Funded Research
Prof Jackie Hodgson
COPR
CJC members Jackie Hodgson and Kevin Hearty have secured funding for the Centre for Operational Police Research with colleagues from other departments. Professors Jackie Hodgson, Neil Stewart (Psychology) and Carsten Maple (WMG) have secured £40,000 from Warwick Strategic Impact Fund for collaborative work with the Metropolitan Police Service. The funding is set to help develop a network of academics and active police staff and officers around three central research projects. Professor Jackie Hodgson and Dr Kevin Hearty, along with Associate Professor Kim Wade and Professor Neil Stewart (Psychology), have also secured £20,000 from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account to collaborate with West Mercia and Warwickshire Police. The funded project: “We don’t buy crime” will develop and evaluate the impact of Smartwater technology and other preventive interventions on public confidence in and satisfaction with the policing of burglary.
Dr Dallal Stevens
ESRC
£150,000
Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat: Mapping & documenting migratory journeys & experiences
Vicki Squire (PAIS, Warwick), with Co-Is Dr Dallal Stevens (Law, Warwick), Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams (PAIS, Warwick), Dr Angeliki Dimitriadi (ELIAMEP, Athens), and Dr Maria Pisani (Malta), have been awarded over 150K for an ESRC Urgent Research project entitled 'Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat: Mapping and documenting migratory journeys and experiences.’. While migrant deaths en route to the European Union are by no means new, the level and intensity of recent tragedies is unprecedented. More than 1850 deaths were recorded January-May 2015, demanding swift action on the part of EU Member States. This project produces a timely and robust evidence base as grounds for informing policy interventions developed under emergency conditions across the Mediterranean. It does so by assessing the impact of such interventions on those that they affect most directly: migrants or refugees themselves. This project undertakes such an assessment by engaging the journeys and experiences of people migrating.
Dr Ana Aliverti
British Academy
£10,000
Foreign nationals before the criminal courts: immigration status, deportability and punishment
The proposed research aims to investigate the impact of immigration status on the treatment of defendants before the criminal justice system. While citizenship and immigration status are in principle irrelevant for establishing criminal liability and punishment, this research seeks to examine whether and to what extent they influence everyday decisions by criminal justice actors. Proposed as a pilot project, it will involve the analysis of decision-making processes in two criminal courts in Birmingham. Specifically, this research will investigate whether and in which ways the immigration status of the defendant influences the decision to prosecute, the defence’s legal strategy, the decision on bail, and sentencing choices. In addition, it will examine the impact that a prospective deportation of the defendant has on sentencing decisions. The proposed project, which lays the foundation of a larger research project, is both topical and timely given the unprecedented levels of human mobility and the impact of mass migration on public services, including the criminal justice system.
Dr Illan rua Wall
Independent Social
Research Foundation
£45,000
The Law of Disorder
The research looks at the relation between law and disorder. Legal concepts are usually framed as being a part of the everyday social order. However, in moments of disorder we find the legal system stripped of its conventional architecture: the monopoly of the use of force, the control of territory and populations, the authority of the legislature, the constitutional unity of the people, or law’s claim to neutral universal protection. In moments of disorder, law as an institution and a basis of the social order is questioned. The problem with extant ideas of the law of disorder is that they start from law’s ‘normalcy’. The ‘Law of Disorder’ reverses the priority wherein law is the horizon of meaning for understanding disorder. Instead it places the emphasis on thinking from within the ‘disordered’ event, attempting to see beyond the conventional legal understanding of constitutional ‘origins’, criminal prosecution and balancing of rights. During the ISRF fellowship, rather than beginning with war, the state of exception or transitional justice (all points of interest for ‘the Law of Disorder’), the project will focus on protest crowds. These reveal essential questions about law and social order. The project will analyse how the protest crowd generates an atmosphere in the space it occupies. From the square or park, sometimes this atmosphere begins to seep outwards, gradually settling upon the city or even the state (as a sense of crisis). Take for example the atmosphere of Madrid or Athens at the height of the Indignados occupations. In this new atmosphere, there is a revision of the type of political settlement that is realistic and possible, evidenced in Greece by the emergence and success of Syriza, the anti-austerity party.
Dr Ana Aliverti
British Academy/Leverhulme
£12,900
Criminal adjudication in the age of migration: an international workshop
Dr Ana Aliverti has been awarded the British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (BARSEA). The BARSEA aims at providing an opportunity for early career researchers who have established their academic credentials as leaders in their field to enhance their skills and career development through playing a leading role in engaging others through the organisation of engagement events. Ana is the co-host and leading organiser of a two-day international workshop entitled ‘Criminal Adjudication in the Age of Migration’ to take place in March 2016 at the University of Oxford. This workshop will bring together leading international scholars and early career researchers from various countries, doctoral students, and British policy makers and practitioners to shed light on the relevance of citizenship and immigration status in criminal justice decision-making. The theme of the workshop is associated to Ana’s current research project, funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, which investigates the impact of immigration status and citizenship on the treatment of defendants before the criminal justice system.
Prof Jackie Hodgson
ESRC IAA
£20,000
We Don't Buy Crime
Professor Jackie Hodgson and Dr Kevin Hearty (Law School), along with Associate Professor Kim Wade and Professor Neil Stewart (Psychology), have secured £20,000 from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account to collaborate with West Mercia and Warwickshire Police. The funded project: “We don’t buy crime” will develop and evaluate the impact of Smartwater technology and other preventive interventions on public confidence in, and satisfaction with, the policing of burglary. The research is carried out through the Centre for Operational Police Research (COPR) and will survey residents across several towns, asking them about their views on crime and policing in their local area. Follow up surveys and focus group interviews will be carried out at three and six month intervals to try to gauge whether different police interventions have had an impact on the public’s confidence in policing and in particular, the level of satisfaction in policing shown by victims of burglary. The police will draw on the findings of the research to inform their future strategy on effective burglary intervention. There is national interest in smart water technology and other forces, such as the Met, have claimed that Smartwater has helped to reduce rate of burglary. However, rather than relying only on local crime figures, West Mercia and Warwickshire police have approached COPR to provide an independent, academic evaluation of the impact of this and other initiatives on public confidence in, and victim satisfaction with, the policing of burglary.
Dr Giuliano Castellano
ESRC IAA
£10,000
Secured Transactions Law Reforms
Dr Giuliano G. Castellano has secured £10,000 from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account to explore with a two-year project the strategies for reforming secured transactions law – in different legal contexts – as a way to foster access to credit and increase market liquidity. Secured transactions are key components of market economies and international finance. Through non-possessory security interests business may gain access to credit by collateralising tangible or intangible assets that are integral to the operation of their respective businesses, while retaining control and continuing to profit from those same assets. From a broader perspective, non-possessory security interests are a form of liquidity provided through the financial system, without excessive reliance on the real-estate market. Pursuing these benefits, national and international policymakers have embarked on various legal reform projects that aim to establish coherent and internationally harmonised sets of rules for secured credit. Of particular relevance are the works of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) that are driving legal reforms in different legal systems. Nonetheless, the implementation of international legal standards into national legal contexts – and in general the reform of this ambit of the law – has proven to be problematic. First, a problem of ‘legal transplant’ may emerge: norms generated outside a given legal systems are often rejected or misinterpreted by receiving countries. This in turn renders reforms ineffective and international harmonisation a chimera. Second, there is a critical, yet not fully explored, connection with banking regulation, in particular with liquidity requirements. While international financing laws are trying to foster secured credit, banking (prudential) regulation may limit the use of secured credit. Hence reforms aimed at reforming secured transactions ultimately clash with regulatory requirements. Moving from the findings of a recent research, the project aims at devising specific reform strategies to address these issues in order to guide law reforms in different legal contexts. The research output is hence translated into policy language with particular reference to the implementation of UNCITRAL’s works.
Dr Maebh Harding
Nuffield Grant
£106,453
How do County Courts share care of children between parents?
Maebh Harding was awarded a Nuffield grant of £106,453 to look at ‘How do County Courts share care of children between parents?’ In December 2013, a briefing document on the initial findings of Nuffield Project was submitted to the House of Lords in advance of the debate over Clause 11 of the Children and Families Bill. The briefing paper was referred to in the debate and was influential to the vote which amended the section to make clear to parents that there is no legal presumption of equal time in the post dispute child care pattern. The final report was published in May 2015 and has received a good deal of media attention with coverage in the Independent, Times and Telegraph. The final report improves the evidence base for assessment of the efficiency of recent reforms to the family justice system. Maebh was also successful in obtaining funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, so that hard copies of the report could be printed. Maebh is currently working on distribution to maximise the impact of the report as part of a targeted dissemination strategy.
Dr Ming-Sung Kuo
Chiang-Ching Kuo
Foundation
£35,847
The Rise and Fall of Juristocracy in Taiwan: Lessons from the Role of the Taiwan Constitutional Court in Managing the Jurisdictional Conflict between the Political Department, 1948-2012
The objective of this research project is to shed light on the conditions for judicial review in steering the interdepartmental relationship between the political departments of constitutional power by examining the changing role of the Taiwan Constitutional Court (Justices of the Judicial Yuan, hereinafter the Court) in managing interdepartmental jurisdictional conflict since its inception in 1948.