Human rights is not enough: The need for demonstrating efficacy of an ethical approach to interviewing in India

Purpose. The present study compared attitudes about Human Rights (HR) and the advocation of coercive interviewing practices amongst Indian Police Officers, Offenders and a sample from the General Public. Method. 100 Police Officers, 50 Offenders and 50 members of the General Public completed a questionnaire that assessed their attitudes about the Human Rights of suspects and the use of coercion in suspect interviews. Results. Police Officers and the Public accepted both custodial violence and the use of intimidating interrogation strategies more readily than Offenders. They were also more prepared to suspend Suspects' Human Rights. Further, individuals who scored high on a coercive belief scale (CBS) were particularly inclined to favour custodial violence and suspend Human Rights. In addition, the self‐reported frequency with which Police Officers used intimidating and non‐intimidating interviewing techniques was related to their beliefs about Suspects' Human Rights and the extent to which they perceived intimidating interviewing methods to be useful. Conclusion. Attitudes about effective interviewing strategies may well be embedded within a broad social context. The effectiveness of a Human Rights Agenda requires that officers in India are informed of the effectiveness of ethical interviewing standards and the practical and legal dangers of using inappropriate methods.     

Parentification of Adult Children of Divorce: A Multidimensional Analysis

The goal of this study was to compare the responses of late adolescent and young adult children of divorce and nondivorce on a new multidimensional measure of parentification assessing the extent and fairness of past and present caregiving in one's family of origin. Three-hundred-and-eighty-two individuals participated. Item analyses and internal consistencies of the different parentification scales were initially conducted on one-half of the sample and cross-validated on the other half. The scores of European and African American participants from the validation sample whose parents either divorced before middle adolescence (N = 35) or never divorced (N = 68) were then compared. The divorced group reported providing more emotional and instrumental caregiving and experiencing more unfairness in their families of origin than did the nondivorced group, although the effect for emotional caregiving was moderated by temporal perspective. Evidence that problematic forms of parentification in children of divorce continue into late adolescence and young adulthood has implications for models of understanding and helping these children and their families.     

‘How the Modern Girl Attains Strength and Grace’: the Girl's Own Paper,sport and the discipline of the female body, 1914–1956

In the first half of the twentieth century there was a great deal of debate about increasing female participation in sporting activities, and changes to the female sporting body and the way in which it was displayed. Magazines for girls played a key role in the construction of the female body, and in mediating for their readers a range of diverse views on the meaning, purpose and benefits or dangers of female physical culture. This article explores the way in which one periodical, the Girl's Own Paper (GOP), disseminated those discourses and allowed its readers to explore different viewpoints. It argues that the way in which GOP presented sport for girls and women was contingent upon the age of the intended readership, and that the coverage of sport within the paper reached a peak in the 1930s when the target readership was aged 12 to 16.     

Aboriginal Affairs: Humanitarian Intervention Then and Now: Dis/Connections and Possibilities

Aboriginal affairs has always been a sore point in Australia. Ever since the first Governor attempted to put in place the Colonial Office's instructions to treat the inhabitants with “amity and kindness” the exercise has been fraught. There is a text‐book version of the changing policy landscape and rote school lessons on the gradual acquisition of Aboriginal rights and freedoms. These go some way to conveying the contested ground, political conflict and personal anguish on which this history was built. Yet, they give the impression of evolution and progress. At the same time, the history wars magnified the fractiousness without carving a pathway through. In this paper I recover an important part of the history, which often goes unremarked. I reflect on the role of humanitarian intervention in this politics. Not only has it been critical to the policy landscape — for good and ill — but there are also historical connections and lineages between then and now, which deserve attention. Closely aligned to a history of human rights in Australia, recovering this history seems more pertinent than ever 1 .