‘License to kill’: How ‘Stand Your Ground’ gun laws are fuelling random shootings and racism across the US

Josh Marcus reports on a growing body of laws making it easier to ‘shoot first and ask questions later’

I

n America, seemingly any interaction, from the innocuous to the intimidating, can end in gun violence.

Consider this year alone.

April saw multiple high-profile shootings. In Kansas City, Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old with dreams of pursuing a career in engineering, was shot at point blank range for ringing the wrong doorbell. A group of young cheerleaders in Texas were shot when one accidentally entered the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot. Kaylin Gillis, 20, was fatally gunned down in rural New York after mistakenly pulling into the wrong driveway. And Kinsley White, a six-year-old from Gastonia, North Carolina, was shot alongside her parents when her basketball rolled into a neighbour’s garden.

The violence continued into August, when University of South Carolina student Nicholas Anthony Donofrio, 20, was fatally shot when he violently attempted to enter the wrong home near campus. At the end of the month, police announced the killing was legally justified, citing state self-defence laws.

Ralph Yarl: Prosecutors charge Kansas City homeowner for shooting teen

Experts say these unpredictable acts of violence are made worse by so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, provisions that the US Commission on Civil Rights once dubbed a “license to kill.”

"If this is the sort of thing where ‘stand your ground’ can be enforced, then every US postal worker, every Amazon delivery person, every pizza delivery person, every Girl Scout volunteer, anybody knocking on your door now becomes someone who’s subject to be shot," Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said of the Ralph Yarl shooting in an interview on MSNBC.

Traditionally, under the law of self-defence, deadly force is considered a last resort, and people generally have a duty to retreat from a situation if possible before resorting to lethal violence, according to Professor Kami N Chavis, director of the William and Mary Law School Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform. At home, though, the “castle doctrine” often applies, meaning one doesn’t need to retreat from a deadly threat.

However, she told The Independent, in the estimated 35 states with explicit Stand Your Ground legislation or similar provisions, the law takes things one step further. In these (often Republican) states, the castle doctrine has been expanded and the duty to retreat eliminated in venues well beyond the home. Fatal force can be used not just to stop imminent threats of harm, but also prevent burglaries, or in states like Florida, even to stop an unarmed person from entering an unoccupied vehicle.

“I am opposed to stand your ground laws because they don’t allow people to de-escalate their situations,” Professor Chavis said.

The first such law passed in Utah in 1994, and they’ve since spread across the country with the backing of millions of dollars from the gun lobby and the political clout of conservative-leaning advocacy outfits like the American Legislative Exchange Council, according to Ari Freilich, state policy director of the Giffords Law Center, an advocacy group attempting to reduce gun violence.

Despite this concerted and highly successful effort, the laws, he said, weren’t even proposed as a solution to any well-defined problem with public safety or criminal justice law.

The National Rifle Association helped lobby for the spread of Stand Your Ground-style laws at the same time as gunmakers began marketing high-powered weapons for self-defence

(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

“There was no real problem that they were solving,” Mr Freilich said. “There’s not a person sitting in jail that they’re pointing to saying that their use of force should’ve been justified.”

Rather, Mr Freilich said, Stand Your Ground came about as the gun industry was trying to drum up new sales with the decline of traditional money-makers like hunting.

“It took them some time. They have now developed a new market. That market was fear-based,” he said.

The new business plan revolved not around selling hunting rifles, but rather high-powered semi-automatic pistols and assault weapons for a newly ascendant notion of “self-defence,” playing on racialised fears about the rise of terrorism and urban violent crime.

It’s hard to believe, but in the 1970s the National Rifle Association was once in favour of restrictions on personal gun use, a reaction to calls from groups like the Black Panther Party for Black people to legally arm themselves in self-defence. Now, the NRA is a key backer of legislation in the half of US states where it is legal to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

The combination of numerous guns, relaxed standards for self-defence, and poorly trained but highly armed individuals has caused a powder keg in states with Stand Your Ground laws.

Numerous studies suggest such laws drive up homicide and gun violence rates. In Florida, whose NRA-backed, 2005 Stand Your Ground law has inspired numerous immitators across the country, the state experienced a 32 per cent increase in gun homicides after the law was in place.

Studies show Stand Your Ground laws drive up violent crime, and often apply disproportionately to protect white gunmen

Stand Your Ground cases also invite personal, and often racist, subjective judgements into lethal situations, according to experts. First, an individual’s perception informs when they think they’re under threat, then a jury must decide whether that was reasonable.

According to the evidence, this scheme often ends up creating a shadow right to self-defence, where white people claiming to be under threat from Black people are trusted at greater rates than when the situation is reversed.

In Stand Your Ground states, 45 per cent of cases with a white shooter and a Black victim were deemed justified, compared with just 11 per cent of cases with a Black shooter and a white victim, according to a 2021 Giffords report.

“If we’re going to have these laws, they seem to have some racial inequities built in,” Professor Chavis said. “That may not be a problem with that law, that’s a societal issue. If we know that and we study that, we ought to try and remedy that.”

If not, she said, there will be more cases like Ralph Yarl’s, where an individual’s perception causes violence with lifelong effects.

“Black adults deliver mail and DoorDash and Uber Eats and have car trouble... This law is just another avenue to perpetuate racial disparities and to allow people to unfortunately exercise their racial prejudices implicitly or explicitly in very dangerous ways,” she added.

“Your very being cannot be a threat.”

And yet it seems that may be exactly what happened in Ralph Yarl’s case.

Andrew Lester has been charged with assault for shooting Ralph Yarl

(Reuters/MerrittForTexas)

The teen was sent to pick up his younger brothers from a friend’s house, and suspect Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, shot him within seconds of the youth approaching his front door. The man, now charged with assault, told police he was “scared to death” by the sight of the child on his doorstep.

Legal experts like Professor Chavis say Mr Lester, who has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to appear back in court 31 August, doesn’t have a particularly strong self-defence case – even with all the subjectivity the law allows, touching a doorknob isn’t a lethal situation to most people – but Stand Your Ground law has a way of defying common sense notion when it comes to the concept of self-defence.

In 2012, for example, the killer of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was acquitted in part under the law. Local resident George Zimmerman called local police to report a “real suspicious Black guy” wearing a hoodie in his neighbourhood. Even though 911 operators urged Mr Zimmerman not to pursue the youth, he did so anyway, and killed the teen in an altercation that followed.

The killer of Trayvon Martin was acquitted in part because of Stand Your Ground laws

More recently, in 2020, there was the case of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Two armed white men chased the Black man down in a truck, thinking he had trespassed at a local construction site, cornering him before eventually fatally shooting him. Police initially declared the conduct a justified homicide under Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law.

If self-defence can include an interaction one deliberately provoked, there is little that seems to fall outside the concept.

There are some signs, however, that despite the proliferation of guns into everyday life, and laws which make their use less likely to face scrutiny, some officials believe self-defence and Stand Your Ground have their limits.

In California, legislation is moving forward requiring people to pass a written safety test, with questions about safety and de-escalation, before acquiring a licence to carry weapons in public.

The Ralph Yarl shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.

In a country with more than one mass shooting per day and more firearms than people, barring dramatic changes to gun laws and US society more broadly, the next random shooting seems less a matter of if, but when.

Beyond just what’s on the law books, Mr Freilich of the Giffords Center says Stand Your Ground is reflective of a larger cultural message.

“That has been interpreted, that has been heard by some people, as an unambiguous encouragement for people to use force in more situations and more impunity, to shoot first and ask questions later,” he said.

Why Trump’s ‘Kubrick Stare’ mugshot is straight out of the horror film playbook

ByRobbie Collin
August 31, 2023 —

Take a good, hard look at the Kubrick Stare: a fixture of the films of Stanley Kubrick, and one of cinema’s most recognisable shots. How does it work?

Well, for a topical example, consult the recently released police mugshot of Fulton County Jail inmate number P01135809, AKA former US president Donald J Trump.

Donald Trump’s Georgia mugshot.

The face is angled downwards rather than up, emphasising the brow, and the eyeline not directed at something far out of shot, but angled uncomfortably close to the viewer’s own.

It’s Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket, just before he shoots R. Lee Ermey, then himself. It’s Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, smirking from under the brim of his bowler hat. It’s Jack Nicholson in virtually every scene in The Shining – and, in all honesty, the rest of the time, too.

Like the Spielberg Gaze – an upturned face aglow with wonder – the Kubrick Stare is also implicatory. Perhaps incriminating is a better word, since the onlooker is being made party to the subject’s bubbling derangement.

“You know what’s going on here,” it seems to say. “And I know you know. And I know you don’t like it. And I like that you don’t.” So as expressions you might choose for your police mugshot go, it’s quite the flex.

Malcolm McDowell in the film Clockwork Orange.




Versions of the stare have appeared in Kubrick’s work since at least 1964’s Dr Strangelove, and in other directors’ oeuvres even before that.

(Anthony Perkins’ climactic leer to the camera in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, from 1960, is as Kubrick Stare-y as close-ups get.)

But it was McDowell’s unhinged chief droog, Alex DeLarge, in Kubrick’s own A Clockwork Orange from 1971, who definitively pinned down the look.

Vincent D’Onofrio in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

CREDIT:WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.

In a 2014 interview, McDowell revealed that Kubrick had asked him to come up with an expression he could use as the character’s reaction to a deafening blast of Beethoven’s 9th.




“So I was doing various things,” he recalled. “[My] eyes were kind of up and glazed over, and [my] mouth kind of took on a weird look. And when he started to laugh, we knew we had it.”

Actors and filmmakers have been deploying it with skin-crawling success ever since.

Anthony Hopkins smiling in his cell in The Silence of the Lambs might be the most chilling Kubrick Stare that Kubrick didn’t direct.


Joaquin Phoenix delivered a particularly upsetting one as the young Emperor Commodus in Gladiator, with flecks of blood on his face. And for Heath Ledger, it was understandably the go-to expression for the Joker in The Dark Knight.




Film director Stanley Kubrick in action in 1971.

Given the highly constructed nature of the shot, it’s always especially fun when a Kubrick Stare is spotted out in the wild.

Trump’s mugshot now seems likely to dominate this lively sub-genre, though other recent notable examples include a number of Madonna’s recent Instagram selfies, including an eyebrow-twisting corker from February 2020, and a January 2022 appearance by Elmo from Sesame Street, in which the fluffy red Muppet listens to his friend Zoe sing a song about Rocco, her pet rock. The brink of madness is closer than we might like to think.

Telegraph, London

Guatemala’s president-elect and his anti-corruption party faces legal challenges. Here’s what’s happening

By — Sonia Pérez D., Associated Press

 Aug 30, 2023 

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala’s Aug. 20 presidential election has been bogged down in court and legal challenges despite the fact the results were clear: Progressive candidate Bernardo Arévalo won about 61 percent of the vote to conservative Sandra Torres’ 39 percent. After weeks of uncertainty, the top electoral court finally certified Arévalo as the winner Monday.

WATCH: How an anti-corruption outsider triumphed in Guatemala’s presidential election

But federal prosecutors are seeking to suspend his party, throwing into doubt whether he will have any support in congress. And Torres has filed court challenges seeking to overturn the election result, alleging fraud in the vote count — something none of the independent election observer groups reported.

How did it get so complicated?

First, you have to understand corruption

Governmental corruption and impunity was so bad in Guatemala that in 2006 the country had to call in a United Nations-backed commission, known as CICIG, to combat it.

The commission’s work led to some serious results: In 2015, Guatemala became one of the few countries in the world to force a sitting president, Otto Pérez Molina, to resign and immediately go to jail, along with his vice president.

The next elected president, Jimmy Morales — and much of Guatemala’s political elite — decided things had gone too far. Morales kicked out CICIG in 2019.

The hunters become the hunted

Under current President Alejandro Giammattei and the attorney general he appointed, Consuelo Porras, the government has targeted criminal investigations not against corruption but against those who investigated and punished it.

Some 30 judges, magistrates and prosecutors involved in the investigation or processing of corruption cases have been forced to flee the country after facing legal action. Opponents and critics have also been targeted.

The U.S. government has cancelled Porras’ U.S. visa, calling her actions unjustified.
What does this have to do with Arévalo?

Arévalo campaigned on one main pledge: cleaning up corruption. That made some in the current administration nervous at the all-too-real prospect of jail time.

Prosecutors claim they found evidence that some of the signatures gathered to register Arévalo’s Seed Movement party were illegal. So Porras’ office has requested the suspension of his political party — even though the law clearly says that can’t be done during a campaign.

Is this ‘lawfare?’

The term ‘lawfare’ is understood as the use of multiple prosecutions and lawsuits to intimidate, silence or discredit dissidents or opponents. Can it be applied to Guatemala’s elections?

Consider this: Prosecutors and courts barred at least three of the most popular candidates from running in the first round on June 25 due to technicalities, in some cases ridiculously small.

And the attorney general’s office raided the headquarters of the country’s electoral authority hours after it certified the results of the first round to search and seize evidence from voter rolls related to the investigation of Arévalo’s party.

Is there any merit to prosecutors’ allegations against Arévalo?

Prosecutors say one of the people who signed to register Arévalo’s party in 2022 came forward to say his signature was falsified. And the attorney general’s office said the names of 12 dead people were found among the 25,000 signatures and as many as 100 might have been falsified.

The office also claims some of the people collecting signatures were paid to do so — something that’s legal and commonplace in the United States, for example. Arévalo’s supporters say that’s a small-potatoes argument for overturning millions of votes.
What’s likely to happen?

Giammattei, who has sought to portray himself as above the fray of his attorney general’s raids and prosecutions, has said he is willing to meet with Arévalo and fulfill the transfer of power to him Jan. 14.

There seems to be little that could be done to stop Arévalo from taking office, and his opponents’ efforts now seem to be concentrated on ensuring he is a weak president with as little legislative support as possible.

Former congressman Roberto Alejos said prosecutors’ decision to suspend Arévalo’s party — which won 23 seats in congress — could at the very least prevent it from getting key committee assignments. But it’s not just politics.

“What prosecutors are doing, intervening in the electoral process, is creating a great deal of legal instability,” Alejos said, “and that could affect the economy, tourism, the rule of law and that could affect investment.”

Left: Guatemalan anti-graft presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo reacts following his victory in the presidential run-off election, in Guatemala City, Guatemala August 20, 2023. Photo by Pilar Olivares/REUTERS

RelatedGuatemalan president calls for democratic transition of power amid legal attacks on rising anti-corruption party

By Sonia Pérez D., Megan Janetsky, Associated Press
Guatemalans elect progressive new president, who faces challenges to his party’s legal status

By Christopher Sherman, Sonia Pérez, Associated Press

Guatemalans protest interference by court, prosecutors in August’s election

Public Law Project: Immigration minister is wrong to say Illegal Migration Act is compatible with the UK’s international obligations

Summary

Robert Jenrick responds to PLP's concerns, but PLP says his claims are inaccurate

By EIN

Date of Publication:

31 August 2023

The Public Law Project (PLP) yesterday published correspondence from the immigration minister Robert Jenrick in which he defended the lawfulness of the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

Jenrick was responding to a July letter by PLP and three other European rights groups urging the Government to reconsider the then Illegal Migration Bill. The groups warned that the Bill would undermine the international rules-based system and contravene the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention.

In his 3-page reply, which you can read here, Jenrick denied that the Illegal Migration Act was incompatible with the UK's international obligations.

The immigration minister wrote: "The Act does not prevent someone from claiming asylum. However, if individuals come to the UK illegally, and have not come from a country where their life and liberty were at risk, their asylum and human rights claims against their country of origin will be declared inadmissible. They may be detained, and will be removed either to their home country (if it is safe to do so), or relocated to a safe third country, where they will receive support to rebuild their lives. They will not be able to make a life here in the UK."

He continued: "The Government takes its international obligations very seriously and there is nothing in the Act which requires the Government to act incompatibly with those obligations. Our focus is on putting in place legislation that, once operationalised, will stop people from entering the country dangerously and illegally. We need a radical response to the challenge presented by the illegal and dangerous Channel crossings. The Government is satisfied that the provisions of the Act are capable of being applied compatibly with the Convention rights, and we continue our work with European counterparts, including operational work with the French on the ground to prevent crossings, and vital work upstream and with law enforcement to tackle the networks of criminal smuggling gangs."

PLP says the immigration minister is not correct to say that the Act is compatible with the UK's international obligations.

PLP stated: "This claim is inaccurate. Here are four ways the Act fails to comply with international law:
• As the United Nations refugee agency stated, the Act punishes refugees based on how they arrive, which violates Article 31 of the Refugee Convention.
• By detaining refugees of all ages indefinitely and arbitrarily, the Act breaches Article 5 of the ECHR, which protects the right to liberty.
• By deporting victims of human trafficking and modern slavery without any period of recovery, the Act violates Article 13 of the European Convention on Action Against Trafficking (ECAT).
• By completely ignoring the best interests of refugee children and detaining them, the Act disregards Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and was therefore condemned by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child."

Project launched to bust myth breast cancer is 'white person's disease'

Medics want more black, Asian and ethnic minority people to participate in breast cancer trials, as they warned people from those backgrounds have been underrepresented in previous studies.

Samuel Osborne
News reporter @samuelosborne93
Thursday 31 August 2023


More must be done to fight the "broad misperception" black women "don't suffer as much from breast cancer", experts have said.

They said the belief can result in the perception "cancer is a white person's disease".

Previous studies have found black women are more likely to die from breast cancer compared to their white peers.

They are also more likely to develop more aggressive cancer and be diagnosed when their cancer is at a more advanced stage.

Medics said they wanted more black, Asian and ethnic minority people to participate in breast cancer trials, as they warned people from those backgrounds have been underrepresented in previous studies.

They said they want research into the disease to be "relevant to people we see in the clinic".

The NHS Race and Health Observatory launched a new campaign alongside Macmillan Cancer Support to improve diversity in breast cancer clinical trials.

The project, supported by pharmaceutical giant Roche, aims to raise awareness of the lack of diversity in clinical studies, improve communications and provide longer-term support to patients.

Specialist nurses will be provided at two major cancer hubs - Bart's Health NHS Trust in London and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester - to help guide patients through the process.

Men, who account for 1% of breast cancer patients in the UK, are also being included.

The NHS Race and Health Observatory said there are "multiple barriers" around the recruitment, communication and retention of black, Asian and ethnic minority patients in clinical trials.

It said data show people from ethnic minority backgrounds are poorly represented in many clinical trials.

'Broad misperception' breast cancer 'does not run' in black women's family history

Dr Habib Naqvi, chief executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, said: "There is a broad misperception that black women don't suffer as much from breast cancer or it does not run in their family history. This can result in the perception that cancer is a white person's disease.

"We want this pilot to encourage women at risk, those already diagnosed and individuals undergoing post treatment to come forward and share their experiences and get the information needed."

Charles Kwaku-Odoi, chief executive of the Caribbean African Health Network, said: "Across the black community there is an undoubted legacy of disengagement in research and most certainly clinical trials that stems back decades as a result of mistrust.

"This has not served us well because it leads to a lack of appropriate interventions that perpetuate the grave health inequalities in breast cancer care.

"This partnership approach to build solutions to improve engagement in clinical trials in breast cancer treatment and care is very much welcomed."

 

Camilla unveils portrait of British Indian spy Noor Inayat Khan

Noor was an undercover agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive during the World War II

• Chandrashekar Bhat
 
• 30 August, 2023

Queen Camilla unveils a portrait of Noor Inayat Khan at the RAF Club in London on August 29, 2023. (PTI Photo)

By: Chandrashekar Bhat

QUEEN Camilla has unveiled a new portrait of the Indian-origin spy and descendent of Tipu Sultan, Noor Inayat Khan, at the Royal Air Force (RAF) Club in London to honour her sacrifice as an undercover agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the World War II.

Camilla on Tuesday (29) also formally named a room at the RAF Club as ‘Noor Inayat Khan Room’, where the portrait hangs opposite a stained-glass window celebrating women in the RAF which was inaugurated by her late mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2018.

Noor was a member of RAF’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) when she was recruited to the SOE in 1942 and went on to become one of only two members of the WAAF to be awarded the George Cross (GC), the highest award bestowed for acts of the greatest heroism, or for the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.

“It was a proud moment to have the Queen unveil the portrait of Noor Inayat Khan at the RAF Club,” said British Indian author Shrabani Basu, who presented a copy of her biography of Noor ‘Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan’ to the Queen at the unveiling ceremony.

“For me, it has been a privilege to tell her story. This wonderful portrait will now be seen by many young men and women for generations. Noor’s story will never be forgotten,” she said.

Born Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan in Moscow in 1914 to an Indian sufi saint father and American mother, Noor moved to London at a young age before settling in Paris for her school years. Following the fall of France during the Second World War, she escaped to England and joined the WAAF.

In late 1942, she was recruited into the SOE created to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied territories during the war.

Her new portrait at the RAF Club was unveiled in the presence of her relatives, including 95-year-old cousin Shaikh Mahmood and nephew Pir Zia Inayat Khan.

The portrait has been created by British artist Paul Brason, a former president of the Society of Portrait Painters. He based his creation on the few available images of Noor Inayat Khan to capture her resolve as an undercover agent, who refused to crack under brutal Nazi interrogation before being shot by the Gestapo at Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1944 with the word liberty on her lips.

“Noor was the first woman SOE operator to be infiltrated into France, and was landed by Lysander aircraft on 16 June 1943. During the following weeks, the Gestapo arrested most of the Paris Resistance Group in which she worked. Despite the danger, Noor refused to return to England because she did not wish to leave her French comrades without communications and she hoped also to rebuild the Group,” the RAF Club said in a statement.

How many headers does it take to damage a footballer's brain?

A British study of ex-professional footballers suggests there's a link between frequent headers and cognitive disorders. Some countries have banned headers for kids. The DFB are taking a different approach.

Deutsche Welle 

Published 31.08.23

How dangerous are headers? Scientists warn of possible long-term damage

Deutsche Welle

The more often a footballer plays, the higher the risk of cognitive disorders. That is the conclusion of a study that has been published in Great Britain. Cognitive disorders include increasing forgetfulness, reduced attention, concentration problems, speech disorders, orientation problems or memory loss.


For the study, which was commissioned by the English Football Association (FA), the researchers analyzed the questionnaires of 468 former British professional footballers over the age of 45. On average, the footballers were around 63 years old. They had to estimate whether they had headed the ball, on a per game or training session basis, between zero and five time, six to 15 time or more than 15 times. Their cognitive abilities were then tested in telephone interviews.

The result was that players with the highest frequency of headers had more than three times the risk of cognitive impairment compared to those in the lowest category.


"Similar results were observed with other cognitive tests noted with dementia and Alzheimer's disease," the study states. However, the researchers qualify this statement, saying that "due to only 13 self-reported cases of physician-diagnosed dementia, the results and conclusion pertaining to these cases should be interpreted with caution.




In 2019, a study from the University of Glasgow had made headlines. The researchers had evaluated the causes of death of more than 7,500 Scottish professional soccer players. According to this study, the players' risk of dying from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or other dementias was three and a half times higher than normal.

A study in Sweden — which examined around 6,000 soccer players who had played at least one game in the top Swedish league between 1924 and 2019 — concluded in the spring of 2023 that professional players had about one-and-a-half times the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia compared with the general population.

Outfield players, especially defenders, were more at risk than goalkeepers, both the Swedish and Scottish studies said as they are more likely to sustain head injuries in duels and head the ball more often.



For a long time, head injuries weren't taken seriously in the world of footballDeutsche Welle

This is also the conclusion reached by the researchers in the new British study. They advise reducing the number of blows to the head to prevent developing cognitive disorders later in life, including dementia. Further studies are needed, they say, for example to determine an upper limit for a responsible number of head concussions.

In the U.S., a ban on headers has already been in place since 2015 for young footballers up to the age of ten. In England and Scotland, header training is prohibited before the age of twelve. In Scotland, there are also restrictions for professionals: they are not allowed to play headers in training the day before and after a match.

The English Premier League have recommended 'that a maximum of 10 higher force headers are carried out in any training week.' This refers to headers after long passes, crosses, corner kicks or free kicks.


The youngest generation are going to be playing in smaller formats in the future

Deutsche Welle

The German Football Association (DFB) wants to take a different approach: From the 2024/2025 season, children's and youth football will be reformed up to the age of eleven. Then, for example, the youngest players will only play two against two or three against three on very small pitches with small goals. A two-year pilot phase is still underway. According to the DFB, "the new forms of competition ensure that headers are virtually eliminated."

However, they say it is also important to practice good heading technique. "Among other things, training headers at a young age should include low practice volumes, the use of lighter balls, sufficient recovery time for the head and initial throwing on with the hand to head the ball."

The research phase of a study on the health of former German professional footballers, in which more than 300 former players have participated so far, will continue until the end of September. Results of the "SoccHealth" study are to be published in 2024.

 

UK

When it comes to supporting apprentices, talk is cheap

If Gillian Keegan wants to prioritise apprenticeships, then she needs to start by prioritising apprentices

by Joe Hanley

 31-08-2023 

Gillian Keegan has been making headlines in recent weeks with a novel take on education, especially coming from a sitting education secretary. Keegan started by telling students that in ten years’ time no one will care about A-level results. A few days later she claimed that in 30 years in business she never asked anyone for their A-level results. Not exactly motivating talk for students receiving various exam grades last month.

These statements make more sense when understood as part of a wider campaign from Keegan to disparage mainstream education routes and promote apprenticeships, and in particular degree apprenticeships, as a key plank on which to fight the next election. This can be seen in an August article in The Sun, where Keegan criticised Labour for a “blind push” to get people into university, while suggesting degree apprenticeships are “under threat” from any future Labour government. This reflects prime minister Rishi Sunak’s own promise to crack down on “rip-off university courses” alongside boosting apprenticeships.

Within this campaign Keegan makes frequent reference to her own background as an apprentice, even claiming she did a “degree apprenticeship” (a statement that fails to acknowledge that the degree apprenticeship model was only introduced by the conservative government in 2015).

A lot has changed since the 16-year-old Keegan started her apprenticeship with General Motors in the early 80s, and not much of it has been positive for apprentices.

National sentiment?

Leaving aside the fact that degree apprenticeships are inherently collaborations between universities and employers (hence ‘degree’), this anti-university, pro-apprenticeship campaign does seem to be tapping a broader sentiment in some sectors across England. Mainstream media outlets increasingly run pieces highlighting degree apprenticeships as a positive alternative to university, including recent articles from the BBC and the Guardian. A YouGov study earlier this year also found that parents are now generally more positive about apprenticeships than mainstream university courses. Even the king has been vocal in his support for apprenticeships.

But while the media, politicians, royals, and parents all seem falling in line behind the apprenticeship push, YouGov found that students still prefer the traditional university experience. This includes seeing it as a better route to a good job and high wage than an apprenticeship. This is further backed up by data from The Sutton Trust who reported only 40% of students interested in undergraduate degrees were also interested in apprenticeships, and just 4% of students see apprenticeships as prestigious, compared to 76% for universities.

Considering apprentices gain a wage and pay no fees, compared to mainstream university students who increasingly graduate with life-limiting debt, this lack of interest is all the more notable. However, based on the experiences of apprentices today, students may have it right on this one.

Growing problems

After the introduction of conservative apprenticeship reforms in the mid-2010s, including apprenticeship standards, degree apprenticeships, and the apprenticeship levy to pay for all this, apprentice numbers in England fell off a cliff edge, going from around 500,000 starts per year to fewer than 350,000 for the past few years. This drop in apprentices has been particularly stark amongst young people and school leavers. As a result, contrary to Keegan’s claims of degree apprenticeships offering a realistic alternative to university, Sutton Trust have actually found that “just a small number of higher and degree apprenticeships are open to young people leaving school”.

Perhaps more worryingly, Sutton Trust also found degree apprenticeships admit a lower percentage of young people eligible for free school meals than other university courses. Elsewhere this has been described as the “middle-class grab” of apprenticeships. This means that commonly parroted arguments that apprenticeships promote social mobility or widen participation are, under the current model, false.

The issues do not stop there. While Keegan proudly highlights that there are now 670 approved apprenticeship standards to choose from, what she won’t say is nearly 1 in 10 have never taken on a single apprentice. But it is the support for apprentices who have already started that should be more worrying. Drop-out rates for apprenticeships consistently hover around 50%, or five times those for mainstream university routes. The figures are slightly better for degree apprenticeships, but 42% of these starts still do not successfully complete. These achievement rates are even worse for women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.

It is therefore undeniable that apprentices are being failed by the current apprenticeship model. But elsewhere, business is booming.

Business is booming

Although analysis shows that small and medium businesses lost over 50% of their apprenticeships after the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017, large multi-national consulting firms such as PwC, Deloitte and EY are all in the top ten employers of apprenticeships in England. Notably these are all firms that are being increasingly criticised for their close relationships to the current government.

The most popular degree apprenticeships, seeing consistent growth, are also those related to expensive higher level management, accountancy and business qualifications that would particularly benefit these firms. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development estimate that £2bn in apprenticeship levy funding has already been spent on courses of this nature.

The government were warned this would be the likely outcome of their apprenticeship reforms, including by National Audit Office, Ofsted and employers, but they pushed ahead regardless. Even the Richard Review in 2012, on which many of these changes were based, warned that apprenticeship funding should not be used to fund training for existing staff. Yet this has remained a central facet of the apprenticeship levy model.

All this essentially means that the apprenticeship funding that we are being told is going to support school leavers and social mobility, is actually subsidising consultancy firms and other large businesses to provide executives and managers, typically already on high wages, with qualifications they would otherwise be paying for out of their own (deep) pockets.

In their current form, apprenticeships in England are therefore not employer-led, provider-led or apprentice-led, they are government and big business-led.

Government-led

The apprenticeship model currently imposed in England also sidelines the knowledge and experience of professions in educating and training their own workforces in favour of inflexible and prescriptive monitoring from above. This has been one of the major arguments put forward by those opposing proposals for a new apprenticeship for doctors. This new route would relegate hundreds of years of experience in training future doctors to a secondary consideration in favour of an apprenticeship model that, for all intents and purposes, has been an abject failure to this point.

My own experience working with social work degree apprenticeships suggests these concerns are well founded. Despite social work in England already having well-established models of practice-based learning built into all qualifying routes, the degree apprenticeship was broadly welcomed into the profession when a standard was approved in 2018. Of course it is unlikely universities and employers would have spent so much time and energy chasing down apprenticeship funding if other qualifying routes were adequately funded, but that is a topic for another day.

Deficits in the apprenticeship model

Unfortunately, some major problems with the social work degree apprenticeship were apparent from the start, most significantly in relation to the degree apprenticeship standard itself. The standard was unworkable as approved, and so had a special “dispensation” attached to it for the first few years. A new standard was published in October 2022 to overcome these issues, but the wrong version was uploaded, containing many mistakes.

At the time of writing, those mistakes have still not been fixed. This means that there are undoubtedly apprentices, and apprenticeship providers, working with the wrong standard across the country. In any other context as a profession we would have been able to work together to overcome these challenges. With apprenticeships, we are at the mercy of the same restrictions and processes imposed on hundreds of other professions.

Social work apprentices are already arguably at a disadvantage compared to their colleagues qualifying through other routes. They are technically required to complete what would otherwise be a full-time social work degree in just six hours designated off-the-job time each week. Within this truncated timeframe, social work apprentices also have to meet a range of additional obligations and monitoring exercises not imposed on other students. These workload issues are a major concern, as IFF Research found that the top reason apprentices drop out is that they lack the time to engage with their training and learning.

It has taken an immense amount of time and investment from both universities and employers to overcome these issues and support the first few hundred social work apprentices to qualify. Unfortunately, much of this has involved trying to overcome the deficits in the apprenticeship model imposed on us, taking away from the time that we could be spending supporting the development of our future colleagues.

An English beast

These issues are not exclusive to social work, and industries from retailers to tech to clockmakers have all argued that the inflexibility of apprenticeships means thousands of prospective apprentices are lost every year. As with social work, these professions are all expected to constantly chop and change to meet shifting government expectations around apprenticeships, rather than getting on with the core business of developing and supporting apprentices.

As a final point, it is important to highlight that degree apprenticeships are not an inevitability. We may need to accept that, as with many recent educational reforms, England have just got it wrong here. Labour are already pledging to reform the apprenticeship levy if they win the next election. However, many of the firms doing well out of the apprenticeship status quo have also been building close partnerships with Labour. So maybe expectations should be tempered that any changes implemented by a new government will go beyond just creating more upheaval for apprentices and the professions they hope to join.