACM are (1) including the public; (2) using reflexivity; and (3) ensuring the findings are relayed to the public and ideally, used to create change. Including the public has two subsections, the victims/survivors and the activists resisting the injustice studied. The authors discuss some of the challenges in conducting ACM, including academic marginalisation of this scholarship (and thus the difficulty of pursuing it, particularly if untenured), securing collaboration with activists and/or survivors, reflexivity on the power differences when collaborating with marginalised communities, and the near impossibility of achieving all the goals of ACM in one study. Although unnamed until now, ACM, as we describe them, has been conducted for hundreds of years around the world. The growing number of scholars historically kept out of academia due to race, gender, sexuality, class, and criminal history is no doubt related to the vastly increasing frequency of studies employing ACMs, as well as discussions and advancement of these methods.

This book chapter briefly discusses the historical and cultural context of ethnography and evaluation as positioned in the United States and the opportunities made possible by merging techniques and methodology. By merging, methodological pluralism and increased responsiveness to cultural contexts are leveraged, and the critical relevance of engaging communities in evaluation processes is underlined. However, engaging with communities with marginalized backgrounds can present complicated power dynamics in practice that require the evaluator to rethink their role. Equity-centered research practices from the Equity-Centered Research Framework are linked to expound on the need for transforming the evaluator's role to shift and share power with communities throughout engagement. We expand on how transformative work also requires ongoing examinations of positionality in the evaluator role through the lens of relationships. Borrowing from ethnographic concepts, relational dimensions of positionality are conceptualized as alignment, temporality, and place. Each component is illustrated with details on how power dynamics may occur throughout community engagement as well as ways to manage and mitigate power differentials between the roles of the evaluator and community partners. We then offer three broad evaluator practices to support transformation: (a) identify positionality, (b) embed into everyday practice, and (c) negotiate in collaborations with communities. With these practices, we reflect on critical questions and position communities as critical learning partners to promote actions to mitigate and manage ongoing power dynamics. We close this chapter with our experiences interrogating positionality to illustrate distinct burdens and insights as evaluators of color.

Despite the burgeoning research on mass incarceration, women are rarely its focus. Racialised women, whose rates of incarceration have increased more rapidly than other groups, are at the best marginal within much of this literature. Within juvenile justice systems, racialised girls and young women are also disproportionately criminalised and remain markedly over-represented but are often overlooked. The absence of racialised women and girls from dominant accounts of punishment and incarceration is a matter of epistemological, ethical and political concern. Intersectionality offers one means to treat racialised women and girls as focal points for research and advocacy directed towards a reduction in criminalisation and incarceration. While intersectionality does not determine how the knowledge produced is deployed, recognising those who have been unrecognised is a necessary first step in striving to bring about positive change through praxis. Flawed mainstream accounts are unlikely to generate strategies that are well-aligned with the needs and interests of those who remain largely invisible.

Research has validated the crucial aspect of empathy in effective clinical practice. Empathy requires the identification of the helping professional with the emotional experience of the client. However, in their work with women offenders, clinicians can encounter a number of obstacles to appropriate empathic interventions: the workers may over‐empathize with their clients; the offenders may be resistant to being helped; and there may be institutional and social dynamics that may discourage empathic helping by staff. This paper discusses the concept of empathy and the difficulties encountered by social workers and other clinicians in their efforts to provide appropriate empathic approaches to this population. Effective strategies that will allow for appropriate use of empathy by clinicians working with female offenders are offered.

Goffman’s (1961) work on total institutions has been relatively neglected in the fields of organizational research. This paper compares the conceptions of obedience to authority in two different types of voluntary total institutions and how such conceptions affect interaction contrary to the aims of the organizations. Consequently, by addressing how conceptions of authority and constructions of the obedient self shape conditions for underlife, the analysis provides knowledge about the variety of ways in which total institutional authority works and contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms of organizational underlife.