Scottish Office Research Articles

How the police conceptualise and view the relevance of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) for policing: a qualitative investigation

PurposeKnowledge about the prevalence and impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) is pivotal to trauma-informed approaches, yet the impact of ACEs training is rarely investigated. This study reports a qualitative investigation of police perceptions of ACEs training in relation to conceptualisations of ACEs and trauma-informed working, practical applications of ACE knowledge and service-level support.Design/methodology/approachFour focus groups were conducted with 29 police officers, who had participated in an ACEs-awareness training. Based on the qualitative data, themes were generated using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019).FindingsAnalysis generated seven themes, conceptualised into three domains of conceptual understanding, police culture and operationalising ACEs.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample is limited to Scottish police officers and is ethnically non-diverse. Further evaluation of higher quality interventions is warranted.Practical implicationsThe study highlighted that a lack of conceptual framework, officer concerns and police culture may present barriers to officers incorporating ACEs knowledge into their day-to-day work. Future trainings should address these issues to achieve maximum benefits.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge, this is the first in-depth qualitative study of police officers' perceptions of ACEs training. Focus groups facilitated the expression of cultural norms. The results provide insight into tailoring trauma-informed interventions in police in future, as well as raising broader service-level issues.

Scots and Italy as seen through Alba amicorum, 1540s–1720s Part 1

The modern historiography of Scots in Italy has been relatively ill-served, which the present article seeks to redress in a limited way. The study of alba amicorum can be a great tool to assist in uncovering these peregrinating Scots, who went beyond the Alps and enhanced early modern Italian studies at various cultural, educational, and linguistic levels. Grouped under socioprofessional categories, the first part of the article explores the academic world and military officers from the emergence of the tradition of album keeping in the 1540s right through to the first third of the eighteenth century, when new developments and tendencies shaped the album to the current poetry album. This paper shows that the phenomenon of Scottish students attending European universities and higher institutions was larger than previously thought among members of the gentry and nobility. These written mementoes illustrate a broader conception of education, both within academic institutions and outwith them. In correlation, Scotsmen took up posts as pedagogues and educators, but in these teaching roles, with one major exception, they have not been scrutinized properly for their careers in Scotland, let alone abroad on the Continent, including as tertiary educators at Catholic and Protestant universities and academies. As for Scottish officers, a facet of their personalities predominates that is distinct from their usually underlined military skills. Instead, within these alba, erudition and linguistic skills come through, and these contributions address other noncombative interests and investments, such as sociocultural experiences.

Non-Orthodox Labour in Early Modern Russia

While the Tsardom Russia in Early Modern Times till the 18th century experienced a constant demographic loss to slavehunters supplying the markets of Muslim Empires, there also was an influx of Non-Orthodox Prisoners of War (from Muslim Tatars to Protestant Swedes) and socially weak people from annexed territories. Most Jasak-paying communities remained ethnically Non-Russian, but some Non-Orthodox “foreigners” by being sold or selling themselves left their communities and entered the status of peasants respectively kholops. These mostly were integrated into the Russian Orthodox flock. By prohibiting Orthodox people to serve in Non-Orthodox households clergy and government hoped to safeguard laypeople against other creeds, but strengthened the labour-market of Non-Orthodox servants. Muslim estate-owners, Armenian merchants, German doctors, Scottish officers etc. wanted servants in house and garden to care for their households and keep their social standings. Non-Orthodox servants, referred to but not regulated in the basic law of 1649, remained ethnically Non-Russian and confirmed Russia’s character as “multi-ethnic Empire”.

Unhousing the Archives Around theZong, Again

Unhousing the Archives Around the<i>Zong</i>, Again

Entangled Histories of Reforms: Scottish Radicalism of Joseph and Allen Octavian Hume and Indian Education

Thus wrote a retired officer about his opposition to the British elitist policies. This was no anomaly. Hume, like most of the Scottish officers in India, defended Indian interests before the colonial administration since his arrival in 1849. In 1854, as a young officer of Etawah district in North India, Hume countered the Orientalist idea that the people of Etawah were uncivilised. He established schools and interacted with Indians very closely. Unable to tolerate his reformist endeavours, he was transferred out of the district, and his schools were destroyed. His father, Joseph Hume, too had defended Indians on more than one occasion in the House of Commons and attempted to empower them by giving direct representation. This paper looks at the Scottish radicalism carried forward by the father and son duo, which dispels the conventional historical narratives that place all colonial officials as instruments of imperialist oppression.

Building on Foreign Expertise. Military and Agricultural Experts and the Eastward Expansion of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sweden

In the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden was almost constantly engaged in armed conflicts with neighbouring kingdoms. Both offensive and defensive wars were characteristic of the Swedish foreign policy from 1550s to 1650s. The same period witnessed the emergence of the Swedish Empire because, due to these conflicts, Sweden was able to acquire new domains in the Baltic region and to expand its territories in both east and south. These geopolitical realities pushed all Vasa kings into multiple projects aiming to rationalise Sweden’s army and its military strategy as well as to develop the acquired areas in various ways. Our article presents two development project examples of this emerging empire (1) Scottish officers (the Swedish Crown acknowledged the military expertise of Scottish troops as well as their officers and tried to harness this experience for Sweden), and (2) the planned modernisation of Ingria through German and Dutch colonisation and agricultural development. The article examines the needs and expertise expectations that the Swedish Crown directed towards these foreign groups. The emergence of Sweden as a European empire did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. International contacts and the influx of European expertise into Sweden were important factors in the building of the Swedish dominion in the Baltic region. By focusing on these foreign expert groups, one operating in the military world and the other in the agricultural sphere, this article illustrates the functions and roles that the Swedish Crown expected foreign experts to have on the eastern frontier of early modern Sweden.

Attitudes, Influences and Perceptions towards Plastic Surgery amongst Medical Students

IntroductionPlastic surgery is a dynamic and evolving field but remains poorly understood due to lack of knowledge, media misconceptions and recent changes to medical undergraduate curricula. To address issues around student interest and recruitment into the speciality, it is imperative to understand the factors influencing medical students and future clinicians. AimsTo examine influences, interest and perceptions of plastic surgery amongst Scottish medical students and explore methods to increase undergraduate engagement. MethodCross-sectional survey distributed online via Scottish undergraduate medical school offices comprising 6 domains: demographics; career interest; perceptions, interests and influences in plastic surgery; curriculum and trainer views; understanding the role of a plastic surgeon; and undergraduate engagement. ResultsA total of 193 students responded with no statistically significant relationship between year group, gender, and interest in plastic surgery. Phrases most strongly identified with plastic surgery included private practice, reconstruction and cosmetics. Placements, teaching staff and workshops/courses were found to influence perception of plastic surgery. Fortunately, only 6% of students encountered antagonism towards plastic surgery encompassing themes of negative stereotypes of surgeons and connotations surrounding cosmetic surgery. Importantly, many students were largely unaware of the range of common procedures undertaken by plastic surgeons. To overcome this lack of awareness and generate greater interest, students suggested greater plastics exposure, consultant-led teaching and workshops showcasing the specialty. ConclusionMedical students want varied, stimulating and flexible careers – something which plastic surgery can provide. However it seems the understanding of the scope of plastic surgery is poorly understood amongs future trainees. To increase uptake and interest, negative perceptions need to be addressed and greater engagement is required from medical school upwards.

“NEEDS NOT DEEDS”: The Scottish Children’s Hearing and the Enduring Legacy of Lord Kilbrandon

Due to political concerns about rising juvenile offending, the Scottish Office in Edinburgh established in 1961, a committee of enquiry to review systems and procedures for children appearing in Scottish Courts. The committee under judge Lord James Kilbrandon reported in 1964. Kilbrandon found that it was not possible to separate the underlying causes of children appearing in Court due to offending behaviour from those requiring care and protection. In both instances, he argued, the needs of the child had not been met by the adults responsible for their upbringing. Kilbrandon proposed a new system based on the needs of the child, the central role of the family in meeting the child’s needs, and the adoption of a preventative and educational approach to children in difficulty. The Scottish Children’s Hearing, a formally constituted legal tribunal but informal in its operation was created in law by the Social Work (Scotland) Act, 1968. Fifty years later it has stood the test of time and continues to operate in the way that Kilbrandon first envisaged it in 1964. In the words of Bottoms (2002,154), “the Children’s Hearing system is a relatively rare surviving example of a full-fledged, welfare-oriented system, and an assessment of its contemporary functioning is of great theoretical interest”. Kilbrandon’s legacy extends beyond the Children’s Hearing. His vision of shared community responsibility for the welfare of children and the lasting impact of adverse childhood events forms an essential element of Scottish public policy to children, to public health and to justice.

The Efficient Organisation of Public Intellect: Lyon Playfair and Scottish Education

Lyon Playfair was a champion of scientific and technical education who was professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University before serving as a Liberal M.P., initially for a Scottish university seat, from 1868 to 1892. This article looks mainly at his role in debates on the Education Act of 1872 and the bills which preceded it. Playfair sought to define the democratic traditions of Scottish education, especially emphasising the legacy of John Knox, and to adapt them to the new national system. He idealised the direct connection between parish schools and universities, and the opportunities available to talented boys, using newly available statistics to support his case. He also contributed to the shaping of Scottish secondary education, and to establishing the modern idea of social mobility through educational merit. When the Scottish Office was established in 1885, Playfair opposed the devolution of education and this dissent led him to move to an English seat. His career has a wider interest for the history of Scottish politics in the age of Gladstone.

Cops in crisis?: ethnographic insights on a new era of politicization, activism, accountability, and change in transatlantic policing

ABSTRACTAgainst the complex backdrop of a post-modern era, characterised by a renewed emphasis on public accountability, oppositional social and political movements, it has been argued that traditional agents of social control have increasingly begun to experience a sense of disempowerment. Nowhere has this been more apparent than within the context of policing, where the increased influence of the mass media, social media, and newly empowered groups has led to an apparent legitimacy crisis on both sides of the Atlantic. To better understand officers’ views, attitudes, and perspectives about the changing landscape of policing, this paper reports on insights from a comparative study involving participant observation in two counties in a Southern State in the United States of America and three inner-city areas in Scotland. The observations were paired with in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 American and 22 Scottish officers. The data suggest that officers on both sides of the Atlantic are hostile towards the increasing influence of new forms of media and digital activism. Many officers also expressed concern for declining public cooperation and perceived there to have been a general diminution of police authority and enforcement tactics. Finally, there was a general feeling of reduced officer self-legitimacy among the participants but an increased awareness of procedural justice and alternative (and more covert) enforcement strategies. The implications from these findings are discussed in terms of changing perceptions of justice, legitimacy, social ideology, and the proposed consequences for rights-based policing in the 21st Century.

A Persian Account of the Religious Customs of the Magh (Arakanese) from Early Colonial Bengal

The document presented in this article is a quasi-ethnographic account of the religious customs of the Magh (i.e. Arakanese), which was most probably collected on the basis of firsthand observations made in the region of Chittagong, in southeastern Bengal, sometime in the 1780s, or early 1790s. The commissioner of the document is John Murray-MacGregor (1745–1822), a Scottish officer of the British East India Company, who remained in Bengal for about three decades and brought back with him one of the largest private collections of Persian manuscripts, as well as some bilingual Sanskrit–Persian texts, and twenty-two bundles of Pali and Arakanese manuscripts collected in eastern Bengal.

A Licence Not to Censor: The Cinematograph Act 1909 in Scotland

The legal and administrative framework for film exhibition in Scotland has been viewed through the prism of practices adopted in the rest of the United Kingdom despite the existence of a separate legal system north of the English border. This article is the first to identify and explain the discrepancy that existed between the Scottish regulatory framework and that existing in the rest of Britain, covering the period from the passing of the Cinematograph Act 1909 to the publication of the Edinburgh Cinema Enquiry in 1933. Discussing hitherto neglected documents, such as the Scottish Office Precedent Books, municipal records, education authority minutes and local newspapers, the article adopts a social-historiographical methodology. It contends that the discrepancy was the result of a decentralised tradition of governance and political motivations to maintain the integrity of Scotland's legal system. This means that the full implementation of the Cinematograph Act 1909 was resisted in Scotland, leading to a laissez-faire approach in the realm of film censorship that was heavily criticised by local pressure groups. The article will first establish the historical context of regulating places of public entertainment in Scotland and subsequently discuss the emergence of film censorship practices in the rest of the UK following the passing of the Cinematograph Act 1909. The second half will explain the different legal interpretation of the 1909 Act in Scotland and its consequences for the applicability of the British Board of Film Censors’ ‘A’ certificate.

Beneficial Interest and the Land Registration Act of 1979

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 provides for the creation of a public register of controlling interests in the owners and tenants of land. The idea, it turns out, is not a new one. Forty years ago the UK Government came close to introducing a legislative provision which sought to achieve much the same ends. The existence of clause 4 of the Land Registration (Scotland) Bill of 1978 has hitherto been unknown. On the basis of a study of the relevant Government files, this paper considers why the clause was thought to be necessary and why it was discarded just before the Bill entered the public domain. Clause 4 was a response to a growing demand for information as to the ownership of land in Scotland. In a path-breaking book, Who Owns Scotland?, published in 1977, John McEwen attempted to list the owners of all estates of over 1,000 acres. On McEwen’s figures, around half of Scotland was owned by 546 individuals or companies. Far from satisfying public curiosity, McEwen’s book only served to increase it. As it happened, the then Labour Government was preparing a Bill for a new map-based system of land registration. The new register would show who owned the land. The purpose of clause 4 was to show who owned the owners of the land by requiring any company or trust seeking to register a title to disclose who held the ‘beneficial interest’ in the company or trust. Clause 4 was championed by the Ministers in the Scottish Office but resisted by civil servants. Having overcome that resistance, the Secretary of State for Scotland, Bruce Millan, was unexpectedly defeated by the refusal of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Elwyn Jones, to allow to be introduced for Scotland a provision which he considered unsuitable for England and Wales.

Vetting Bills in the Scottish Parliament for Legislative Competence

In this article, Christopher McCorkindale and Janet Hiebert present the first empirical examination of the process by which bills in the Scottish Parliament undergo vetting for legislative competence. Based on a series of interviews with officials in the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament and UK Government the paper makes a two-fold argument. First, that – despite the susceptibility of Acts of the Scottish Parliament to strong-form judicial review – the statutory requirement that the responsible minister and the Presiding Officer report to parliament on the competence of every bill, and the discretion of the Scottish and UK Government Law Officers to refer any bill to the Supreme Court before Royal Assent, align the devolution scheme with an emerging family of systems that favour legislative to judicial constitutional review. Second, that the deference shown by political actors to the advice of officials on questions of competence at each stage supplants legislative review – and its aspiration to engender a new culture of constitutional engagement – with a more closed form of bureaucratic review.

Artist and Patrons: Court Art and Revolution in Brussels at the end of the Ancien Regime

This article will consider certain art objects and underlying acts of patronage in the waning days of the ancien regime in Europe, partly through a trifecta of personalities who either produced or consumed art. Michel-Paul-Joseph Dewez (1742–1804) was a Brussels goldsmith and bronze caster; James Lockhart (1727–1790) was a Scottish military officer in the Austrian service and a court official; and Prince Charles Alexandre of Lorraine (1712–1780) was the governor general of the Austrian Netherlands from 1744 until his death in 1780. The works by Dewez that form the focus of this study include a pair of silver candlesticks that he made and Lockhart bought in about 1778, a rare survival from an age that ended in chaos and catastrophe as the ancien regime fell and revolutions erupted across Europe. Dewez also produced massive quantities of gilt bronze (ormolu) ornaments for a new Audience Chamber and Grand Salon commissioned by Prince Charles Alexandre of Lorraine for his Winter Palace in Brussels. While they lasted these rooms were among the most extraordinary courtly interiors in Europe. They have not survived, and with a few exceptions their sumptuous furnishings were also consumed in the fires of the French and Brabanconne Revolutions and their aftermaths. By assembling these stories of persons, things and their interrelationships into a single narrative, it is hoped that a soupçon more of light will be cast on a tumultuous time and its art, during the twilight years of the old Europe before the advent of the modern age.

Hugh Boyd, CM (1925–2016)

Hugh Boyd, <scp>CM</scp> (1925–2016)

The Enigma of Arrival: The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

The republication of The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave (1831) and The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857) in 1987 and 1988, respectively, provides a new understanding of the constitutive relationship of autobiography to the cultural inheritance of the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean. Originally published twenty-six years apart in England, across the great divide of the emancipation of slaves in 1834, the narratives of Mary Prince and Mary Seacole prefigure styles of being and identity in male-centered texts of twentieth-century Caribbean autobiography. They reconfigure Caribbean autobiography, which emerged as a predominantly male enterprise in the twentieth century, as the legacy of two extraordinary women of the nineteenth. The narratives bring into sharp focus the conflicts and contradictions of identity, authority, and freedom built into the relationship between Europe and the Americas, seat of empire and dependent colonies, master and slave, men and women. If The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave reflects an embryonic nationalism formed in resistance to slavery, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands reflects an enthusiastic acceptance of colonialism in the aftermath of slavery.(1) In her narrative, Seacole celebrates her subject status in an empire that had systematically exploited and abused her native land and the majority of its inhabitants since the British captured Jamaica in 1655.(2) Though free blacks in Jamaica were not granted the same civil rights as born Englishmen until the Disabilities Act of 1830, and civil unrest continued in Jamaica after the slave rebellion of 1830-32 and the emancipation of the slaves in 1834, Seacole's narrative is not concerned with the degradation suffered by black Jamaicans under British rule. Mary Prince's passionate articulation of the experiences and aspirations of fellow slaves suffering under British rule, her dream of autonomy and comfortable domesticity, is succeeded by the narrative of a Jamaican and entrepreneur who rejects domesticity as frustrating and constricting. Seacole's narrative is not one of victimization, endurance, and survival, but of accomplishment and achievement. The fundamental freedom articulated in her narrative is the freedom to be a subject of the British Empire and to be celebrated as a unique individual who challenges the boundaries of race, gender, and privilege within the parameters of that Empire. Cultural resistance and autonomy have distinct value to Seacole, the yellow doctress from Jamaica, child of a free black Jamaican woman and a Scottish officer, writing her own narrative with great sophistication, two decades after the emancipation of slaves in her native land. Seacole crafts her self-image in a journey from the perceived margins of civilization bo its center. She graduates from celebrity status among expatriates in Jamaica as a creole doctress, to notoriety in New Grenada as the yellow doctress, to legendary status in the Crimea and Britain as Mother Seacole, guardian and purveyor of English values away from home. The values implicit in this journey organize Seacole's narrative of travel, adventure, and ordeal, and project a precursory image of the restless, rootless, wandering West Indian that would become a distinctive feature of colonial and postcolonial West Indian autobiographical consciousness.(3) The desire to shape a life of personal, social, and cultural significance beyond Jamaica resides at the core of The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole.(4) In explicitly addressing an English reading public, Seacole seeks English recognition and courts English approval. The built-in assumption of the narrative is that it will earn her a place in the civilized consciousness of the culture that determines value in her world. The text shows colonial migration to be more than a socio-historical feature of colonial life. …

Police Amalgamation and Reform in Scotland: The Long Twentieth Century

This article examines shifting debates about police amalgamation and governance reform in Scotland since the mid-nineteenth century in the light of the creation of a single police service (Police Scotland) in 2013. From a proliferation of 89 separate police forces in 1859, the number had been reduced to 48 by 1949 and eight in 1975. Yet the move towards a single police service was far from inevitable, as comparison with England and Wales demonstrates. The idea of a ‘single’ or national force was mooted from the 1850s onwards in moments of unrest, disorder and emergency, but for most of the twentieth century it remained anathema. For the Scottish Office and Home Office as well as for many police officers, the move towards larger policing units was seen as desirable on the grounds of economy, efficiency, and professionalisation. Yet the assumption that ‘local’ control of police forces through municipal and county councils best enabled accountability and hence legitimacy remained intact until the 1960s, whilst the regional model set up in 1975 persisted for forty years. The article explores the reasons for this, focusing on the changing dynamics of the relationship between central and local government across the last 150 years.

The attempt to reform School Councils in the 1980s: a rehearsal for the furore that greeted the proposals for School Boards?

In the light of the Scottish Government’s commitment to the principles enshrined in the Christie Commission and developing approaches worldwide to public administration, this article considers the forces at work and the major arguments for suggesting the need for increased and enhanced participation by parents in educational decision-making and school governance by focusing on the early 1980s. This was another period when participative democracy and partnership between lay-persons and public officials was widely supported at a theoretical level but often met resistance on the ground. An analysis of the responses to the abortive School Council consultative exercise of 1984 conducted by the Scottish Education Department (SED) is offered. The period before the emergence of Michael Forsyth as Education Minister in the Scottish Office in Mrs Thatcher’s era as UK Prime Minister is reviewed. Forsyth’s controversial proposals for the establishment of School Boards that caused such consternation among the educational establishment and parents have subsequently been replaced by Parent Councils.

Police officer perceptions of harassment in England and Scotland

PurposeResearch has demonstrated that certain relational biases exist within perceptions of stalking. One such bias concerns the perception that ex‐partner stalkers are less dangerous than those who target strangers or acquaintances despite applied research suggesting the opposite.MethodIn all, 135 police officers in England (where stalking has been outlawed since 1997) and 127 police officers in Scotland (where stalking has been outlawed since 2010) responded to vignettes describing a stalking scenario in which the perpetrator and victim were portrayed as strangers, acquaintances, or ex‐partners.ResultsAlthough typical relational biases existed in both samples, Scottish police officers were less susceptible to these biases than English police officers. Victim responsibility mediated the relation between prior relationship and perceptions of stalking for the English, but not the Scottish, police officers.ConclusionsFuture work should examine whether these biases may be found in other areas of the criminal justice system, and how far they are influenced by policy, practice, and training.