Inductive machine learning algorithms attempt to recognize patterns in, and generalize from empirical data. They provide a practical means of predicting lithology, or other spatially varying physical features, from multidimensional geophysical data sets. It is for this reason machine learning approaches are increasing in popularity for geophysical data inference. A key motivation for their use is the ease with which uncertainty measures can be estimated for nonprobabilistic algorithms. We have compared and evaluated the abilities of two nonprobabilistic machine learning algorithms, random forests (RF) and support vector machines (SVM), to recognize ambiguous supervised classification predictions using uncertainty calculated from estimates of class membership probabilities. We formulated a method to establish optimal uncertainty threshold values to identify and isolate the maximum number of incorrect predictions while preserving most of the correct classifications. This is illustrated using a case example of the supervised classification of surface lithologies in a folded, structurally complex, metamorphic terrain. We found that (1) the use of optimal uncertainty thresholds significantly improves overall classification accuracy of RF predictions, but not those of SVM, by eliminating the maximum number of incorrectly classified samples while preserving the maximum number of correctly classified samples; (2) RF, unlike SVM, was able to exploit dependencies and structures contained within spatially varying input data; and (3) high RF prediction uncertainty is spatially coincident with transitions in lithology and associated contact zones, and regions of intense deformation. Uncertainty has its upside in the identification of areas of key geologic interest and has wide application across the geosciences, where transition zones are important classes in their own right. The techniques used in this study are of practical value in prioritizing subsequent geologic field activities, which, with the aid of this analysis, may be focused on key lithology contacts and problematic localities.

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The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014 has extended post-release supervision to all individuals serving short sentences in England and Wales – a cohort who previously faced neglect within the criminal justice system. This empirical study uses a case study approach to explore the resettlement experiences of individuals subject to this new legislation, understanding how individuals circulate and re-cycle between a range of services and agencies in the community, further illuminating upon the reality of repeat ‘revolving door’ imprisonment. Drawing upon Cohen's ‘net widening’ analogy, this article posits that collectively the array of services involved in an individual's resettlement form a ‘resettlement net’, which segregates individuals in the community through control and surveillance functions, extending the carceral boundary of the prison firmly into the community. Welfare-orientated organisations become compelled to ‘braid’ welfare responses alongside penal functions in order to operate within the resettlement net. This article also explores some of the difficulties that individuals experience as they navigate the resettlement net, including informal forms of exclusion, and the wear and tear of the net, which undermines the rhetoric of care envisioned by this legislation, and drives individuals deeper into the mesh of carceral control.

Introduced under the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 created a period of post-sentence supervision (PSS) after licence for individuals serving short custodial sentences. This empirical study features on the ground views and perspectives of practitioners and service users of PSS in one case-study area. Findings from this research suggest a number of issues and ambiguities with the enactment of the sentence. These include ambiguities regarding the correct use of enforcement procedures; the antagonistic relationship between third sector and Community Rehabilitation Company staff, primarily centred around transferring cases and concerns over the use of ‘light touch’ supervision and uncertainties over what the rehabilitative aims of this sentence mean in practice. These issues led to practitioners questioning the legitimacy of the third sector organisation involved in the management of PSS, while service users experienced PSS as a frustrating ‘pass-the-parcel’ experience, where resettlement support was constantly stalled and restarted at each juncture of the sentence. Before briefly discussing the potential future of PSS under the next iteration of probation policy, this article concludes by arguing that there is emerging evidence of a commonality of failures occurring at every juncture of the short sentence, undermining resettlement prospects for the long-neglected short sentence population.

As part of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, 70 ‘local’ prisons in England and Wales were re-designated as resettlement prisons, in order to provide additional through-the-gate support to individuals serving short sentences. Drawing on staff and prisoner interviews in one case study resettlement prison, this article considers what challenges were involved with implementing a resettlement culture in a local prison. Findings first outline factors inhibiting the resettlement status of the prison; these include a tension between attempts to implement a more expansive resettlement remit into the prison, while also fulfilling more long-standing core institutional duties; the size and churn of the prison population; wide-scale apathy caused by change fatigue; and government austerity policies which caused significant difficulties in the day-to-day staffing of the prison. This article then turns to practitioner responses to the re-designation, finding that practitioners interpreted resettlement in two limited ways: top-down managerial attempts to instil a wider resettlement culture into the prison, and resistance from prison officers who felt unwilling or unable to expand their roles beyond custodial and security concerns. This article concludes by outlining how this set of inter-related barriers frustrated staff and prisoners alike, eroding a sense of hope and purpose and impeding true cultural change.