The value and role of the ‘public’ in criminology and criminal justice have been constructed and reconstructed over the decades, experiencing a number of discursive shifts across different subdisciplines in criminology. Narratives about public voices change according to the context in which they are told. Depending on the researcher’s vantage point and inclination, it appears that the voice and role of the public in criminology tends to be narrated either as a ‘malevolent public’, which speaks for an unspecified entity of people who are most of the time misinformed, punitive and in need of expeditious education, or a ‘benevolent public’, representing a more inclusive, but also romanticised, vision of citizens in the public sphere. In this chapter, examples of various perspectives on the role and value of lay people in criminology are discussed to emonstrate how these narratives are interpreted and framed to align with the pre-conceived perception of either the ‘benevolent’ or the malevolent’ public agenda. This development, as well as the dominant application of quantitative methodologies to research public attitudes, has silenced the magnitude of different and sometimes elusive communities, whose access to the public sphere and media representation is limited. Thus, there is a need not only to shift away from the dichotomous division between liberal vs. punitive public views, but also to address the heterogeneity of people’s views and roles vertically (individual, collective), horizontally (in different networks/publics/target groups). Moreover, the publics as we knew them some decades ago, when the most frequently cited attitudinal research was conducted, are now different publics that function in both the online and offline public spheres simultaneously – the impact of which is yet to be captured in criminology.
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More than 25!years after Moore’s first introduction of the public value concept in 995, the concept is now widely used, but its operationalization is still considered difficult. This paper presents the empirical results of a study analyzing the application of the public value concept in Higher Education Institutions, thereby focusing on how to account for public value. The paper shows how Dutch universities of applied sciences operationalize the concept ‘public value’, and how they report on the outcome achievements. The official strategy plans and annual reports for FY2016 through FY2018 of the ten largest institutions were used. While we find that all the institutions selected aim to deliver public value, they still use performance indicators that have a more narrow orientation, and are primarily focused on processes, outputs, and service delivery quality. However, we also observe that they use narratives to show the public value they created. In this way this paper contributes to the literature on public value accounting.
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Can audience embarrassment be used to shape interactions in public settings? Is this the threshold for an audience to step in and / or out of the interaction in performative interactions in public space? The proliferation of mobile and ubiquitous devices has shifted the attention to the design of interactive systems for use in public settings. This design applies the notion of performance to attract and engage audiences. Because performance becomes such a core part of the interaction, the success of those interactive systems heavily depends upon the physical, social and emotional context in which they are to be used. Indeed, strangers around a potential user may hinder or encourage that individual's participation in the interaction. Similarly, the physical space in which the interaction takes place, public or semipublic space may as well facilitate audience participation or prevent it. This paper investigates what characteristics of this setting (perceived / felt) can trigger audience participation in the interaction. A model based on the notion of performance and entailing some degree of felt embarrassment is applied to two cases to explain how the potential embarrassment implicit in any interaction in public space can be used to encourage users’ participation in it.
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How to create personas to improve designs for behaviour change strategies in the public domain? Three recent cases illustrate lessons learnt and challenges encountered during persona development in the public domain. Personas were helpful to gain insight into diversity within a target group, to create empathy for its members, and to have a shared understanding when communicating about them. The main challenges encountered were 1) capturing complex behaviour with personas, as the behaviours involved were variable over time, the (legislative) environment in motion, and the target groups diverse; 2) finding the right balance between intuitive vs. evidence-based decision-making, a process we coined “taking a responsible leap of faith”; and 3) transferring personas to third parties, as free sharing of insights and tools is common in the public domain. Validation plays an important role in personas’ transferability. We call for all involved researchers to share experiences with using the persona methodology in the public domain, in order to tackle the challenges, and to create a more standardised way of developing personas.
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The vast literature on accountability in the public sector (usually called ‘public accountability’originating from political science and public administration tends to emphasize the positive dimension of holding authorities to account. As formulated by one prominent scholar in the field, ‘[a]ccountability has become an icon for good governance’: it is perceived as ‘a Good Thing, and, so it seems, we can’t have enough of it’ (Bovens, 2005: 182, 183). Accountability has, thus, become one of the central values of democratic rule – varying on a well-known American slogan one could phrase this as ‘no public responsi bility without accountability’.
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The essence of a democratic process is the guarantee that citizens have free and easy access to public information. How can that be made possible and how can people learn to use that information critically? In earlier papers (Boef, et.al. 2008 and 2009), we discussed the relationship between public library, press and the free access to relevant information. In this paper, we concentrate on the role of journalistic media in making public information accessible for the citizen. Our starting point is the fact that the citizen, in shaping her or his position in relation to political and other societal issues needs fewer opinions of others, but more reliable information; verified and certified by professionals. That way, the citizen will become enabled to create and to ground his or her opinion. Based on that solid foundation, opinions and comments of others can be appreciated and rated. Finally, we will discuss the ongoing process of the disappearing of independent media and the negative effect on the democratic process, and hence the need for a new generation of Internet savvy civil journalists.
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This paper investigates how management accounting and control systems (operationalized by using Simons’ (1995a) levers of control framework) can be used as devices to support public value creation and as such it contributes to the literature on public value accounting. Using a mixed methods case study approach, including documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews, we found diverging uses of control systems in the Dutch university of applied sciences we investigated. While belief and interactive control systems are used intensively for strategy change and implementation, diagnostic controls were used mainly at the decentral level and seen as devices to make sure that operational and financial boundaries were not crossed. Therefore, belief and interactive control systems lay the foundation for the implementation of a new strategy, in which concepts of public value play a large role, using diagnostic controls to constrain actions at the operational level. We also found that whereas the institution wanted to have interaction with the external stakeholders, in daily practice this takes place only at the phase of strategy formulation, but not in the phase of intermediate strategy evaluation.
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In this policy brief we recommend that in order to face numerous societal challenges such as migration and climate change, regional governments should create a culture of innovation by opening up themselves and stimulate active citizenship by supporting so called Public Sector Innovation (PSI) labs. These labs bring together different types of stakeholders that will explore new solutions for societalchallenges and come up with new policies to tackle them. This method has been developed and tested in a large EU funded research project.
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The growing prevalence of AI systems in society, has also prompted a growth of AI systems in the public sector. There are however ethical concerns over the impact of AI on society and how this technology can impact public values. Previous works do not connect public values and the development of AI. To address this, a method is required to ensure that developers and public servants can signal possible ethical implications of an AI system and are assisted in creating systems that adhere to public values. Using the Research pathway model and Value Sensitive Design, we will develop a toolbox to assist in these challenges and gain insight into how public values can be embedded throughout the development of AI systems.
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