Sex offender (re)integration into the community: realities and challenges

Abstract

This paper explores the benefits of engaging with self-defined communities in Northern Ireland on the issue of sexual offending and argues the case for building on existing community structures, by identifying people with leadership skills and by empowering them with the knowledge, and with connections to statutory services, that will support public protection. We address the historical context in terms of the impact of the conflict on these communities and describe the role and experience of NIACRO working in Northern Ireland, in particular its Base2 project supporting people under threat. We reference the development of current statutory arrangements for Public Protection Arrangements for Northern Ireland (PPANI) and argue the case for preparing people in the community to receive and understand the messages promoted through PPANI on the basis of our belief that public education is most effective when the people receiving it are receptive.     

Terror in the Texts: Technology – Law – Future

This paper is concerned withlaw's failure and need to manifest theessentiality of technology for the West. Thiswill be shown through a critical reading of therelated fictional and juridical projects ofAmerican golden age science fiction and spacelaw. This analysis involves sensitivity to theterrors that bind together technology, law andthe future. It is argued that cornucopia, thevictory of modernism through technology, ispresented in science fiction and space law asterrorised by its other – dystopia. Thisterrorising means that cornucopia activelyresists dystopia. However, this resistiveenterprise is flawed – cornucopia never escapesdystopia. Alternative images of humanity andtechnology are needed to escape these flawedimaginings of the West. The paper concludesthat the cyborg offers the potential for aregenerative thinking about technology and law.     

From Cronyism to Oligarchy? Privatisation and Business Elites in Myanmar

Privatisation is often contentious yet in Myanmar it has not so much been its merits or drawbacks that have attracted attention as questions around implementation. In Myanmar, the implementation of privatisation has broad significance for the political economy. A first phase of privatisation was focused on small and medium-sized enterprises and did not have a significant economic impact. A second phase, commenced in 2008, consolidated the interests of a business elite with personal connections to the military regime. The impact of this second phase of privatisation was such that some elements of this elite strengthened to the extent that they no longer relied entirely on patronage, creating opportunities for diversification in their strategies of wealth creation and defence. For this reason, it is argued, the wealthiest strata of Myanmar’s business elite is now best conceived as not simply consisting of cronies but rather as a nascent form of oligarchy. In theoretical terms, this suggests that greater attention to the qualitative difference between cronyism and oligarchy is warranted, as is close study of processes – like privatisation and political reform – that enable or require a wider range of strategies of wealth defence.     

Therapeutic engagement in medium-secure care: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of service users’ experiences

Service users (SUs) detained in forensic hospitals are usually required to engage in psychological therapies aimed at reducing mental distress and/or for preventing further offending. Poor therapeutic engagement (TE) can lead to adverse clinical outcomes and reoffending, at a cost to the individual, staff, the service provider, and the public. To understand what factors influence TE from a SUs’ perspective, the experiences of 10 male residents of a medium-secure hospital were explored. Using a service-user informed design, interpretative phenomenological analysis of interview data was completed. Four superordinate themes emerged: different worlds; what the individual brings; what the therapy entails; and control. Consideration of how these factors may be of use to professionals working in secure care settings is discussed in relation to existing theory and research.     

Seeing Law: The Comic,Icon and the Image in Law and Justice

This special issue examines how the comic and the icon prefigure forms of legality that are different to modern law. There is a primal seeing of law unmediated by reading, writing or possibly thinking. This introduction identifies the primacy of the eye, the emergence of visual jurisprudence and the transformations of law as a paper-based material practice to a digitally enabled activity.     

History of interpersonal violence, abuse, and nonvictimization trauma and severity of psychiatric symptoms among children in outpatient psychiatric treatment

In a clinical sample of child psychiatry outpatients, chart review data were collected for 114 consecutive admissions over a 1-year period at a Child and Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. Data included history of documented maltreatment, potentially traumatic domestic or community violence, neglect or emotional abuse, and noninterpersonal stressors as well as demographics, psychiatric diagnoses, and parent-rated child emotional and disruptive behavior problems. On a bivariate and multivariate basis, any past exposure to interpersonal violence-but not to noninterpersonal traumas-was related to more severe disruptive behavior problems, independent of the effects of demographics and psychiatric diagnoses. Noninterpersonal trauma and psychiatric diagnoses were associated with emotional problems; exposure to interpersonal violence appeared to partially account for this relationship despite not being independently associated with emotional problem severity. History of exposure to interpersonal violence warrants clinical and research attention as a severity marker and potential treatment focus in psychiatric outpatient services for children, particularly those with disruptive behavior problems.     

STATE CHILD EMOTIONAL ABUSE LAWS: THEIR FAILURE TO PROTECT CHILDREN WITH GENDER IDENTITY DISORDER

Emotional abuse of children with Gender Identity Disorder by parents is very difficult to identify and prevent. State investigators of abuse and neglect often have a hard time determining if the reasons for mental illness and psychological harm in children are due to the actions of their parents, or if they stem from other sources. Once identified, it becomes even harder to prove in court for purposes of ordering services or removing the child from the home if the abuse is severe enough. With children who are gender non‐conforming, this task becomes exponentially more difficult due to the low prevalence rate, discrimination, stereotypes, and a parent's right to bring up their child as they choose. These youth face discrimination and violence in school, work, their communities, and also within their own families. Emotional abuse statutes are too vague to protect youth who are gender non‐conforming. The vague and unclear laws lead to inconsistency in the application of the law and lack of protection of the children because judges and investigators are not aware of how parent's actions harms youth with gender identity disorder. Therefore, states should adopt the model statute within this Note which defines specific actions by parents which would not qualify as abuse when involving gender conforming youth but qualifies as abuse for children with gender identity disorder. Many states already have statutes which define physical abuse, sexual abuse and abandonment by specific actions by parents towards their children. This proposal will enable both the state and the judges to properly identify victims with gender identity disorder of emotional abuse and provide for their protection.