Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R V Clarke.
A field study was carried out to investigate the possibility of preventing suicide on the London Underground. Four groups of potentially valuable measures were identified with the objectives of: (i) reducing public access to the tracks; (ii) improving surveillance by station staff; (iii) facilitating emergency stops; and (iv) reducing injury. These strategies are discussed.
This paper examines the value of data published by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) on the collision frequency of different automobile models as a potential guide to vehicle safety. It is argued that these data fail to control for factors other than design, including vehicle usage and driving quality. An alternative measure of collision risk, controlled for some of these factors, is constructed employing the fact that theft risk is determined by many of the same usage characteristics as collision risk. This alternative measure is validated by demonstrating that it is a more effective predictor of injury risk than collision frequency. In conclusion it is argued that if HLDI collision data are to provide a more useful guide to the relative design safety of different automobile models, the data need to be controlled for a wider range of potentially confounding factors.
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A study of the frequency of car exhaust as a cause of accidental death in the United States from 1968 to 1984 showed that the accidental death rate from car exhaust has declined during the same period during which the toxicity of car exhaust has been reduced through the imposition of emission controls. However, in Great Britain, where there are no emission controls on cars, the accidental death rate from car exhaust has risen slightly over the same period. Thus, the introduction of emission controls on cars to reduce pollution of the environment seems to have had incidental beneficial effects on mortality from accidental poisoning from car exhaust.
During the 25 years between 1959 and 1984, the suicide rate in the United States increased from 10.5/100,000 to 12.4/100,000. The increase was confined to those suicides using a firearm, which had reached 58.5% of the total by the end of the period. At the same time, there was a marked increase in the household ownership of handguns (but not of shotguns and rifles). The present study investigates whether the increase in suicide might be due to the increase in the ownership of handguns. Regression analyses showed a strong relationship between handgun ownership and the rate of gun suicides, but not between handgun ownership and the overall rate of suicide. These results support the hypothesis that the rise in handguns has led to an increase in gun suicides, but, they do not permit a choice between two further competing hypotheses: (i) that more people are now committing suicide because there are more handguns available or, (ii) that people who would otherwise have killed themselves in some different way are now using guns. Because of the potential implications for prevention, further study of these issues is needed.
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The rate of car exhaust suicides in the United States has declined following the introduction of emission controls in the mid-1960s, though not as much as the decline in CO emitted by cars. In Britain, where emission controls have not been introduced, the rate of these suicides, initially much lower than in the United States, has greatly increased since the beginning of the 1970s and is now about double that of the United States. This rise cannot be explained simply on the basis of an increase in the opportunities for suicide as represented by an increase in the number of cars but may be due to increased knowledge of the method. While these results are interpreted as generally supporting the potential for opportunity-reducing preventive measures, they also demonstrate that much more research is needed into the complex nature of the opportunity structure for suicide.
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Twenty years of Home Office research into delinquency prevention support Jack Tizard's belief that greater improvements in performance and behaviour are likely to attend efforts to change environments rather than inner dispositions. Situational measures which reduce opportunities for crime seem more effective than attempts to reform delinquents. Moreover, given that most delinquents desist from crime in early adulthood, minimal interference in their lives may be the best policy. For those requiring institutional placement, humane care rather than reform should be the goal.
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Evaluative research in the penal field has had two main characteristics: first, there has been a pre-occupation with the objective of treatment to the almost complete exclusion of any other, and second, there has been a concern with the demonstration of effects without a corresponding attempt to understand the nature of the treatment process. This has been because the research has proceeded on an inappropriate "medical" view of penal treatment on which it is assumed that the "cure" of the offender is the major task and that the nature of treatment is relatively easy to understand. The main achievement of this research has been to show that, by and large, penal treatments differ very little in their capacity to reform. The importance of this result should not be underestimated. It has helped to bring about a changed view of delinquency and its treatment which in the long term will have far reaching effects on penal practice. In the shorter term the effects on evaluative research are likely to be two-fold. First it opens the way for evaluation to proceed on a wider front. Instead of needing to pay so much attention to reformative aspects, the researcher will be more free to compare penal measures with respect to such things as their economic and social costs, their cpacity for general deterrence, the protection afforded to the public from the activities of known criminals, and the extent to which they satisfy requirements of justice and humanity.