Prisoners' Wives in Post-Soviet Russia: ‘For my Husband I am Pining!’

The identity of a prisoner's wife is often a shameful societal stigma. Yet Russia's unique history of imprisonment has provided an unusually positive trope for women who have to come to terms with their partners' incarceration: the ‘Decembrist wife’ (dekabristka). This trope originated in the aftermath of the 1825 ‘Decembrist’ uprising—the first anti-monarchist revolt in modern Russian history. A handful of wives of the perpetrators voluntarily joined their husbands in Siberian exile and, in leaving behind families and comforts, created a precedent to be glorified for future generations. Upheld in Russian national mythology as a model of the exemplary wife, the dekabristka identity lives on. This paper examines its enduring power and significance in contemporary Russia.     

Making housemaid remittances work for low-income families in Sri Lanka

In rural Sri Lanka, remittances from housemaids working in the Middle East figure prominently in household livelihood strategies. This article examines the impact of housemaid remittances on living standards and suggests measures to maximise the benefits of remittances for recipient households while minimising the personal and financial costs of migration. The effectiveness of migration as a household strategy depends on a decent overseas job with a reliable income, a reduction in the costs of migrating and remitting, and the responsible management of household welfare and finances by recipients, including the maintenance of local income sources while the migrant is away.     

Serving those Who Served: Outcomes from the San Diego Veterans Treatment Review Calendar (SDVTRC) Pilot Program

Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) are a type of specialty treatment, problem-solving, criminal court. Though the number of VTCs has increased over the past decade, few research studies have examined their effectiveness. This paper examines the data collected concerning a particular VTC experience, the first 82 Veterans enrolled in the Veterans Treatment Review Calendar Pilot Program conducted by the California Superior Court of the county of San Diego from February 2011 until July 2014 (SDVTRC.) The evidence presented herein concerns the nature of this cohort’s population, the SDVTRC program structure in which these Veterans participated, and the outcomes of participation. SDVTRC participants showed a significant decrease in symptoms on 11 of 12 clinical measures from baseline to 12 months. Particular outcomes of the SDVTRC program were related to factors of military service, such as length of service, number of awards, and discharge status. There were also significant relationships between symptom decrease and court process factors, such as length of time in program and sanctions imparted. This court has a 0% recidivism rate, which is believed to be related to its systematic data collection process that was used to inform individualized treatment plans for participants. Implications for other VTCs are provided.     

The Promised Land: A Study of Trafficking in Women from Central and Eastern Europe to the Netherlands

This study on trafficking in women from Central and Eastern Europe explores the contextual factors, the characteristics, and the motivation of victims as well as the methods of traffickers. A combination of rational choice theory, strain theory and social control theory forms the theoretical framework of our research. Based on information from experts in the field, interviews with victims, questionnaires, a study of dossiers and a search of the literature, we developed a typology of victims, which may be helpful for prevention and law enforcement.     

‘Constant Violence from Everywhere’: Psychodynamics of Power and Abuse Amongst Rural and Small-Town Youth

Informed by psychosocial theoretical constructs, this study explores dynamic processes that underlie behaviors of what we call youth relational violence. The paper challenges earlier studies about teen dating violence that use models of adult domestic violence to inform the work, and posits, instead, that youth relational violence is not domestic, occurs beyond the scope of committed partnerships, and varies broadly in the degree and qualities of the relational dyads in which it occurs. Data from participants in targeted and random focus groups (n = 84) consider the social and economic context of a rural and small-town region. The study makes no gender assumptions about abusive teen relationships, nor does it limit data sources and analyses to heterosexual dyads. It conceptualizes elements of power and attachment, and operationalizes them into analyzable data forms, toward the development of a theoretical model that will inform research and practice about violence between teens in relational dyads. Whereas research in the last decade has focused principally on prevalence and evaluation, this paper introduces an exploration of dynamic processes that underlie power, tolerance of abuse, vulnerability to perpetration and victimization, and degree of attachment as it relates to abuse and power dynamics.