Youth Justice Sytem Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Youth Justice Sytem - Essay Example Surely the aberrant youths cannot be prosecuted the same way as adults as there is a different degree of criminality. The young criminal is always considered as a troubled youth whose parents, the church, the state and its institutions must partake of the blame. He is deemed as a victim of circumstances, of the weakening and destruction of the family and the family values, of fads such as drug use, cults, gangs and even heavy metal music as well as a product of violence in the newspapers, TV and the cinema. On the other hand, youth crimes cannot just be handled with kid gloves or reacted to by a mere slap of the wrist as these are potent symptoms of the debilitation of the moral fabric of society and thus, the weakening of the bonds that hold tight the dam that preserves society. Surely, if youthful criminals are detained for a while and released prematurely to society, they will be back to wreak more and deadlier havoc. At first, most societies dealt with youth crime control by subscribing to the environmental theory of crime which believes that youthful crimes are caused by external and environmental factors that are mostly beyond the control of the youthful offender. When this proved to be a failure, most societies shifted to the classical theory of crime which holds that the individual's crime is a result of his exercise of his free will and thus he must be deterred from commission 2 of crimes by severe punishment (Olivo et al 52). Today, UK has decided to meet halfway and has come up with a legislation called Youth Criminal Justice Act 2003, which holds that the youthful offender must be punished but he must undergo rehabilitation, pre-emptive intervention, education and a host of other services like the concept of restorative justice offered by the Youth Justice System (Stephenson xvii). The above was triggered by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of which UK is a signatory. In 1990, UK has agreed to accede to the UN provision respecting "special protection measures covering the rights of children in the juvenile justice system" and the provision granting to each child offender the right to "family environment and family care" as well as the "right not to be subjected to torture" (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). The UN Riyadh Guidelines 1990 also provided for early intervention which is a shared responsibility between state and the parents. Concomitant to the provisions of the Youth Justice System was the establishment of Youth Justice Board (YJB) by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Its role is to oversee and provide leadership for the improvement of the performance of the youth justice system (Smith 83). Its main responsibility is to prevent the commission of offenses by young persons (Ghate 1). Other responsibilities are the securing of facilities for the juvenile offenders, the development of models of restorative justice and the development of parenting programmes (Smith 86). The Act declared that its main objective is the reinforcement of the responsibilities of parents to exercise control over their offsprings.

How people recall memories

How people recall memories In 1932 British psychologist Frederick Bartlet put forward a theory of how people organise and recall memory. His idea was that memory is not like a video recorder that can be played back, but that in fact there are a number of factors that lead to distortion and reconstruction of information. His theory is known as reconstructive memory and his ideas are still in use in current psychological research, such as eyewitness testimony, false memory syndrome, and even in the field of artificial intelligence This essay will explain Bartletts theory, its strengths and weaknesses, its implications in the understanding of how the mind organises, stores and recalls information, and how Bartletts ideas have been incorporated and expanded. Bartlett asserted that peoples recall of events is often inaccurate as reconstruction and distortion of information takes place, internally within the mind. The initial stimulus is taken in but as one can only give a certain amount of attention to a stimulus; previous experience, and knowledge, which he referred to as schemas, are used to construct a fuller picture internally. For example, if one was walking down a dark alley one might feel on edge, one suddenly notices a person approaching. An existing schema for this situation would exist and will probably result in the construction of a sinister character approaching, despite having no previous knowledge of the person. A schema is organised previous knowledge, an internal representation of how one perceives the world. Bartlett considered schemas to be maps or structures of knowledge stored in long-term memory. (May 07th 2008) www.wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Schemas In 1932 Bartlett composed a short fable which he named war of the ghosts. The fable was an old Native American folk story which would have been unfamiliar to the western participants. Generally it presented as a logical representation of events but within it was held more subtly illogical or irrational content. The story was recited to the participants who were asked to recall it after twenty hours, and again at varying intervals afterwards. He discovered that most people found it extremely difficult to recall the story exactly, even when the fable was read repeatedly. Bartlet hypothesised that, elements of the story which failed to fit into the schemata of the participant were omitted from their recollection, or reconstructed into more familiar forms. He remarked that people make an effort after meaning to make sense of information; any information which did not correspond with their cultural experiences, norms, or values, or that were unfamiliar, tended to be excluded from the reco llection of the participants. This resulted in a reduced, direct version of the story. Bartlett remarked that in the end, no trace of an odd or supernatural element [was] left: we [had] a perfectly straight forward story of a fight and a death. (2010) www.docstoc.com Bartletts ideas were revolutionary and drew many responses, positive, and negative. Bartletts research into practical aspects of memory, with an approach that set out to study how the human memory system is applied in every day, real life situations, is seen as a fundamental strength of the reconstructive memory model. However, his experiment was criticised for the methods employed. Bartlett was stopping students on their journeys around the Cambridge campus and reciting the war of the ghosts. He would often have to wait until he met them again before he could ask them to recall their version of the story. His methods were considered as being unscientific and his work was rejected by some as a result. Bartletts idea of schemas was rejected as being too vague, and hard to back up with empirical evidence. Also it was argued that Bartletts idea of reading participants an unfamiliar story could have actually been a factor in why participants reconstructed parts of the story when they rec alled it. Despite the criticism, Bartletts ideas regarding schemas, and reconstructive memories, are still in use, and are still prevalent in various fields of current psychological research. The reconstructive memory model was an important breakthrough which is still very much relevant in todays modern world. For example, a fundamental tactic employed by the police to catch and convict criminals is eye witness testimony. But how reliable is this method if memory really works as Bartlett suggested. With the emergence of new technologies such as CCTV, in some cases, it has now been possible to explore the reliability of eye witness testimonies. One example of false eye witness testimony was the case concerning Charles Mendes, a Brazilian man who was shot by police in a case of mistaken identity after the terrorist bombings in London. Witnesses recalled Mr Mendes jumping over the ticket barrier and running away from the police before he was shot dead by the police. Later CCTV footage of the event that emerged clearly showed that this was false information and in fact Charles Mendes actually bought a ticket and only ran to avoid missing the train. Recent tests concerning reconstructive memory have also raised doubt over the reliability of eye witness testimony. In 1974 Elizabeth Loftus conducted a series of experiments to explore the reliability of eye witness testimony. In 1974, Loftus and Palmer conducted experiments in which participants were used in an independent measures design. They were shown footage of a car crash and then separated into three groups of fifty. The first group was asked, how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? The second group was asked the question but the word hit was changed to smashed. The independent variable being the changed word. The third group was not asked the question; this group was used as a control group. The findings showed that the wording of the question directly affected the estimation of the cars speed. When the question was asked using the word hit, the lowest estimation was given. When the question was asked using the word smashed, participants responded with the highest estimation of the cars speed. After seven days, the participants were asked if they had seen broken glass after the accident; Loftus and Palmer found that participants who had been asked the question with the word smashed had been consistently more likely to answer yes (wrongly). The findings of Loftus and Palmers 1974 car crash experiments reinforced and continued the reconstructive memory theory. It has raised questions concerning the reliability of eye witness testimony; as a result of this work, juries are no longer allowed to convict a defendant on the basis of eye witness testimony alone. Their work has also led to the police revising the way they interview witnesses; to avoid misleading questions which could contaminate the original recollection of events, and in order to aid a witness to recall as much of a situation or event as possible, the police now conduct cognitive interviews. The understanding of how the mind stores and retrieves information has aided the police, whose modified interview techniques are now thought to be more successful in drawing often vital details held in the memory of witnesses. These can be used to solve crimes, help to bring dangerous criminals to justice, and are more accurate, hopefully leading to less cases of wrongful convictions due to false information or mistaken identity. There are criticisms that can be directed towards Loftus and Palmer for their experimental methods in 1974; it has been argued that due to a lack of participant variety, the findings of the experiment cannot be viewed as universally applicable as the participants were all students. Another point that has been made is that the results could have been affected by demand characteristics; the participants could have given answers according to what they thought the researchers wanted to hear. It has also been argued that the experiments were artificial; real life situations could have different results. In a real situation there are potentially severe legal and moral consequences involved with distorted recollections of events in a court of law; this is not the case in a laboratory experiment. These concerns have now been addressed by more recent research that has based experiments in a more realistic, every day context. This new research, such as the Open University and BBC project, appears to confirm much of what Loftus and Palmer asserted. Participants witnessed a stabbing and were taken to the station by the police for cognitive interviews. They were unaware that the situation had been staged. Dr Pike, a psychologist involved with the project echoed comments remarked by Elizabeth Loftus when he commented on the findings; speaking of how the mind is malleable, not fixed, he remarked that its not like imputing data into a computer, the mind does not store facts absolutely the way they are and it does not recall them absolutely accurately either. Winterman, D (2010) www.news.bbc.co.uk Further research by Loftus has led to greater understanding of how the mind reacts differently in stressful situations such as at the scene of a crime taking place. It is now understood that when a weapon is involved, ones attention tends to focus on the threatening object. As a consequence, ones recall of peripheral details diminishes. Loftus asserted that weapon anxiety can be responsible for ones inability to recall the perpetrator, and or crucial details or events of a crime. It is now understood that age, and ones emotional state, are factors to be considered concerning accurate recall. It is also widely accepted that people are more likely to misinterpret a situation, make errors, or make crucial mistakes when they are scared or in shock. Although in some instances, an extreme situation can lead to a state of heightened awareness, which can in turn lead to flashbulb memories; potentially extremely accurate detailed memories of an event or situation. Having explored Bartletts theory of reconstructive memory, and later research by Loftus and Palmer that continued it, one can see that these theories have facilitated a much greater understanding of the complexities of human memory. Bartlett put forward an explanation of aspects of human memory that other models of memory do not account for. Most, if not all people would have experience with memories that are vague, or unclear. How many times have you recalled an event, only for the person next to you, who shared the experience with you, to contradict you, with a completely different account of the events? Reconstructive memory puts forward an explanation for why this can happen; of how memory does not always reflect an accurate account of an event or situation. Loftus and Palmers continued research into reconstructive memory has further supported the theory. Their work has had important repercussions in areas such as law and police procedure. The reconstructive memory theory continu es to exert a significant influence in todays modern world. Cardwell M, Clark L, Meldrum C. (2003) Psychology for A Level, Harper Collins. Gross R. (2009) Psychology. The Science of Mind and Behaviour 5th Edition, Hodder Arnold. Gross R, Rolls G. (2003) Essential AS Psychology, Hodder Stoughton. www.google.com/http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Frederic_Bartlett (accessed 26th April 2010) (May 7th 2008) www.google.com/http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Schemas (accessed 26 April 2010) (2010) www.google.com/http://www.docstoc.com/docs/33510508/The-War-of-the-Ghosts/ (accessed 26th April 2010) www.google.com/http://www.s-cool.co.uk/alevel/psychology/human-memory/criti (accessed 26th April 2010) Winterman, D. (2010) BBC Magazine available at www.google.com/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8617945.stm (accessed 28th April)

Samoan Language :: essays research papers fc

Samoan is a rich language that remains the principal language of the people of Samoa. The Samoan language is exquisite and quite easy to learn and is similar to other languages in the pacific region. â€Å"Samoan is a branch of the Austronesian Language, formerly called Malayo-Polynesian language, one of the word’s largest language families, both in terms of numbers of languages-more than 700-and geographic spread-covering islands and some mainland areas from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island and Hawaii in the east† (Amerika Samoa). â€Å"The Austronesian language is divided into two branches: Formosan, the languages spoken by about 200,000 people in Taiwan; and Malayo-Polynesian, comprising the rest of the language in the Austronesian family† (Encarta Online). As a student finishing up his 2nd year of the Hawaiian Language, I was amazed to find several words in Pouliuli having the same meaning in Hawaiian. Therefore, this report will focus on the Samoan l anguage; it’s rules, pronunciation, and the similarities and differences between the Samoan language and the Hawaiian language. The Samoan language cannot be considered as strong language, and few letters of the alphabet are put to use. â€Å"D and B are never used; H, R, and K are of rare occurrence, which are found in words that have been introduced. All words have a vowel termination, and their etymological forms are constructed by the employment of particles attached to the roots, thereby forming agglutinative or polysynthetic words. The Samoan language is comprised of only fourteen letters-five vowels, A, E, I, O, U, and nine consonants, F, G, L, M, N, P, S, T, V, --H, K, and R only occurring in words of foreign origin† (Neffgen 3). The Samoan language now contains many introduced words, which have been distorted by added vowels or substituted consonants, in order for native speakers to articulate them. Samoan vowels have long and short versions. The language is generally pronounced as in romantic languages such as Spanish and Italian. In print the long vowel sound is represented by the presence of a dash or macron over the vowel. Here is a chart on how to pronounce each vowel. Vowel  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Long  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Short A  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Bath  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  But E  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Eh  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Bet I  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Feet  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Bit O  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Raw  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Gone U  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Pool  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Pew Source: Samoan Sensation â€Å"Samoan consonants are pronounced the same as in English, with the exception of G, which sounds like the NG as in song† (Samoan Sensation). The Hawaiian language and Samoan language are quite similar because they both come from the same language family.

Glory of women Essay

Siegfried Sassoons Glory of Women is a poem depicting the roles which women played during World War I. The poem is made up of a series of sarcastic statements about women. Sassoon attempts to use these statements to convey the cruel and ironic side of the war that women do not tend to see. Glory of Women is a war-time lyric, constructed of 14 lines, with a varied rhyme scheme of ABABABAB CDECDE making it a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet. It is divided into two sections, the octave which consists of the first eight lines, and the sestet the final six lines. It is written in iambic pentameter, which helps clarify the meaning of the poem as you read it. The title of the poem itself is ambiguous, posing the question whether womens roles during war are glorious as the soldiers on the battlefield. A number of techniques were used in this poem to communicate Sassoons idea of emotional truth about the war. Sassoon speaks directly to the readers by writing in second person You, an attempt to involve the readers and bring attention to those he directed this poem at women. He also uses assonance which creates a euphonious effect when being read. The poem begins with a praising tone, with sarcasm and bitterness scattered throughout the rest of its content. You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, Or wounded in a mentionable place. depicts womens ignorance in regards to war, believing soldiers to be heroes only when they are wounded in a mentionable place. The Great War offered many job opportunities for women that had long been denied them. You make us shells. portray the many women who were recruited into munitions factories during the war. This line is ironic in a sense that it is the shells that kill the soldiers, whether they be British or German. It is a juxtaposition to line 8 And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed, depicting that the women make shells that kill soldiers, and are therefore further heating the conflict of war, creating more deaths and mourning. Strong imageries were presented in the final three lines of the poem, a  German mother knitting socks for her son while he lay dead in the mud. This imagery shows the ignorance and how much knowledge and experience women have about the truth of war. It is intended to distress those women who tend to spend time at home, and have no idea of the brutality of war that Sassoon and many other soldiers had experienced. This imagery is also a contrast of women and mens roles during The Great War. Sassoon is anguished by the fact that women sit at home comfortably while soldiers are risking their lives on the battlefield. The imageries from the final three lines also depict that whether it be British or German, the soldiers are all individuals. His face is trodden deeper in the mud. allowed readers to empathize with the honour that dead soldiers often receive. German soldiers also have women to mourn their laurelled memories when they are killed. The emotions that Sassoon portrayed in this poem are both horrifying and miserable. Trampling the terrible corpses – blind with blood. describes the realism of war, in contrast to By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. Sassoon believes that women perceive war as a heroic story, where in reality it is full of blood and violence. Therefore, the title and the content of this compelling and powerful poem are written in pure irony. In Sassoons opinion, women cannot earn glory by knitting at home, nor by making shells that encourage further killings. The use of narration in second person effectively leaves readers with an understanding of the brutality of war, and an insight into the roles which women played during World War I. References Sassoon, S. Glory of Women, The Norton Anthology of Literature vol. 2, 2000. Kanaya, T. Sassoon’s Use of Irony in â€Å"Glory of Women†, http://www.haverford.edu/engl/english354/GreatWar/Sassoon/Sasslehr.html, 1997. Lehr, A. On Glory Of Women by Siegfried Sassoon, http://www.haverford.edu/engl/english354/GreatWar/Sassoon/Sasslehr.html, 1999.

Features of bluetooth technology Essay

The logo for Bluetooth is based on Runes surrounding the legend of Harald Bluetooth. Bluetooth the technology is based on communications central to man’s own personal space. Fundamentally Bluetooth operates within the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band at 2. 4 GHz. It is a short-range wireless communication standard defined as cable replacement for a Personal Area Network (PAN) (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, pp. 87-94). Figure 1 is the Bluetooth Logo. A cable replacement standard has been defined because cables limit mobility of the consumer; they are cumbersome to carry around, are easily lost or broken. Often connectors are prone to difficult to diagnose failures; or are proprietary. To counteract these limitations Bluetooth is designed to be light and portable. It can be embedded to take the riggers of physical knocks and shocks. It includes standards and protocols to make it mobile, robust, reliable and not limited to one manufacturer (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, pp. 87-94). The operating band also fits the goals of Bluetooth, imposing requirements as a cable replacement. The cost needs to be comparable with cable. Reductions can be achieved by operating in the licence free 2. 4 GHz ISM band, keeping backward compatibility wherever possible lowers the cost of ownership by avoiding upgrades and having a relaxed radio specification enables single chip integrated circuit solutions. It also needs to be as reliable and resilient as cable and cope with errors and degradation caused by interference. For mobile devices it must be compact, lightweight, low power and easy to use (see â€Å"Bluetooth†. Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, pp. 87-94). A. 1 Frequency Hopping We have addressed the reasons for the Bluetooth without delving into the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the technology to discover how it operates. For the majority of countries the ISM band used by Bluetooth is available from 2. 40-2. 4835 GHz, although some countries impose restrictions. In this band Bluetooth uses Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) techniques in order to improve its immunity from interference (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). In unrestricted countries the radios hop in pseudo random sequences around all available channels, this equates to 79 RF channels with a channel spacing of 1 MHz. Starting at a base frequency of 2402 MHz then the frequency of the channels, f, can be expressed as: f =2402 + n MHz where, n, is the channel number with an integer value in the range of 0 to 78. In restricted countries a limited frequency hopping schemes with just 23 channels is used and is catered for in the Bluetooth specification. Both hopping schemes have a 1 MHz channel spacing making it possible to design a simple radio interface whereby the baseband only has to specify a channel number and the radio multiplies this up to the appropriate frequency offset (see J.Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). In this FHSS scheme there are 1600 hops per second, which is a hop every 625  µs. Part of this hop timing is taken up by the guard time of 220  µs allowing the synthesizer time to settle. The frequency hopping implements time division multiplexing as shown in Figure 2. The basis of the scheme has the Master device transmitting in the first 625 us slot, k, and here the Slave receives. In the next slot k = 1 the Slave is permitted to transmit and the master listens (see J.Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). Figure 2: Frequency Hopping, master and slave interact on corresponding slots The radio must be able to retune and stabilise on a new frequency within tight time constraints. This is pushed further when establishing a connection; the hop rate can be shortened to every 312. 5 us. As the radios are constantly hopping to different radio channels, this ensures that packets affected by interference on one channel can be retransmitted on a different frequency channel. To further enhance resilience both ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) and FEC (Forward Error Correction) form part of the specification (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall). One drawback with the normal hop sequence is the time taken for production testing. Bluetooth ensures adequate frequency coverage with a test sequence allowing the radios to be tested at a faster rate (see J. Bray and C. F. Sturman, Bluetooth: Connect Without Cables†, Prentice Hall).