Do Retributive and Restorative Justice Processes Address Different Symbolic Concerns?

In support of a unitary conceptualization of retributive justice (justice through the imposition of punishment) and restorative justice (justice through dialogue aimed at consensus), three studies using hypothetical and recalled experiences of victimization found that people’s endorsement of, and satisfaction with, either justice notion depends on the symbolic meaning of the transgression. In Study 1, perceiving the transgression as a status/power violation was uniquely related to the endorsement of retributive justice, whereas perceiving it as a violation of shared values was uniquely related to restorative justice. In Study 2, motivation to restore status/power was related to retributive responses, whereas motivation to restore value consensus with the offender was uniquely related to restorative responses. In Study 3, a scenario experiment, respondents called for greater additional sanction when the applied justice process (retributive vs. restorative) did not fit the salient meaning of the transgressions compared to when it did (status/power vs. values).     

Memories of childhood sexual abuse: narrative analyses of types, experiences, and processes of remembering

The study explored types of memory for childhood sexual abuse (CSA) in a clinical sample of 30 women and identified factors that led some women (n = 24) to report recovered memories. Questionnaires produced three types of memory: always (n = 6), recovered (n = 14), both (n = 10); however, analysis of narrative data also revealed the use of language that could not be categorized into discrete types. Recovered memories were linked to three categories of experience (cumulative reactions, atypical reactions, and atypical experiences). Subcategories identified specific contexts associated with those experiences. Findings suggest that further research is needed on the phenomenology of memory experiences using language derived from CSA survivors and a better understanding of the long-term process of interpretations of key experiences that result in reports of recovered memories.     

Babble: A Theater in Justice and Discourse

The world studied by empirical criminal justice research is babble—a congeries of voices whose meanings represent many normative worlds. Our research designs provide a frame for the babble, and our statistics codify and simplify it. We provide analytic portraits of it and, using the substantive language of crime control, give those portraits meaning. Yet, those meanings are located in a crime control discourse that de-legitimizes and destroys those normative worlds. This paper, an interpretive montage, is a collection of fractured narratives assembled to show that interpretation has something to offer the way we think about knowledge production in the field of criminal justice. It is also a cautionary tale to students in criminal justice, to remember that our scientific abstractions are an abstraction from the underlying realities of human life, not a “deeper” or in some way more real understanding. Our aim is to move the babble—the humanity from which the voices emerge—back into the foreground of justice research.

---

Without fear or favour,affection or ill will: addressing gender bias in NSW judicial education

This article traces how gender equality has evolved conceptually and provides an overview of the educational initiatives in place for raising gender awareness among members of the NSW judiciary. The author gives examples of gender bias and explores some of the seminal policy and legislative responses at state and federal levels during the reformist decades of the 1970s to the 1990s. North American jurisdictions played an important role in raising judicial awareness of gender bias in the 1980s, with this issue coming to prominence in Australia in the 1990s. The author describes the work of the Judicial Commission of NSW in this area, including training sessions on gender equality, both discrete and as part of integrated education initiatives; its involvement with the National Judicial Orientation Program; and the launch of its Equality before the Law Bench Book in 2006.     

The War with the Ottoman Empire: The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War,Volume 2

The War with the Ottoman Empire: The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War, Volume 2. By Jeffrey Grey (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp.x + 238. 16 Maps. AU$59.95 (cloth).     

Queering the World or Worlding the Queer? New Readings of Anna Kavan’s Who Are You?

Abstract

This essay explores world-literary and queer approaches to Anna Kavan’s little discussed 1963 novel Who Are You?. It argues that world-literary scholarship demonstrates the centrality of white colonial masculinity to capitalist modernity, while a queer reading highlights the anxious performativity at the heart of such power. The most distinctive feature of Kavan’s text is its unusual format, whereby the story is told once, in detail, before immediately being retold, in more concise fashion and with some adjustments. What both fields add to the analysis of this formal deviation is a shared concern with the failings of normative order—whether that be the bourgeois, heteropatriarchal family or the capitalist system itself—and, in turn, the relationship of such failure to narrative disjuncture.     

Monotowns and the political economy of industrial restructuring in Russia

During the 2008–2009 economic crisis, Russia's monotowns – one-industry towns left from the Soviet era – gained widespread attention as potential sources of social protest and unrest. Will such worries resurface under current economic conditions? While fears about monotowns were exaggerated during the last economic crisis, Russia's leadership has reason to remain concerned. Despite the dramatic transformations of the last two decades, Russia's post-Soviet industrial landscape has largely survived intact, leaving a significant number of monotowns with unprofitable enterprises in a precarious position. Yet given its emphasis on social stability, we can expect the government to continue subsidies, both explicit and hidden, that seek to maintain employment and avoid social conflict, but that preserve the country's inefficient industrial geography.