Decisions to offend in men who sexually abuse their daughters

Abstract

A group of nine intrafamilial child molesters of daughters and stepdaughters from Canada and the United Kingdom were interviewed about their analysis of opportunities to sexually offend. Questions focused on the evaluation of immediate and life circumstances surrounding the offence, including how the offender defined, created and responded to opportunities for offending. An equally important goal was identifying strengths in resisting opportunities and coping with spoiled attempts. The interviews were transcribed and subjected to grounded theory analysis. Consistent with the rational choice theory of criminal behaviour the majority of offenders identified information and decision-making processes used to evaluate opportunities for offending. Themes related to offender and victim characteristics, as well as situational factors, are identified and discussed with respect to risk and protective factors. Offenders described positive relationships, greater social/community connectedness and successful employment as present in their lives when not offending. These elements are consistent with positive approaches to sexual offender treatment and management.     

Risk assessment with intimate partner sex offenders

Abstract

Risk assessment with any offender presents a number of challenges. However, risk assessment with offenders who have committed offences against their partners presents practitioners with a number of additional challenges. Intimate Partner (IP) sex offenders are reported to be responsible for the majority of adult serious sexual offences in England and Wales. However, despite calls for a unified approach to sex offender theory there has been little integration between this and the IP and family sexual violence literature. This paper summarizes the relevant literature on prevalence and cross over of sexual abuse by IP offenders, patterns of abuse, generality of offending, psychopathology and risk concerns (including risk of intimate partner homicide). Based on this, recommendations are made for best practice with IP sex offenders.     

Child Sex Offender Public Disclosure Scheme: The views of applicants using the English pilot disclosure scheme

Abstract

A limited Child Sexual Offender Disclosure Scheme was launched in England and Wales in 2009–10. Drawing upon data from an evaluation of the pilot scheme, this paper explores the views of applicants seeking a disclosure. In particular, the paper considers issues around the low take-up, perceptions of satisfaction and more broadly the role of the scheme in providing reassurance to the public about child sexual offenders in the community. Interestingly, while perceptions of satisfaction with the scheme were high, anxieties about child sexual offenders were not necessarily alleviated by the scheme, and in many instances were heightened.     

Working with sex offenders: Best practice in enhancing practitioner resilience

Abstract

The systematic and widespread treatment of sex offenders is a comparatively recent innovation in the human services field. Consequently, research considering the impact of such work on providers and organisations is still in its infancy. The first swathe of international research, published throughout the 1990s, identified a range of deleterious effects for treatment providers, ranging from mild anxiety to severe psychological morbidity. More recent findings indicate a considerably more optimistic psychological future. This paper seeks to provide the reader with an overview of the relevant literature, together with its shortcomings, and introduce the Model of Dynamic Adaptation (MDA), a framework through which variables associated with both positive and negative outcomes may be grouped and managed. It is proposed that understanding and managing the MDA can support both individuals and organisations in achieving their goals in good psychological health, through the development and implementation of informed, evidence-based, best practice strategies.     

Violent Life Events and Social Disadvantage: A Systematic Study of the Social Background of Various Kinds of Lethal Violence,Other Violent Crime,Suicide, and Suicide Attempts1

ABSTRACT

Open sanctions and changes in conceptions of rehabilitation are changing qualification requirements in the field of prison and probation services. In particular, the significance of social interaction between employees and offenders has emphasized. This study examines this issue from the viewpoints of social constructionism and discourse analysis. Research material was collected by interviewing 11 Finnish Criminal Sanction Agency employees who prepared and enforced supervised probationary freedom. According to the results, social interaction was structured from different points of view and linked to differently constructed identities in the interviewees’ speech. Professional interaction and a confidential employee–offender relationship were viewed as a means to create occupational safety and prevent security risks, and also to support offender’s rehabilitation. In addition, employees used a discourse of daily interaction and support which emphasized the significance of everyday encounters with the offender. Employees were able to overcome the tension between support and control by flexibly combining the discourse of supervision with the discourse of daily interaction and support, which enabled them to support the offender without being a rehabilitation professional. The study reveals the central role of social interaction, which creates challenges for education, and the development of an organizational culture in prison and probation services.     

Introduction

Abstract

Dating violence is prevalent among Hispanic adolescents, yet few incidents are reported to the police. This research explored the severity of adolescent definitions as one potential reason for its under-reporting. It was expected that some adolescents might define only the most severe violence as “dating violence” and as a consequence these incidents are under-reported. Hispanic adolescent definitions of dating violence were examined along with factorsgeneral acceptance of dating violence, peer support of dating violence, acculturation, victimization experience, and sex-that might be related to the construction of these definitions. Acculturation, victimization experience, and sex were found to significantly contribute to the severity of adolescent definitions.     

The politics of ‘wrongful life’ itself: discursive (mal)practices and Tay-Sachs disease

Abstract

This article examines eight wrongful life/wrongful birth suits filed by parents of children born with Tay-Sachs disease. Their legal claims are analysed in terms of the biopolitics of genetic risk that has emerged in recent decades with a view to arguing that, as health and disease are increasingly understood within a genetics framework, the individual is becoming responsibilized to be proactive and undergo genetic testing. At the same time, this responsibilization is being defined as a kind of entitlement rooted in historically specific ideas about personhood and quality of life. The only option for reconciling this contradiction has been simply to define responsibilization as the individual's right, thereby calling into question the notion of agency in genetic decision-making and revealing that choice in this context is in fact becoming the unfreedom to choose.     

The structures of uncertainty: performativity and unpredictability in economic operations

Abstract

The paper reflects on the presuppositions and consequences of the concept of performativity (understood as the involvement of the observer in the objects and projects he/she describes). The paper proposes a broader notion of performativity, one that not only concerns theory but is also extended to the entire economy, which observes itself in all of its operations. This conception has the advantage of being connected with critical approaches inside economics, which highlight the central role of uncertainty and surprise. It can explain how and why performativity turns into counter-performativity and how financial operators exploit uncertainty when orienting their behaviour, expecting and using the unpredictability of the future.     

If at first you don't succeed

Political and social stability in advanced capitalist societies is threatened both by the impossibility of achieving full employment owing to automation and the transformation of family life and gender relationships. This article explores explanations of these shifts in Jeremy Rifkin's and Ray Pahl's work. It explores alternative models of employment in which formal work is shared and third-sector work is expanded, underwritten by a cultural shift in which work, success and consumption are traded for free time, balance and self-development.     

Risk illusion and organized irresponsibility in contemporary finance: rethinking class and risk society

Abstract

This paper analyzes the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to show how processes associated with risk society – the social production and distribution of systemic financial risk in a context of organized irresponsibility – are contributing to the intensification of contemporary class-based inequalities. Utilizing a framework based in Bourdieusian class resources, the analysis moves beyond Beck's rejection of the relevance of class relations to systemic risk, and his critics’ denial that risk transforms existing logics of distribution, to identify key shifts in the relation between contemporary financial risk, power and inequality. The conclusions of this study, showing how systemic financial risk in contexts of organized irresponsibility contributes to differential ‘risk-classes’, suggest that risk is a key source of contemporary inequality and that reconstructing the theory of risk society can illuminate these changes.