The highs and lows of working with sexual offenders: A New Zealand perspective

Abstract

The positive effects on clinicians responsible for the treatment of sexual offenders are little understood. The few available studies have focused upon the negative sequelae of this work. The current study of clinicians working therapeutically with sexual offenders at a community-based organization aimed for a more balanced picture of the effects of sex offender treatment provision. Using qualitative methods, both negative and positive aspects of this work emerged within three main themes: taking an optimistic perspective, working for community outcomes and supportive agency culture. Although the study revealed many challenges for therapists, these were found to be counterbalanced against rewards, affording a high degree of personal and professional fulfilment from working within this field.     

Evaluation of a Health Care Provider Training Program to Identify and Help Partner Violence Victims

This study tested four hypotheses about the impact of a 3-h domestic violence training program with 752 health care providers on attitudes and values related to screening and helping partner violence victims. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were that training would be related to: 1) increased self-efficacy to identify and help partner violence victims, 2) increased endorsement of the role of health care providers and settings for helping partner violence victims, and 3) increased comfort making appropriate community referrals to help partner violence victims. Hypothesis 4 was that training effects would be moderated by prior training and by prior experience with helping a victim. Following training, health care providers reported increased self-efficacy, increased comfort making appropriate community referrals, and increased valuation of health care providers and the health care system as having an important role in stopping domestic violence. Hypothesis 4 was also supported. Prior training and/or experience with an abuse victim predicted smaller changes in the dependent variables. These gains held at a 6-month follow-up. Implications for training curriculum design are discussed, in addition to institutional policy implications for determining the benefits versus costs of universal training, including staff who demonstrate prior training or experience with battered victims. Study limitations and future research directions, including the need to measure performance and policy compliance will also be outlined.     

Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part I

The Labour government that came to power in the United Kingdom in 1997 made much of its commitment to ‘joined‐up working’, by which it meant horizontal integration between policies and co‐ordination across services. The particular manner in which it pursued this commitment has led to growing pressure for the sharing of citizens’ personal information among public service agencies. Yet at the same time, Parliament was engaged in implementing the European Data Protection Directive with a new Data Protection Act and the Government was honouring its manifesto commitment to bring the European Convention on Human Rights – including its enshrined right to private life – into domestic law. Government has therefore been obliged to find ways of managing the potential tension between these commitments. There are two analytically distinct dimensions to the arrangements through which this is being attempted. First, the horizontal dimension consists in initiatives that apply across all policy fields, and includes the establishment of cross‐governmental guidelines for implementing data protection law as well as the development of national policy on sharing personal data between public services. In 2002, the government published a major policy paper on data sharing and privacy. By late 2003, its approach to the need for legislation had changed sharply. The second analytically distinct dimension, the vertical dimension, consists in the laws, codes and norms developed in specific policy fields to govern relationships between data sharing and privacy within those fields. This two‐part article discusses these arrangements. Part I analyses the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Part II (published in the next issue) examines the vertical dimension in three fields in which tensions between data sharing and privacy have come to the fore: community safety, social security and NHS health care. Four options for the governance of data sharing and privacy are analytically distinguished: (1) seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; (2) mitigating the tensions with detailed guidelines for implementation; (3) allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy; and (4) allowing privacy to take precedence over data sharing. The article argues that, despite its strong assertion of (1), the government has, in practice, increasingly sought to pursue option (2) and that, in consequence, the vertical dimension has become much more important in shaping the relationship than the horizontal dimension. The articles argue, however, that option (2) is a potentially unstable strategy as well as being unsustainable.     

The Market as a Matter of Money: Denaturalizing Economic Currency in American Constitutional History

Histories of the early American political economy present that world in fractured form, dividing political and constitutional dimensions from economic aspects. The fragmented approach reflects an old, oft-denigrated, but still powerful imagery, one that naturalizes economic activity as a set of myriad spontaneous and individuated exchanges, conducted with a conventional medium, money, and predictably composing a market sphere. The motif and its underlying assumptions in turn dissuade exploration of money and markets as territories of public decision, insulating by neglect the structural power of determinations made there. This essay traces the naturalization motif through a historiography of macroeconomic models of money. It then considers how money, recognized as a dynamics of value, would look if the law structuring it were approached as a complex set of relations that expressed, reiterated, and revised the distribution of authority in society. The early American political economy appears in a different light: money becomes a matter of value and governance at once, and therefore a crucial area of constitutional debate. Through that medium, the political economy of early America is transformed not once but repeatedly, from a mercantilist to a domestic paper to a liberal capitalist form.     

Gender Differences in Anxiety Trajectories from Middle to Late Adolescence

Although developmental trajectories of anxiety symptomatology have begun to be explored, most research has focused on total anxiety symptom scores during childhood and early adolescence, using racially/ethnically homogenous samples. Understanding the heterogeneous courses of anxiety disorder symptoms during middle to late adolescence has the potential to clarify developmental risk models of anxiety and to inform prevention programs. Therefore, this study specifically examined gender differences in developmental trajectories of anxiety disorder symptoms (generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder) from middle to late adolescence in a diverse community sample (N?=?1000; 57?% female; 65?% White), assessed annually over 2 years. Latent growth curve modeling revealed that girls exhibited a slight linear decrease in generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder symptoms, whereas boys exhibited a stable course. These models suggested that one trajectory was appropriate for panic disorder symptoms in both girls and boys. Growth mixture models indicated the presence of four latent generalized anxiety disorder symptom trajectory classes: low increasing, moderate decreasing slightly, high decreasing, and very high decreasing rapidly. Growth mixture models also suggested the presence of five latent social anxiety disorder symptom trajectory classes: a low stable trajectory class and four classes that were qualitatively similar to the latent generalized anxiety disorder trajectories. For both generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder symptoms, girls were significantly more likely than boys to be in trajectory classes characterized by moderate or high initial symptoms that subsequently decreased over time. These findings provide novel information regarding the developmental course of anxiety disorder symptoms in adolescents.     

Introduction: Social Media,Political Marketing and the 2016 U.S. Election

This essay introduces the contributions of the volume “Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 U. S. Election.” Using a variety of methodological approaches, the authors investigate the communication strategies of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president together with the responses of their audience. Collectively, this research offers insights into how new communication technologies are changing both political marketing and the ways candidates and voters interact.     

Questions of gender in a multicultural society

The relationship between multiculturalism and feminism has been hotly debated both theoretically and politically. This article approaches the issue through a critical assessment of Susan Moller Okins article, "Is multiculturalism bad for women?" (1999) and argues that some forms of feminist critique of multiculturalism run the risk of upholding and strengthening monoculturalism in its most excluding form. Norwegian integration politics are critically evaluated in light of this discussion.     

The Influence of Romantic Attachment and Intimate Partner Violence on Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in Young Adults

Several theoretical models for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) have been proposed. Despite an abundance of theoretical speculation, few empirical studies have examined the impact of intimate relationship functioning on NSSI. The present study examines the influence of romantic attachment and received intimate partner violence (physical, psychological and sexual) on recent reports of NSSI behaviors and thoughts. The sample was composed of 537 (79.9% female) primarily Caucasian university students between the ages of 18 and 25 years and currently involved in a romantic relationship. The results reveal that anxiety over abandonment was a significant predictor of NSSI thoughts and behaviors in women and a significant predictor of NSSI thoughts in men. Moreover, the experience of intimate partner violence emerged as a significant predictor of NSSI behaviors in both men and women. Continued empirical investigations into the influence of intimate relationship functioning on NSSI will facilitate the development of psychological interventions for young adults dealing with self-harm.