Hard labour: Four views on women in the workforce

Desley Deacon, Managing Gender. The State, the New Middle Class and Women Workers 1830–1930 (Oxford) Melbourne 1989; Sally Hacker, Pleasure, Power and Technology. Some Tales of Gender, Engineering and the Cooperative Workplace, (Unwin Hyman) London 1989; Rosemary Pringle, Secretaries Talk. Sexuality, Power and Work, (Allen & Unwin) Sydney 1988; Claire Williams, Blue, White and Pink Collar Workers in Australia. Technicians, Bank Employees and Flight Attendants, (Allen & Unwin) Sydney 1988.     

Working positively with sexual offenders: maximizing the effectiveness of treatment

In this article, the authors draw on literatures outside sexual offending and make suggestions for working more positively and constructively with these offenders. Although the management of risk is a necessary feature of treatment, it needs to occur in conjunction with a strength-based approach. An exclusive focus on risk can lead to overly confrontational therapeutic encounters, a lack of rapport between offenders and clinicians, and fragmented and mechanistic treatment delivery. The authors suggest that the goals of sexual offender treatment should be the attainment of good lives, which is achieved by enhancing hope, increasing self-esteem, developing approach goals, and working collaboratively with the offenders. Examples are provided of how these targets may be met. When this is done within a therapeutic context where the treatment providers display empathy and warmth and are rewarding and directive, the authors suggest that treatment effects will be maximized.     

Expert Evidence,Judicial Reasoning,and the Family Courts Information Pilot

The Family Courts Information Pilot took a modest step towards open justice in Children Act cases by publishing 161 judgments of the County Courts and Family Proceedings Courts. Combining socio‐legal and philosophical analysis on lines inspired by the work of Habermas, this article examines the epistemology of expert testimony implicit in the judgments. What emerges is a form of reasoning based on ‘inference to the best explanation’: judges seek to show that the best explanation for experts saying what they do is that they have good reasons for their opinions. While this approach is not blindly deferential, it has serious limitations in cases where the only experts are local authority social workers and the guardian, and an awareness of these limitations is one reason for the courts' willingness to allow other experts to be instructed. The article also criticizes the analysis of the courts’ use of experts by the recent Family Justice Review.     

Moral strangers or fellow travellers? Contemporary perspectives on offender rehabilitation

This article is a response to the two previous articles in this issue (Polaschek, 2012, and McNeill, 2012), which make up the hot topic debate on offender rehabilitation.     

Assessing desistance in child molesters: a qualitative analysis

The aim of the study was to investigate the process of desistance from sexual crime by comparing two groups of child molesters: One group was deemed to be desisting, while men in the other group were deemed as being still potentially active offenders. Men in the desisting group reported being optimistic for the future, reported an enhanced sense of personal agency and a more internalized locus of control, and identified treatment as being a turning point in their lives. In comparison, men in the active group were found to be more pessimistic and were more likely to blame external events, or situations, for their problems. One of the most striking findings of the research was that the desisting group had found a place within a social group or network, unlike the still potentially active offenders who all described a life of social isolation and alienation.