Relationships Between Adult Women’s Mental Health Problems and their Childhood Experiences of Parental Violence and Psychological Aggression

We used the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (M. A. Straus, S. L. Hamby, D. Finkelhor, D. W. Moore, & D. Runyan, 1998) to assess retrospectively women’s childhood experiences of both mother and father physical abuse and psychological aggression, and assessed mother and father alcohol problems based on criteria derived from the Family History Research Diagnostic Criteria (N. C. Andreasen, J. Endicott, R. L. Spitzer, & G. Winokur, 1977). Data were collected from 447 women (age 18 or higher) from seven domestic violence programs and five substance use disorder treatment programs in a midwestern state. Using OLS regression with backward elimination (p < .10 as criterion for removal from the equation) we found that higher levels of mother physical abuse, father psychological aggression, and presence of mother alcohol problems predicted higher scores on the Beck Anxiety Inventory and Trauma Symptom Checklist. Higher levels of mother physical abuse and father psychological aggression predicted higher scores on the Beck Depression Inventory. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Toward a restorative justice pedagogy: reflections on teaching restorative justice in correctional facilities

Restorative justice is currently practiced in a variety of ways inside correctional facilities. One such way is the facilitation of restorative justice education. If grounded in restorative values, such education can contribute to outcomes similar to other restorative practices, such as victim offender dialogue. These outcomes include opportunities to speak to personal experiences, personal change, and growth, and a desire to engage in positive relationships and give back to the community. This paper draws on the teaching and facilitation experiences of the author and incarcerated peer facilitators to develop a restorative justice pedagogy. This pedagogy, based on restorative values, aims to inspire individual and social transformation; build community among participants; give voice to the unique experiences of participants; offer opportunities for real-life problem solving; provide a creative learning environment that is co-created by students and facilitators; view students as practitioners, theorists, and educators; and invite instructors to view themselves as students and share in the learning process. Implications of the restorative justice pedagogy for teaching outside the prison context and with course material other than restorative justice conclude the article.     

The Arab Spring and the European Response

Europeans enthusiastically embraced the Arab Spring. However, the EU and its member states have lacked significant influence in a neighbouring region in turmoil. The EU has not devised new and more appropriate approaches towards the region, but rather relied on its traditional tools and frameworks. The Eurozone’s financial crisis and threat perceptions have quickly underminded the readiness of EU member states to contribute meaningfully to Arab transformations with money, market access and mobility. In addition, European support has not been equally welcomed across the region, and delays in terms of building empowered governments have prevented a quick impact. Moreover, the violent power struggles triggered by the Arab Spring have revealed the EU’s weakness with regard to effective conflict prevention and timely crisis management – and thus created an environment averse to democratic transformation and regional stabilisation.     

Victims of ‘Friendly Fire’? The NRF,the EU BG and Contested Identity Constructions within the Transatlantic Community

Abstract

The NRF and the EU BG were launched to enable NATO and the EU respectively to shed some of their Cold War roles and begin to incorporate new organisational functions as means to meet their members’ needs in a changing global security environment. However, since their launch the two rapid reaction forces have both failed to fully consolidate. Our argument is that an examination of intra-NATO/EU contested identities at three levels (supra-state, state and sub-state) provides us with additional insights for the lack of success in consolidating the two sets of rapid reaction forces.     

‘It’s a dead place’: A qualitative exploration of violence survivors’ perceptions of justice architecture

Each year, thousands of victims of violence enter the Canadian criminal justice system and, by extension, justice buildings, such as police stations and courthouses. The architecture and design of these buildings communicate symbolic messages about justice and may influence the emotions, behaviors, and well-being of survivors. This qualitative study explored survivors’ emotional experiences with justice architecture. Findings reveal that survivors experience justice architecture as cold and hard; a facilitator of feelings of insignificance; lacking in privacy and; representative of their raw emotional state. The author discusses implications of these findings for victim engagement in the context of justice spaces.