Children's testimony: Research findings and policy implications

Abstract

Traditionally the British legal system has taken a sceptical attitude toward the testimony of children, reflected in the competency requirement, the corroboration rule and the judicial caution. However, recent psychological research has suggested that children, properly interviewed, can provide invaluable testimony in securing convictions in cases of sexual or physical abuse. Research suggests that children's spontaneous accounts of events are generally accurate, and that suggestibility can be greatly reduced by appropriate questioning techniques. Partly as a result of such research, the legal hurdles surrounding children's evidence have been dismantled and procedural innovations, such as the use of the Videolink and videotaped interviews introduced. Empirical research demonstrates the success of the Videolink and a similar evaluation is planned for videotaped interviews. The latter has highlighted the need for a new research agenda which would include the impact of biased or repeated questioning, and requests to children from abusers to lie or keep secrets.     

Framing and perceptions of stalking: the influence of conduct severity and the perpetrator–target relationship

Research has demonstrated that the way in which questions are presented (i.e. framed) has the capacity to influence responses to subsequent questions. In the context of stalking, perception research has often been framed in terms of whether or not particular behaviours constitute stalking. The current research investigates whether the framing of the opening question (question frame), conduct severity and the perpetrator–target relationship influence perceptions of stalking. Two studies employed experimental 3×3 independent factorial designs: one to examine question frame and conduct severity, the other to examine question frame and the perpetrator–target relationship. Participants in both studies (total N=449) were presented with vignettes and asked to answer six questions relating to the behaviour described. Question frame was found to impact on the classification of behaviour, with a greater proportion of participants indicating that the behaviour represented harassment or stalking rather than an illegal act. Consistent with previous research, conduct severity and the perpetrator–target relationship influenced perceptions of stalking. However, there was no evidence to suggest that the framing of the opening question influenced these perceptions. The implications of these findings for previous perception research are discussed.     

Victim age,attractiveness and,abuse history as factors in the perception of a hypothetical child sexual abuse case

Abstract

This study examines the effect of victim age, victim attractiveness, the victim's abuse history and respondent gender have on attributions of blame and credibility towards a female victim in a hypothetical child sexual abuse case. A total of 397 respondents from a community sample read a hypothetical child sexual abuse (CSA) scenario in which victim age, victim attractiveness and the victim's abuse history were manipulated. Respondents then completed a 16-item blame attribution questionnaire. Several predictions were made. First, a 10-year-old victim would be deemed less blameworthy and more credible than a 15-year-old victim. Secondly, an attractive victim would be viewed more positively, and attributed less blame, than an unattractive victim. Thirdly, a victim with previous history of being sexual abused—either by the same or different perpetrators—would be deemed more culpable for their own CSA than a first time victims. Finally, female respondents were expected to take a more pro-victim and anti-perpetrator stance than males. Whilst comparatively few differences were found across victim attractiveness and abuse history. Overall findings were broadly in line with predictions. It was concluded that victim age and respondent gender play particularly important roles in the attribution of blame towards victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse.     

Reporting guidelines for social and psychological intervention trials: considering the special context of crime and justice interventions

We comment on Grant and colleagues’ proposal to develop an extension to the CONSORT statement for social interventions, and propose that crime and justice interventions should be considered a special case, due to the added complexities of reporting consent, coercion and harm in criminal justice experiments.     

Working on the Ground. A Collective Biography of Feminine Subjectivities: Mapping the Traces of Power and Knowledge

In this paper we map the traces of power and knowledge as we read them at play in our own memories and as we make sense of them from a Foucauldian perspective. Our question here is twofold: how might we use Foucault to read our embodied memories of power and knowledge; and how might we use the analysis of those stories to enable us better to see the implications of Foucault's writing for the analysis of subjects' enmeshment in power/knowledge relations? We use as the ground of our analysis our own embodied memories of achieving ourselves as appropriate(d) subjects (as girls and women, in relation to men--fathers, lovers, and husbands). Our trajectory in this paper is double. First, it has been towards uncovering the ways in which girls and women might be said to be powerful, even when they are complicit in their own subjection. Second, it has been to show that when Foucault defines all acts of power to involve the possibility of resistance and freedom, and he takes the opposite, a state of domination, to arise from 'economic, political, or military means', he has not fully acknowledged the extent to which the repeated, minute accretions of everyday practices can generate sedimentations of lines of force that may also be understood as a state of domination.     

Environmental protection and US–Asia relations: a policy of disconnect

Despite the post-September 11 focus on regional security and the continued emphasis on regional economic cooperation, environmental degradation should not be overlooked as an important issue for US policy in and relationship with the Asia-Pacific. It is an important issue in its own right, presenting the countries of the region with ecological, economic and social (human security) challenges. There are both ethical and instrumental impulses for the United States, as a rich indus­trialised country and as a disproportionate consumer of resources and polluter of global waste, to provide environmental assistance to the Asia-Pacific. Despite global demands that the ‘new’ new world (environmental) order should be based on solidarity and collective responsibility, neither US environmental policy towards the region nor the regional consequences of its international environmental policy more generally meet this test. The US is fundamentally self-regarding rather than other-regarding in the various dimensions of its environmental relationship with the region. The consequences for both the region and for the US may be substantial. Continued environmental degradation in the region has the potential to undermine other US policy goals, in terms of its reputation, it economic objectives and even its more orthodox geopolitical security objectives.     

Nano‐Industry Operationalizations of “Responsibility”: Charting Diversity in the Enactment of Responsibility

The Collingridge dilemma—the problem of reacting to emerging technology either “too early” or “too late”—is one that is readily recognized by developers and promoters of nanotechnologies. One response can be found in the rise of a discourse of “responsible development” in the science and innovation policy landscape. While a number of commentators have discussed the potential of such initiatives, it remains unclear how responsible development is actually being configured “on the ground,” in private sector nanotechnology. This paper addresses this question by analyzing empirical engagements in Europe and the United States in order to map industry operationalizations of “responsibility” in these contexts. We show that a number of different articulations of “responsibility” are present, including as a response to public lack of trust and perceived public pressure, and as the management of risk. We close by relating these findings to the theoretical literature on responsibility, other contemporary accounts of the ways in which responsible development can be operationalized, and the possibilities that these articulations of responsibility may open up.     

National Assessment by the National Security Council Staff 1968–80: An American Experiment in a British Style of Analysis?

At a time of intense debate over the specific organizational arrangements of American national security agencies with new or refocused intelligence responsibilities, the relative proximity between intelligence producers and consumers is a key issue. Intelligence capabilities may have to be kept separate from decision-making because of organizational economies of scale and scope, but separation alone does not mean intelligence must be distant from decision-making. For example, the British style of analysis involves a much closer relationship between intelligence producers and consumers than exists in the American context. Efforts to improve the integration of intelligence into decision-making by closing the distance between them would do well to study the history and efficacy of this process as they look to create new ways of structuring the relationship between intelligence analysis and decision-making. Specifically, history demonstrates that the US National Security Council staff implemented a process in 1968 through 1980 that approximated the British style of analysis, and this may provide US policymakers with a model for bridging the gap between intelligence analysis and decision-making.     

Intelligence scholarship as all‐source analysis: The case of Tom Bower's the perfect English Spy

Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90 (London: Heinemann, 1995). Pp.385, 24 photos, biblio., index. £16.99. ISBN 0–434–0080–9