Explanations of a Violent Relationship: The Male Perpetrator’s Perspective

The purpose of this study was to understand the way male perpetrators’ perceive and explain intimate partner violence (IPV) in their relationship. Specifically, men were invited to reflect upon their role in their relationship when violence exists, their contributions to the violence, and how they felt about it. Using coding procedures from grounded theory methodology, researchers analyzed data from 13 men who had been in violent relationships. Seven key themes were identified from 104 significant statements. These themes included justification, relapse, control, anger, emotional threshold, triggers, and remorse. Clinical implications as well as suggestions for future research are presented.     

Community In‐Reach Through Jail Reentry: Findings from a Quasi‐Experimental Design

Offenders face a number of significant challenges upon reentry into the community, including securing employment, locating housing, and accessing adequate substance abuse and mental health treatment. These and related issues, if neglected, only bolster rising recidivism rates which have prompted renewed interest in rehabilitation initiatives such as inmate reentry. Many jurisdictions have implemented programs designed to improve offenders' success after prison, but jail reentry programs are far less common. This study examined the effectiveness of one such program, the Auglaize County (OH) Transition (ACT) Program. Using a quasiexperimental design, recidivism was measured a year after release to determine if participation in the ACT Program was predictive of successful reentry. Findings suggest that program participation is strongly related to outcome success as was criminal history. Implications for correctional policy and suggestions for additional jail reentry research are considered.     

Scandinavian Prospects for a Place‐Based Randomized Experiment on Burglary Reduction

Despite their widespread implementation, there is a surprising absence of clear‐cut, unambiguous evidence concerning the effectiveness of situational crime prevention approaches (e.g. alarms, neighborhood watch, property‐marking) on residential burglary. This absence of evidence—which should not be confused with a presence of contradictory evidence—stems most notably from the fact that very few of the programs enacted to date have been evaluated under controlled, experimental conditions. The current article describes problems with previous evaluations and advocates the use of a place‐based, randomized experimental design—which this author argues should be easier to implement in Scandinavia than elsewhere.     

Is There a Difference? Exploring Male and Female Correctional Officers' Definition of and Response to Conflict Situations

Abstract

Although the use of force in corrections is a topic of interest, little is known about the factors that influence correctional officers' decisions. In particular, very little is known about similarities and differences between male and female correctional officers in their definitions of and responses to conflict situations. Interviews were conducted with 192 officers at a large southwestern jail. Using a realistic vignette of an inmate disobeying a direct order, 96 female and 96 male officers were asked about their perceptions in defining and responding to conflict. Results indicate that male and female officers react to conflict situations in a similar manner, although it appears that the inmate's sex is a salient factor in the officers' decision on how to resolve conflict.     

Catch‐22: Exploring Victim Interests in a Specialist Family Violence Jurisdiction

Research and advocacy over the past few decades have combined to draw attention both to the inadequacies of criminal justice intervention in domestic violence as well as the law's positive potential. Radical changes in law, policy, and practice have been implemented in the civil and criminal jurisdictions in most western countries, including Australia. More proactive intervention from criminal justice agencies has not been without its critics. The interests of victims of domestic violence have been portrayed by some as being in conflict with those of the justice system. This article explores this interaction using evaluation surveys and qualitative data from interviews with 360 victims of domestic violence in an urban Australian jurisdiction. Using a smaller subset of respondents, the article provides an exploratory examination of victims’ engagement with criminal prosecution and how they place themselves within the decision‐making process and the objectives of the system. The article concludes that there is significant congruence between victim objectives and interests and those of a public‐interest justice system.     

Europol and the Policing of International Terrorism: Counter‐Terrorism in a Global Perspective

The European Police Office (Europol) is an international police organization that was formed to promote cooperation among law enforcement agencies in the European Union. Framed within the context of the Treaty of the European Union, Europol’s mandate includes all serious forms of international crime, including international terrorism. This paper offers an analysis of the organization of Europol’s counter‐terrorism operations in the context of the history and dynamics of international police cooperation. More specifically, on the basis of the bureaucratization theory of policing, Europol is reviewed to exemplify the dual forces of political control over the organization via the regulative bodies of the European Union, on the one hand, and the institutional autonomy and professional expertise of participating police agencies, on the other. The outcome of these dual forces can be expected to determine the course and outcome of counter‐terrorist policing in the European Union in years to come.     

DI‐LE‐CA approach to teaching European law

The Queensland University of Technology badges itself as “a university for the real world”. For the last decade the Law Faculty has aimed to provide its students with a ‘real world’ degree, that is, a practical law degree. This has seen skills such as research, advocacy and negotiation incorporated into the undergraduate degree under a university Teaching &; Learning grant, a project that gained international recognition and praise. In 2007–2008 the Law Faculty undertook another curriculum review of its undergraduate law degree. As a result of the two year review, QUT's undergraduate law degree has fewer core units, a focus on first year student transition, scaffolding of law graduate capabilities throughout the degree, work integrated learning and transition to the workplace. The revised degree commenced implementation in 2009. This paper focuses on the “real world” approach to the degree achieved through the first year programme, embedding and scaffolding law graduate capabilities through authentic and valid assessment and work integrated learning.     

Sharing a Single Seat: The Poetics and Politics of Male Intimacy in the Vikramāṅkakāvya

In this essay, I trace the enabling conditions for the major statement of the subversive subtext in Bilhaṇa’s Vikramāṅkadevacarita (VDC) by unpacking the operation of the work’s patent, eulogistic text. In particular, I will explore the place given to the depiction of male intimacy as a poetic substitute or simulacrum for the political alliances central to Vikramāditya’s coming to the throne, as described in the mahākāvya’s fourth through sixth sargas. My intention in focusing on the intense friendships between men is to highlight a significant rhetorical strategy of Bilhaṇa’s, which allowed the poet both to introduce and to buffer the poem’s most explicit statement of his skepticism towards royal power. It is this charged affective theme—one that occupied only a tenuous position within the regnant critical discourse of literary emotion at the time—that sets up Bilhaṇa’s most powerful and explicit denunciation of kingship. The explicit theme of royal praise and the subtext of its denunciation can thus be seen as contrapuntally related, which goes some way towards explaining how the court poet was able to successfully carry off his potentially incendiary literary project.     

Sex/gender‐based decision‐making in the criminal justice system as a possible (additional) explanation for the underrepresentation of women in official criminal statistics — a review of international literature

This article represents an analysis of the literature on sex‐based selection processes in the criminal justice system. It is only since the feminist wave of the sixties that sexual discrimination has been considered as an issue of importance in the study of the criminal justice system and that female criminality has been looked at more thoroughly. The article deals with the different assumptions and hypotheses which have come forward in the debate on the possible discrimination of men and women in the criminal justice process. In the first part of the article the various theoretical models are outlined: the chivalry and evil women hypotheses, the legal or etiological model, the social control theory, the family‐based justice model, and a multifactoral model. In the second part of the article, the results of empirical research relevant to these hypotheses are presented. American, British, Belgian, Dutch and some German literature has been taken into account. The review of the literature shows that the chivalry hypothesis cannot offer an all‐embracing explanation for the possibly perceived preferential treatment of women. Similar conclusions can be drawn for the explanatory value of the legal model. Although a more lenient treatment of women can sometimes be explained by legal factors, these factors can offer no more than a partial explanation for observed sex differences in the criminal justice system. Especially in the case of pre‐trial release and sentencing, more particularly when deciding whether or not to send a defendant to prison, a noticeable sex‐effect can still be found. In the literature we find strong suggestions — although not always confirmed — that an (initially observed) more lenient treatment of women at these stages can be explained by stereotypes and expectations about the personality of women as less dangerous and the specific role which women fulfill in western society.     

The Influence of Community‐Oriented Policing on Crime‐Reporting Behavior∗

This research examines the influence of community‐oriented policing (COP) on citizens’ crime‐reporting behaviors. The study’s data consist of incidents of violence obtained from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey that were linked to city‐level measures of police involvement in COP. Multinomial logistic regression analyses reveal that although third‐party police notification is more likely in cities with large numbers of full‐time COP officers, victims residing in such cities are significantly less likely to report to the police than they are to report to non‐police officials. However, in cities where the training of police officers in COP is relatively extensive, victims demonstrate a preference for police notification (relative to both non‐police notification and non‐reporting). Lastly, multiplicative models indicate that police involvement in COP has less of an influence on the reporting behaviors of residentially unstable victims who likely lack strong social ties to the communities in which they reside.     

Ideology and Anti‐Utopia

A recent film adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, makes a number of seemingly minor changes in the novel’s characters, setting, and plot. Together, however, these changes transform the novel’s theme into its polar opposite. As a result, the dystopian novel is transmuted into an anti‐utopian film. After examining these changes in detail, I analyze the contrasting world views that lie behind the two texts and argue that they are based upon opposing views of human nature and society. I then reflect on the meaning of this transformation, arguing that it reflects a fundamental transformation in our society, one which undermines the possibility of using political action to attain social justice. Moreover, it is just this transformation which Huxley, in writing Brave New World, had hoped to warn us against.     

Pathways of Victimization and Resistance: Toward a Feminist Theory of Battered Women’s Help‐Seeking

Although intimate partner abuse has been extensively researched over the last thirty years, battered women’s help‐seeking remains perplexingly undertheorized, particularly within criminology. This analysis aims to offer a corrective by applying the feminist pathways theoretical model—which examines women’s and girls’ offending behaviors in the context of their past victimization experiences—to battered women’s help‐seeking. Data from in‐depth life history interviews with 22 battered women in two states indicate that the women’s childhood victimization experiences informed their adult help‐seeking decisions in meaningful ways. The primary theoretical contribution of this analysis is the identification of specific mechanisms—five help‐seeking inhibitors and three help‐seeking promoters—through which childhood victimization influenced participants’ help‐seeking. Results of this analysis demonstrate the benefit of a feminist pathways theoretical model of battered women’s help‐seeking in order to better understand how pathways of victimization and resistance develop over the course of women’s lives.     

From vocational training to education: the development of a no‐frontiers education policy for Europe?

This article focuses on developments towards an EU educational policy. Education was not included as one of the Community competencies in the Treaty of Rome. The first half of the article analyses the way that the European Court of Justice and the Commission of the European Communities between them managed to develop a series of substantial Community programmes out of Article 128 on vocational training. The second half of the article discusses educational developments in the community following the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty of Amsterdam. Whilst the legal competence of the community now includes education, the author's argument is that the inclusion of an educational competence will not result in further developments to mirror those in the years before the Treaty on European Union. If the 1980s were a decade of expansion, the medium‐term future is likely to be one of consolidation.     

Crime‐Control in the Post‐Wall Era: The Menace of Security

Over the past ten to fifteen years, an increasing number of social issues have become linked, and then subordinated, to security policy. This policy area has witnessed a paradigm shift, with the emergence of a new security mentality. The crumbling of the walls built up during the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet empire, meant the disappearance of the East versus West polarity. And as this world order, based on a balance of terror, passed into history, the nature of the global threat situation was transformed. The antagonisms of the Cold War had hardly had time to cease creating fear before new threat images emerged onto the scene. Unlike the Cold War situation, where world peace was threatened by a frenetic arms race between two highly concrete superpowers, the perceived threats of the 1990s became increasingly vague. The military menace was superseded by what was said to be a much more diffuse criminal threat. For what is it that lies concealed behind such concepts as ‘cross‐border crime’, ‘organized crime’, ‘terrorism’ and the like? Previously, security policy analysts had been able to localize the source of a given threat with precision. Their benchmark was now gone, however. Once the established geographical demarcations between Us and Them ceased to apply, it was found that the enemy might instead be in our midst.     

Low Self‐Control and Contact with the Criminal Justice System in a Nationally Representative Sample of Males

Prior research on law enforcement and court system actions suggests that offender demeanor influences practitioner decision making. However, few studies have examined a key implication of this body of work—namely, criminogenic factors associated not only with offending but also with demeanor may result in a greater likelihood of contact with and formal processing by law enforcement and the courts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we test the hypothesis that low self‐control, which is associated with a range of characteristics that might influence practitioner perceptions of individual offenders’ demeanors, will predict greater contact and formal processing. Briefly, we found that low self‐control was consistently related to criminal justice system involvement as measured by police contacts, arrests, age at first police contact, and arrest onset. The implications of the findings for theory and research are discussed.     

Free voting in a provincial parliament: The case of ‘same‐sex’ legislation in Ontario, 1994

Previous research on parliamentary free voting, which has been confined exclusively to national parliaments and almost exclusively to the British House of Commons, has found relatively little constituency impact on members’ voting decisions, even on the most contentious issues of social policy. Since sub‐national parliaments tend to be smaller, less professionalised, and (arguably) ‘closer to the people’, it is possible that a more significant ‘constituency connection’ might be observed in these legislative arenas. This study extends the literature on this topic by empirically examining the fate of a recent homosexual rights bill in the Ontario Legislative Assembly. Contrary to expectations, none of the constituency characteristics used in logistical regression models generates a significant MLE coefficient, suggesting that Canadian provincial legislators may be even less sensitive to constituency preferences than their national counterparts.     

Evidence of Negligible Parenting Influences on Self‐Control,Delinquent Peers,and Delinquency in a Sample of Twins

Behavioral genetic findings continue to call into question the dominant role of parental influence. Utilizing a sample of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we assess the association between parenting behaviors and child self‐control, delinquent peer formation, and delinquency. Our results indicate that genetic influences and non‐shared environmental influences account for variation in these outcomes. We discuss these findings as they relate to theorizing about the role and function of parenting in the etiology of unique traits and behaviors.