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.     

侦查辨认失真：错案形成的心理学因素分析

侦查辨认是常用的侦查措施之一,侦查辨认的可信度和有效度可以直接影响办案的结果,错误的侦查辨认结论可以导致错案的发生。本文通过重点探讨辨认人对案发生过程中客观刺激物各元素的原感知以及对辨认对象各元素的感知比较的误差,分析导致侦查辨认失真的心理学因素,最后提出防止侦查辨认失真的有效策略。     

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.     

公职人员经济犯罪影响因素分析——基于受贿视角的实证研究

利用行为学理论分析公职人员经济犯罪行为的产生机理,得出影响公职人员经济犯罪的因素有宏观、中观和微观三个层次。在对三个层次的影响因素进行理论分析和总结的基础上,以受贿犯罪类型为视角,选取实地调研的373个公职人员经济犯罪案例,对其中6个可观测变量进行逻辑回归分析。结论表明:影响不法公职人员受贿的因素有成长环境、受教育程度、年龄、级别以及公职人员类型,这些因素都与不法公职人员采取受贿犯罪类型呈正相关关系,影响力由大到小依次为:级别、受教育程度、成长环境、年龄和公职人员类型。     

风险社会背景下侵权法的哲学使命

随着风险社会的冲击,侵权法迎来了前所未有的挑战。面对赖以存在的社会事实和社会哲学的剧烈变动,适时改变它的哲学指导根基成为当代侵权法的重要使命。在风险社会的背景下,侵权法应当更多、更深刻的发掘人性内涵,既要清醒地知晓人性之"恶",也要悉心鼓励人性之"善",最终通过侵权法对人格之塑造引导人类走向"善"的生活。自由主义关照下的个人正义已经不能独当侵权责任之大任,社会正义也走进了人们的视野,二者相互影响、水乳交融形成的二重正义观才是当代侵权法的价值追求。