Using a cognitive analytic approach to formulate a complex sexual and violent offender to inform multi-agency working: developing a shared understanding

Abstract

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is a collaborative time-limited psychotherapy developed by Ryle. The approach aims to formulate how early experiences influence the development of unhelpful patterns that maintain a person's current difficult experiences. Within the UK, forensic services personnel are increasing their uses of CAT approaches within contextual, i.e. treatment teams, settings. Offending behaviour is relational (perpetrator to victim), and CAT is a relational model. Within the context of National Health Service consultation service (Serious Offender Liaison Service) working with the Police and Criminal Justice Social Work to assess, formulate and give advice regarding working with serious sexual and violent offenders, often with personality disorders, a case example is presented. The paper suggests that utilising a relational model, such as CAT, and applying one of the main the tools of this approach, through diagrammatic representations (maps) of the formulation, can enable agencies working with an individual to share a common formulation and language.     

The relationship between schemas and offence supportive attitudes in mentally disordered sexual offenders

Abstract

The study of schemas in sexual offenders is a relatively new approach in attempts to understand the deviant beliefs and attitudes of sexual offenders. Emerging findings suggest that offence supportive attitudes may be the product of an offender's underlying schemas. This study aims to establish the relationship between offence supportive attitudes and schemas in a sample of mentally disordered sexual offenders (MDSOs). Thirty-one male sexual offenders held within low through high security forensic mental health units were assessed using the Young Schema Questionnaire - Short Version 3 and the Questionnaire on Attitudes Consistent with Sex Offending. Correlational analyses suggested a pattern of relationships in which Insufficient Self-control, Entitlement and Enmeshment arose as the schemas associated with most offence supportive attitudes. This supports a relationship between schemas and offence supportive attitudes in MDSOs and is consistent with the literature to date. Implications for further research and treatment are considered.     

Translation,Modernity, and Women in China

The end of the cold war witnessed the emergence of a commercial web sprawling from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China and extending into Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Pakistan, and Russia. Running parallel to the state-managed exchange in hydrocarbons, raw materials, technology, and infrastructure, this new Eurasian trade had an informal component as everyday consumer items manufactured in China were imported into neighboring countries, bypassing formal regulatory mechanisms. This inter-Asian trade began as shuttle trading by itinerant merchants for local markets; by the mid 1990s, shuttle trading was overshadowed by largescale export for national markets in neighboring countries without losing its informal character. This informality extending across national boundaries defined the post–cold war commerce in innermost Asia; at the same time, it also signaled a return to pre-cold war trading structures. Moving away from the “retreat of the state” thesis that found traction following the cold war, the author attributes informality in this inter-Asian trade to three factors: (1) a restructuring of state power where informal trade was a new comparative advantage sought in an evolving geopolitical climate; (2) the actors in this inter-Asian trade—party and regional officials in China, along with traders and intermediaries—who found and exercised agency through this exchange; and (3) a chain of inter-locking, commercial macro-regions, which are economically sustainable and which transcended international boundaries. Working in conjunction, these factors constitute a dynamic inter-Asian trade and challenge static state imaginaries of a “New Silk Road” or “Eurasian Continental Bridge.”     

Resistance to Privatization: Why Protest Movements Succeed and Fail in Latin America

Why do some protest movements in Latin America succeed in rolling back privatizations while others fail? This article argues that protests against privatizations have tended to succeed under two conditions. First, privatization's opponents form linkages (or “brokerage”) across multiple sectors of society. Broad coalitions are more likely to achieve their goals, while groups acting alone, such as labor unions, are more easily defeated or ignored by governments. Second, civil rights are protected but political representation is weak. In that case, opponents have the legal right to protest, but are unlikely to have opportunities for communicating their concerns through formal institutions, which prompts them to channel their demands outside of existing political institutions. Using case examples and logistic regression, this study confirms these arguments and discusses the implications for democracy in the region.     

East Timor's Emerging National Security Agenda: Establishing “Real” Independence

Abstract

This article focuses on the steps East Timor has taken to bolster its defense sector following its attainment of independence in 2002. In International Relations, scholars have often argued that the ability to defend territory and population from external threat is an essential component of sovereign statehood. Literature on post-colonial sovereignty, however, suggests that the external sovereignty of “weak” post-colonial states is more likely to be protected through international legal recognition. In recent years, East Timor has sought to develop their defense capacities in line with conventional thinking about security and “real” independence. This influences the foreign relations of East Timor and also has broader implications for understanding security and independence in post-colonial states.     

Child characteristics and successful use of housing vouchers: Estimates from the moving to opportunity demonstration

Abstract

Voucher‐based programs have become the most common form of housing assistance for low‐income families in the United States, yet only a slim majority of households that are offered vouchers actually move with them. This article uses data from 2,938 households in the Moving to Opportunity demonstration program to examine whether child characteristics influence the probability that a household will successfully use a housing voucher to lease‐up.

Our results suggest that while many child characteristics have little bearing on the use of housing vouchers, child health, behavioral, and educational problems, particularly the presence of multiple problems in a household, do have an influence. Households with two or more child problems are 7 percentage points less likely to move than those who have none of these problems or only one. Results suggest that such families may need additional support to benefit from housing vouchers or alternative types of affordable housing units.