Shame, Guilt and Remorse: Implications for Offender Populations

The emotions shame and guilt may represent a critical stepping stone in the rehabilitation process. Often referred to as "moral" emotions owing to their presumed role in promoting altruistic behavior and inhibiting antisocial behaviors, shame and guilt provide potentially exciting points of intervention with offenders. In this article, we describe current psychological theory and research that underscores important differences between shame and guilt. We note parallels between psychologists' conceptions of guilt and shame, and criminologists' conceptions of reintegrative and disintegrative shaming. We summarize recent research investigating the implications of these moral emotions for criminal and risky behavior, with special emphasis on the handful of studies conducted with actual offenders. We conclude with a discussion of implications for treatment in criminal justice settings.     

HUNTER‐GATHERER COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE

This article describes the development of a practice group based on a hunter‐gatherer model, with the mission of providing high quality collaborative divorce services, with an emphasis on protecting children and divorcing partners, and expanding access to middle‐ and lower‐income families. The practice group professional disciplines include law, mental health divorce coaching, co‐parent coaching, financial analysis, and case administration. These professionals have collectively associated their individual practices to address challenges facing their collaborative practices. With common purpose, the practice group builds skills, generates client base, nurtures trust, and lays a common knowledge base. Collaborative divorce teams formed from its members serve divorcing families with efficient, cost‐conscious, interest‐based negotiation processes that protect children and help parties productively move on with their lives.     

CIT in context: the impact of mental health resource availability and district saturation on call dispositions

The goals of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) programs include improving safety during encounters between police and persons with mental illnesses, diverting persons with mental illnesses away from the criminal justice system, and increasing referral and access to mental health services. CIT is a systemic intervention, and as such, its implementation and effectiveness are influenced by existing practices and infrastructures. However, little research has considered the context in which CIT programs are implemented. In this paper, we present research on CIT in four Chicago police districts that vary in terms of two contextual factors hypothesized to influence the impact of CIT training on how calls involving persons with mental illnesses are resolved. Using data from 112 patrol officers in four Chicago police districts, we consider the impact of mental health services availability and CIT saturation (the percentage of district personnel that are CIT certified). Findings indicate that CIT training increased direction to mental health services primarily in districts with greater availability of mental health services. In districts with low service availability, higher CIT saturation increased direction to mental services. The opposite pattern emerged for contact only or informal call resolution. No effects were found for arrest as a call outcome.     

Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns

In this article, we review two research programs that could benefit from a more extensive dialogue: media and policy studies of agenda setting. We focus on three key distinctions that divide these two robust research programs: the agenda(s) under investigation (public versus policymaking), the typical level of analysis (individual versus systemic), and framing effects (individual versus macro level). We map out these differences and their impacts on understanding the policy process. There is often a policy disconnect in the agenda-setting studies that emanate from the media tradition. Though interested in the effects of political communication, scholars from this tradition often fail to link the media to policy outcomes, policy change, or agenda change. Policy process scholars have increasingly rejected simple linear models in favor of models emphasizing complex feedback effects. This suggests a different role for the media—one of highlighting attributes in a multifaceted political reality and involvement in positive feedback cycles. Yet, political communication scholars have for the most part been insensitive to these potentials. We advocate a shared agenda centering on the role of the media in the political system from an information processing framework, emphasizing the reciprocal effects of each on the other.     

Flexibility versus Inflexibility: discursive discrepancy in US democracy promotion and anti-corruption policies

This article analyses US discourses on democracy promotion and anti-corruption strategies. The analysis shows that there is a cosmetic agreement in these discourses on notions of the good society that identify democracy as a good thing and corruption as a bad thing. However, despite this agreement, there are differences in the discourses on the measures recommended to promote democracy and fight corruption that may lead to policies and processes pulling in opposite directions. This discrepancy arises, on the one hand, from a mode of operation of democracy promotion that is flexible and adaptable to various contexts and, on the other hand, from the uncompromising and inflexible language of anti-corruption policies that threatens to ‘undo’ what US democracy promotion's rhetoric aims to achieve: ownership and sustainability of democratic reforms through re-empowering the state.     

Cultural Criminology and the Politics of Meaning

Cultural criminology focuses on situational, subcultural, and mediated constructions of meaning around issues of crime and crime control. In this sense cultural criminology is designed for critical engagement with the politics of meaning, and for critical intervention into those politics. Yet the broader enterprise of critical criminology engages with the politics of meaning as well; in confronting the power relations of justice and injustice, critical criminologists of all sorts investigate the social and cultural processes by which situations are defined, groups are categorized, and human consequences are understood. The divergence between cultural criminology and other critical criminologies, then, may be defined less by meaning than by the degree of methodological militancy with which meaning is pursued. In any case, this shared concern with the politics of meaning suggests a number of innovations and interventions that cultural criminologists and other critical criminologists might explore.     

Framework for Analysis of Legal Mobilization: A Decision-Making Model

The American legal system, structured in an entrepreneurial mode, relies upon the individual actor to personally evaluate the burdens and benefits of invoking the law on his or her own behalf Without discounting the contribution to our understanding of legal mobilization which has been made by the access-to-justice movement, the author argues that focusing on the poor and the distribution of legal services has limited our understanding of the legal system.
The article presents an alternative analytic framework for examination of citizen use of the law. The model of legal mobilization presented focuses on demands rather than needs, on citizens rather than lawyers or judges, on decision making rather than access, and on invoking the law rather than compliance with it. Drawing on the literature and available empirical evidence, the author attempts to analytically clarify the complex process of legal mobilization by organizing relevant variables into a decision-making model that focuses on the individual actor and the factors weighed in deciding whether and how to proceed in mobilizing the law.     

Creating a political image: Shaping appearance and manipulating the vote

The key question addressed is whether political consultants can shape a candidate's appearance in such a way as to influence voters' preferences. To explore this question, an attempt was made to discover the components of a favorable political image and then use that information to manipulate voters' preferences. Photographs of over 200 women were analyzed and the features of the women's appearance which affected the quality of the image projected were isolated. Using this information, a make-up artist and photographer were employed to shape the appearance of six women. Photographs of the women were then placed on campaign flyers along with information on the women's political party affiliation and their position on several key issues. Pairs of flyers were used to create mock elections. The result of these elections suggest that it is possible to shape a political candidate's image in a way which may effect electoral outcomes. The implications of this for electoral politics are discussed.     

Libyan involvement in West Africa: Qadhaffi's “revolutionary” foreign policy

This article looks at a hitherto unexamined area of Libyan foreign policy. It looks at Libyan involvement in West African politics since 1980, and specifically at three states: Ghana, Burkina Faso and Liberia. It comes to the conclusion that Libyan foreign policy in these areas is oriented towards sustaining “progressive” regimes, perceived allies in the Libyan fight against US and Zionist imperialism.