IN BRIEF


EMERGENCY RESPONSE The ‘Data Awareness for Sending Help’ (DASH) project aims to explore the potential of new data sources for improving ambulance response times. The project builds on a research collaboration between King’s College London and the London Ambulance Service (LAS) which is evaluating novel methods for ambulance dispatch by simulating ambulance call-outs based on historical LAS system logs. ESRC grant number ES/P011160/1


LIFE AFTER PUNISHMENT The Distant Voices project responds to pressing public policy and political challenges created by rising numbers of people subject to penal sanctions and by high levels of reoffending. Turning conventional understandings of offender rehabilitation on their head, this study is concerned not with ‘correcting offenders’ but rather with exploring and changing how they are received when ‘coming home’ after punishment. ESRC grant number ES/P002536/1


DIGITAL BENEFITS The benefits of digital work and trade appear to flow more to big corporations in the global North than to workers, enterprises or governments in the global South. The new ‘Development Implications of Digital Economies’ (DIODE) Strategic network aims to help ensure that digital economies work to deliver development goals by filling key knowledge gaps about digital economies in the global South. ESRC grant number ES/P006329/1


6 SOCIETY NOW SUMMER 2011 SUMMER 2017


China beats Russia at innovation


DESPITE HISTORICAL AND current parallels in their policies, China is now more clearly becoming a leading power in science and innovation than Russia, suggests research. Thirty years ago both countries had similar levels of R&D investment and scientific publication outputs, with comparable institutions leading on research, in particular the respective national Academies of Science. But while China has improved its performance on a range of innovation indicators, Russia has lagged. Among the reasons, say researchers, is that China is more open to internationalisation


and talent migration and has upgraded its research and innovation systems. In contrast, Russian research activities remain centralised around the Russian Academy of Sciences with little scientist/private sector exchange and less return migration of expatriate researchers. n


i Contact Professor Philip Shapira, University


of Manchester Email p.shapira@manchester.ac.uk Web www.risingpowers.net/projects Telephone 0161 2755921 ESRC Grant Number ES/J012785/1


Better prisoner visiting vital


PRISONERS WHO MAINTAIN family relationships while in prison are less likely to reoffend. Positive experiences of being visited in jail are important in keeping relationships on track, research suggests. Taking steps to ensure prisoner visits can be as positive as possible – both for prisoners and visitors – can reduce reoffending, says researcher Dr Dominique Moran. In a three-year study of prison visitation and recidivism in the UK, researchers explored the spaces in which prison visits took place and the quality of the experience. Often, the setting for visits is a very large open space, containing chairs and low tables bolted to the floor with the onus on safety and surveillance. “As a result, it’s often extremely noisy, with lots of reverberation from the hard surfaces,” Dr Moran says. “The way the furniture is fixed to the floor can mean a visitor is closer to the conversation going on behind them, than to the person they have come to visit. Overall, it can be


extremely difficult to hold the kind of conversation that is likely to support a relationship.”


If prison visiting is recognised to be


important to rehabilitation, then more attention should be paid to the spaces in which visits take place. “It’s possible to do a lot with these spaces – including the use of carpet to reduce noise levels, better spacing of tables, a mix of spaces, upholstered furniture, colourful wall displays – that can facilitate good interactions while mitigating against the security risks inherent in visits,” she says. Prisons should also pay greater attention to improving the frequently stressful experience of visitors which can be exacerbated by the negative view in which they are held by some prison staff. n


i Contact Dr Dominique Moran, University


of Birmingham Email d.moran@bham.ac.uk Telephone 0121 414 8013 ESRC Grant Number ES/K002023/1


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