Sentimental Frauds

The 2006 class action against James Frey, concerning his fabrications in A Million Little Pieces, was the first suit of its kind in the United States. There is nothing new about false memoirs, so what can explain the lawsuit? When the book was promoted on “Oprah's Book Club,” viewers were invited to respond emotionally, and saw their responses as a form of testimony. Those responses produced a sense of betrayal and inauthenticity when Frey's falsehoods were revealed. This view finds support in the eighteenth‐century sentimental novel, which similarly linked readers' reactions to the author's emotional authenticity. Fraud was an ongoing concern for sentimental novelists, some of whom used elaborate editorial to ploys to disavow responsibility for the text, while others populated their novels with fraudulent characters, intended as foils for the protagonist. An investigation of these novels helps to reveal the implications of the Frey case for future claims of literary fraud.     

Mass incarceration: ‘a sin against the future’?

Conclusion The move towards incarceration as the response to all social problems is serious for all the reasons given above. It constitutes negative investment in the future and gives a frightening legitimacy to that vision of the society of the future that sees the population divided into three, one third living a comfortable life but behind fortifications, one third incarcerated in some form of camp or ghetto and the other third guarding the homes of the comfortable or working as prison personnel. The 20th century has not had a very good record on incarceration. It has seen Hitler’s concentration camps and Stalin’s Gulag. Nils Christie and other commentators talk already of the US gulag. In Western Europe, still, these are but trends. Imprisonment rates are still generally, except for those of the UK, lower than 100 per 100,000. The punitive and exclusionary attitudes prevalent in the US are not so deeply embedded in European traditions. A philosophy of re-integration into society for offenders still underpins legislation and practice. A philosophy of social cohesion governs institutions. The assumption is that offenders, although they must undergo criminal sanctions and pay back in some way for what they have done, keep their citizenship and must be welcomed back into society. These beliefs are part of European democratic ideals. Much energy will need to be put into supporting and maintaining them in penal policy in the years ahead.     

How the Indashyikirwa Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Programme in Rwanda Influenced Parenting and Violence against Children

There is increasing interest in working at the intersections of intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence against children (VAC), especially in the family, yet few programmatic strategies exist or have been evaluated to assess the combined impact of strategies on both types of violence. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the influence that Indashyikirwa—a programme designed to reduce IPV in Rwanda— had on VAC in the families of couples participating in the programme. Indashyikirwa included a 21-session couples’ curriculum, safe spaces for IPV survivors, and community activism against violence. In addition to reductions in IPV, a randomized control trial found significant reductions in parent’s reports of children witnessing IPV, parents’ attitudes condoning harsh physical punishment of children, and parents’ use of corporal punishment as discipline. This paper uses qualitative data to better understand how and why the couples’ curriculum influenced parenting and VAC. Twenty-eight participants (fourteen male-female couples) were individually interviewed at three time points, once before and twice after the couples’ curriculum implementation. Six men and six women who completed the curriculum and subsequently carried out activism were also interviewed at two time points. The data were analyzed thematically. Pathways motivating couples’ attitude and behavior changes towards children included reflecting on the consequences of IPV for children and appreciating the benefits for children of non-violent, gender equitable households. This analysis suggests that working with co-habiting couples presents a viable strategy for working to prevent IPV, VAC and promote more gender equitable family dynamics.