New programme announced: New directions for work in digital Scotland
The questions addressed in this programme relate to the future of adults’ working lives that are affected by technological change and new work formats. The programme will discuss how Scotland’s digital knowledge and skills can be strengthened to respond to challenges that derive from its geography and from the threat of digital exclusion. To this end the programme will identify ways that learning (including linguistic and cultural) can be promoted to benefit digital working and provide recommendations for guidelines to reduce digital exclusions, particularly those associated with poverty, age, gender, rurality and disability.
Read More...
New programme announced: Re-thinking responses to rape
This programme will collect initial soundings of the impacts of reforming the definition and prosecution of rape, recognising that experiences of rape survivors and public attitudes of blameworthiness towards them have in the past been stubbornly resistant to changes in law, policy and practice. The incremental steps that typify traditional legal reform represent progress, but are incapable on their own of producing the cultural shifts necessary to transform the social and legal practices that shape reactions to rape. The programme will harness the expertise of those familiar with these practices to stimulate debates and pose fundamental questions about current norms and assumptions and consider innovative responses, models and best practice from other communities and countries.
Read More...
Scots Law of Evidence: programme report
The Scots Law of Evidence programme report examines the risks arising when evidence from science or technology is used in Scottish criminal trials. This is very timely given Lord Carloway's wider report into criminal law and practice, and the report from the Shirley McKie Inquiry.
Read More...
New programme announced: Fingerprints, a road map to reform
In recent years a number of high profile cases from around the world, and more particularly from Scotland, have cast doubt on the validity and reliability of fingerprint evidence. Major figures in the criminal justice community have expressed public concerns about these developments and issues of public trust and accountability have been raised by the media. This programme seeks to examine these specific cases and by engaging a wide range of professional stakeholders and academics, to establish the causes of these failings and identify practical steps to address them.
Read More...