Family violence and depressive symptomatology among incarcerated women

This study examines the potential association between witnessing parental violence as a child and later adult depressive symptomatology within a population that has received limited attention in the scientific literature, namely, incarcerated women. The Conflict Tactics Scale and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale were administered to 60 women incarcerated in a maximum security prison in North Carolina. A majority of the women reported that they had witnessed verbally aggressive or physically violent interactions among the adult members in their families. Seventy percent of these women suffered from clinically relevant levels of depressive symptomatology. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis revealed that increasing levels of reasoning conflict resolution strategies used in the women's families of origin were associated with decreasing levels of depressive symptomatology of the women, whereas increasing levels of physically violent conflict resolution strategies were associated with increasing levels of depressive symptomatology.     

Perceptions of Sexual Harassment: The Effects of Gender,Legal Standard,and Ambivalent Sexism

This research tests the possibility that the reasonable woman as compared to the reasonable person test of hostile work environment sexual harassment interacts with hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs and under some conditions triggers protectionist attitudes toward women who complain of sexual harassment, We administered to a sample of undergraduates the ambivalent sexism inventory along with the fact patterns in two harassment cases and asked them to make legally relevant decisions under either the reasonable woman or person standard. We found that those high in hostile sexism, and women, found more evidence of harassment. However, those high in benevolent sexism did not exhibit the hostile sexism effects. Although men were less sensitive to the reasonable woman standard than women, under some conditions the reasonable woman standard enabled both genders to find greater evidence of harassment. The results are discussed from the perspectives of law and psychology.     

Affect Regulation and the Cycle of Violence Against Women: New Directions for Understanding the Process

The process of the intergenerational transmission of violence is not well understood. A risk and resilience model of criminal violence against women was investigated using secondary data. The sample was composed of adolescent male juvenile delinquents who had been physically abused by their parents, and who were followed up at ages 25 and 31. A series of structural equation models were fit to investigate whether dysregulated affect mediated the effects of attachment and family chaos on the adult perpetration of violence against women. These models support the hypothesis that affect dysregulation may act as a mediator. Results raise new ideas about the mechanisms by which violence may be transmitted across generations.     

Counting the costs of HIV and AIDS to civil-society organisations

HIV threatens the survival of many civil-society organisations (CSOs) in Africa. While we know the range of potential costs to such groups, we lack a detailed picture of the extent of the impact. This article highlights important findings from exploratory research in Malawi. Respondents perceived that overall performance in the four CSOs studied declined by an average 20 per cent because they were working in a context of high HIV prevalence. Yet the CSOs' workplace response to this threat was very limited, and they remain highly vulnerable to future impact. We consider why the CSOs have not been more proactive, and we recommend that donor policy should help partners to respond to the epidemic and enable them to remain effective.     

Social ecology, individual risk, and recidivism: A multilevel examination of main and moderating influences

Purpose

Despite a longstanding tradition in criminology to consider the impact of neighborhood context on crime-related outcomes, criminologists have largely ignored the influence of social ecology on recidivism until recently. The purpose of the present study was to examine the main and moderating influences of social ecology on recidivism.

Materials and Methods

The present study used hierarchical nonlinear modeling to estimate the effects of concentrated disadvantage, immigrant concentration, and residential stability on recidivism for a sample of offenders released from custody/supervision in 2006 and nested within Iowa counties. We controlled for individual-level risk for recidivism using the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R), a validated risk assessment instrument. We also examined whether the relationship between LSI-R score and recidivism varied across counties, and if so, whether this variation can be explained by social structural characteristics.

Results

Results indicate that residential stability was the only contextual variable significantly related to recidivism. The relationship between individual-level risk and recidivism did not vary across contexts.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that the social structural context has limited influence on recidivism, while the LSI-R is a robust predictor of recidivism across contexts. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research.     

Is there such thing as ‘global sex trafficking’? A patchwork tale on useful (mis)understandings

This article intends to respond to a recent call (e.g., Zhang Global Crime 10(3):178–195, 2009; Brunovskis and Surtees International Migration 48(4):1–38, 2010) for more innovative studies and methodologies in order to move beyond the current discourse on human trafficking. We do so by describing three ethnographic fragments on the dynamics of (dealing with) sex trafficking within Europe. The concepts of ‘friction’ and ‘collaboration’ (Tsing Cultural Anthropology 15(3):327–360, 2000, 2005) are used to analyse these fragments. These concepts refer to creative processes that occur as people interact across differences. They give insight into how universal ideas on freedom and justice enable collaboration between parties involved in fighting human trafficking who do not necessarily share a common goal. We conclude that the presented method of ‘patchwork ethnography’ is useful in studying sex trafficking as it implies a strong focus on connections between ‘sites of diverse knowledge’, without losing sight of individual stories of people making those connections. ‘Patchwork ethnography’ is innovative and it allows researchers to expose and untangle the workings of the supposedly all-powerful phenomenon and the encompassing, uniform, hegemonic discourse surrounding human (sex) trafficking.     

Human trafficking revisited: legal,enforcement and ethnographic narratives on sex trafficking to Western Europe

In this paper we focus on the ways ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ are imagined in the narratives on women who have been trafficked to West Europe for sexual exploitation. Three specific domains: international/national law, local law enforcement and ethnographic academic perspective are particularly important as they strongly influence political reaction to trafficking and describe the phenomenon from the perspective of the individuals concerned. In our analysis, an explanation of the diversity of the perceptions in these three domains is provided.     

Expert Testimony of the Battered Person Syndrome, Defendant Gender, and Sexual Orientation in a Case of Duress: Evaluating Legal Decisions

The current study examined the utility of expert testimony of the battered person syndrome (BPS) in a case of duress and the extent to which defendant gender, defendant sexual orientation, and participant gender influence mock jury decisions in a case of duress. Participants (N?=?413) read a scenario based on U.S. v. Dixon (2006) and answered questions assessing verdict, guilt, sentence length, duress legal elements, and attributes typically ascribed to victims of abuse. Results showed heterosexual female defendants were assigned the lowest sentences and met more of the legal elements of duress (i.e., were coerced, more likely to be believed, and purchased a gun to prevent harm) and attributes (i.e., experienced severe abuse, learned helplessness) compared to other defendants. When mock jurors received expert testimony, they provided lower rates of guilt and sentencing for defendants. Results also showed the inclusion of BPS expert testimony increased ratings for many of the legal elements of duress and attributes typically associated with intimate partner violence. In addition, results suggested that while heterosexual female defendants are more likely to be believed in a case of duress, expert testimony of BPS is helpful to all defendants. Limitations and future directions for research and practice are discussed.