Abusive Men’s Indirect Control of Their Partner During the Process of Separation

The current study evaluates the impact of prior controlling behavior and physical abuse on indirect abuse during the process of separation. The sample includes women in the New York City family court system from 2002 to 2005 who had at least one child with the male she was obtaining an order of protection against. Stepwise logistic regression was used to determine the impact of prior physical abuse and controlling behavior on if the abusive partner told lies to the children, kept the children longer or contacted the woman’s family or friends over the follow-up period. Women experienced a decline in the occurrence of physical abuse but did not experience the same decline in controlling behaviors over the follow-up period. Level of education and employment status of the couple may be more appropriate predictors of later indirect abuse over the process of separation than prior physical abuse and controlling behavior.     

Police Witness Identification Images: A Geometric Morphometric Analysis*

Abstract: Research into witness identification images typically occurs within the laboratory and involves subjective likeness and recognizability judgments. This study analyzed whether actual witness identification images systematically alter the facial shapes of the suspects described. The shape analysis tool, geometric morphometrics, was applied to 46 homologous facial landmarks displayed on 50 witness identification images and their corresponding arrest photographs, using principal component analysis and multivariate regressions. The results indicate that compared with arrest photographs, witness identification images systematically depict suspects with lowered and medially located eyebrows (p = <0.000001). This was found to occur independently of the Police Artist, and did not occur with composites produced under laboratory conditions. There are several possible explanations for this finding, including any, or all, of the following: The suspect was frowning at the time of the incident, the witness had negative feelings toward the suspect, this is an effect of unfamiliar face processing, the suspect displayed fear at the time of their arrest photograph.     

The Intersection of Redistricting,Race, and Participation

The drawing of congressional district lines can significantly reduce political participation in U.S. House elections, according to recent work. But such studies have failed to explain which citizens’ voting rates are most susceptible to the dislocating effects of redistricting and whether the findings are generalizable to a variety of political contexts. Building on this nascent literature and work on black political participation, we show that redistricting's negative effects on participation—measured by voter roll‐off in U.S. House elections—are generally strongest among African Americans, but that black voters can be mobilized when they are redrawn into a black representative's congressional district. Our findings, based on data from 11 postredistricting elections in five states from 1992 through 2006, both expand the empirical scope of previous work and suggest that redistricting plays a previously hidden role in affecting black participation in congressional contests.     

Out of Time: The Moral Temporality of Sex, Crime and Taboo

This paper discusses the relationship between law and morality. Morality does not necessarily coincide with the law, but it contributes to it. An act may be legal but nevertheless considered to be immoral in a particular society. For example, the use of pornography may be considered by many to be immoral. Nevertheless, the sale and distribution of non-violent, non-child related, sexually explicit material is legal (or regulated) in many jurisdictions. Many laws are informed by, and even created by, morality. This paper examines the historical influence of morality on the law and on society in general. It aims to develop a theoretical framework for examining legal moralism and the social construction of morality and crime as well as the relationship between sex, desire and taboo. Here, we refer to the moral temporality of sex and taboo, which examines the way in which moral judgments about sex and what is considered taboo change over time, and the kinds of justifications that are employed in support of changing moralities. It unpacks the way in which abstract and highly tenuous concepts such as “desire”, “art” and “entertainment” may be “out of time” with morality, and how morality shapes laws over time, fabricating justifications from within socially constructed communities of practice. This theoretical framework maps the way in which these concepts have become temporally dominated by heteronormative structures such as the family, marriage, reproduction, and longevity. It is argued that the logic of these structures is inexorably tied to the heterosexual life-path, charting individual lives and relationships through explicit phases of childhood, adolescence and adulthood that, in the twenty-first century, delimit the boundaries of taboo surrounding sex more than any other time in history.     

‘Social Services will not touch us with a barge pole’: social care provision for older prisoners

Older prisoners are the fastest growing subgroup in the English and Welsh prison estate. Older prisoners have high levels of health and social care needs. This mixed-method study involved the distribution of a questionnaire examining the availability of health and social care services for older prisoners to all prisons housing adult males in England and Wales, followed by qualitative telephone interviews with representatives from eight prisons. Over half of establishments had some contact with external social care services, but reported significant difficulties in arranging the care for individuals. A professional lead for older prisoners had been identified in 81% of establishments; however, the value of this role to positively affect practice appeared questionable. Statutory social care was often non-existent in prison due to the lack of understanding of what it constituted and who was responsible for its provision.