Social Protest and Policy Attitudes: The Case of the 2006 Immigrant Rallies

Do protests sway public opinion? If so, why and how? To address these questions, we examine the impact of the 2006 immigration protests on immigration policy preferences. We use the 2006 Latino National Survey coupled with protest data to examine whether temporal and spatial exposure to the protests are associated with policy preferences. Our findings lend evidence that protest activity influences Latinos’ immigration policy preferences. However, the findings suggest the effect of protest on immigration policy preferences is not uniform across the population, but rather contingent on generational status and the intensity of protest activity at the local level.     

Illegal behavior

What is illegal behavior? An intuitively plausible answer is that illegal behavior is behavior which the government discourages by the use of coercion. Although such coercion theories are generally out of favor today, the usual objections to such a theory can be plausibly answered, and moreover the theory has significant advantages over other ways of understanding the notion of illegal behavior.     

Working positively with sexual offenders: maximizing the effectiveness of treatment

In this article, the authors draw on literatures outside sexual offending and make suggestions for working more positively and constructively with these offenders. Although the management of risk is a necessary feature of treatment, it needs to occur in conjunction with a strength-based approach. An exclusive focus on risk can lead to overly confrontational therapeutic encounters, a lack of rapport between offenders and clinicians, and fragmented and mechanistic treatment delivery. The authors suggest that the goals of sexual offender treatment should be the attainment of good lives, which is achieved by enhancing hope, increasing self-esteem, developing approach goals, and working collaboratively with the offenders. Examples are provided of how these targets may be met. When this is done within a therapeutic context where the treatment providers display empathy and warmth and are rewarding and directive, the authors suggest that treatment effects will be maximized.     

Expert Evidence,Judicial Reasoning,and the Family Courts Information Pilot

The Family Courts Information Pilot took a modest step towards open justice in Children Act cases by publishing 161 judgments of the County Courts and Family Proceedings Courts. Combining socio‐legal and philosophical analysis on lines inspired by the work of Habermas, this article examines the epistemology of expert testimony implicit in the judgments. What emerges is a form of reasoning based on ‘inference to the best explanation’: judges seek to show that the best explanation for experts saying what they do is that they have good reasons for their opinions. While this approach is not blindly deferential, it has serious limitations in cases where the only experts are local authority social workers and the guardian, and an awareness of these limitations is one reason for the courts' willingness to allow other experts to be instructed. The article also criticizes the analysis of the courts’ use of experts by the recent Family Justice Review.     

Moral strangers or fellow travellers? Contemporary perspectives on offender rehabilitation

This article is a response to the two previous articles in this issue (Polaschek, 2012, and McNeill, 2012), which make up the hot topic debate on offender rehabilitation.