Apology in victim–offender mediation

Victim–offender mediation practices bring conflicting parties together so they can engage in a two-way dialogue and ultimately negotiate a mutually agreeable resolution. The fact that apology may be a motivator for participating in the mediation process and that it is often a common outcome of mediation suggests that research on mediation ought to more carefully explore the nature of the apologies that are offered. The present study provides a qualitative exploration of the prevalence and nature of the apologies offered by offenders to their victims during face-to-face mediations. Fifty-nine mediation agreements recorded by the longest running mediation scheme in the UK were analysed. It was found that 50.8% of agreements contained mention of the perpetrator saying ‘I’m sorry’ or offering a partial apology (i.e. acknowledging harm and/or promising forbearance). Full apologies were absent in the mediation agreements. Agreements did not make explicit mention of the offender admitting responsibility or expressing remorse or regret. Finally, although the mediation agreements did not make any explicit mention of offenders offering reparation, they did record efforts at providing solutions to the conflict.     

Can Lebanon Survive Future Earthquake Disasters by Relying on a Military Response Strategy?

Inefficient responses by civilian emergency organizations during crises have prompted Lebanese authorities to rely on the military for disaster response operations. Although understandable, this reliance might be insufficient to achieve desirable response efficiency. This article demonstrates that neither civilian emergency organizations nor military forces can unilaterally and efficiently handle the response to large-scale disasters, such as earthquakes, without a major restructuring of the current emergency response management. Therefore, this article describes the potential role of the integration of the military and Hezbollah in future response operations and proposes a model to improve the efficiency of future response operations.     

The Jewish population and family in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 18th century

The sources that can be employed to examine demographic aspects of the Jewish population and family in 18th-century Poland–Lithuania are sparse and mostly fiscal in origin. Since this source material has been preserved only for some periods and regions, few generalizations can be made. First, the authors have referred to the most comprehensive census that was carried out in 1791 by household in Cracow province (województwo krakowskie). It does not allow for detailed family reconstitution, however. Although extended/multiple family households might have been fairly common, the two-generational conjugal family unit seems to have prevailed, and no more than four nuclear families lived in one house. In addition, the age at first marriage was influenced only to a limited extent by the traditional practice of early marriage.     

Collapse at the WTO: a Cancun post‐mortem

This article offers an analysis of the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun in September 2003. It argues that the collapse of the talks should not be regarded as a victory for the developing world, as many have suggested. Rather, the collapse should be seen as the inevitable result of deep‐seated tensions within the wto 's institutional framework, both in terms of the processes that underlie its working and the substance of its agreements. The article argues that these imbalances, if not corrected, will heighten the alienation of developing countries and work to the detriment of the legitimacy and survival of the wto.     

Examining the relationship between sexual offenders and their victims: Interpersonal differences between stranger and non-stranger sexual offences

Abstract

The present study examined the behavioural differences in sexual assault offences in relation to the offender–victim relationship (stranger versus non-stranger). These differences were examined specifically in the context of four interpersonal themes of interaction: dominance, submission, hostility and cooperation. The details of 100 sexual offence cases (50 stranger and 50 non-stranger) were content-analysed, generating 58 dichotomous variables, covering offender and victim behaviour during the offence. χ² tests comparing the two samples found that offenders who were strangers to their victims were more likely than non-stranger offenders to display behaviours that indicate a hostile, violent offence style. In contrast, those offenders who knew their victims were more likely than strangers to display a less violent and more personal, compliance-gaining offence style. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for offender rehabilitation and victim support.     

Multiple imaginations of the state: understanding a mobile conflict about justice and accountability from the perspective of Assyrian–Syriac communities

This article examines how the struggle for the recognition of genocide in the twentieth century opens up a political space which, on the one hand, generates historical discourses and imaginaries about the categories of victim and perpetrator and, on the other hand, redefines relationships between the state and its minority citizens. Genocide becomes a ‘critical event’, in the sense of Veena Das, that citizens from different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds use to express their positions concerning the repressive state practices they have been victims of. This expression creates a collective space of solidarity where parties support each other by adopting similar strategies in the struggle for state accountability. At the same time, it opens up a space for negotiation among the state, minority citizens and migrant communities regarding claims to rights and justice.     

Intersemiotic Texture: analyzing cohesive devices between language and images

Recent research on multimodal discourse has explored the nature of semantic relations between different semiotic resources. Drawing on the interpretation of language as a social semiotic resource, this article proposes Intersemiotic Texture as the crucial property of coherent multimodal texts and presents a preliminary framework for cohesive devices between language and images. The framework is illustrated through examination of print media to demonstrate how the image–text relations are meta-functionally orchestrated across experiential, textual and logical meanings at the discourse stratum. A discourse-based model is suggested to analyze image–text logical relations complementary to existing grammar-based approaches. This research also develops a meta-language to describe Intersemiotic Cohesive Devices from two complementary perspectives: Intersemiotic Cohesion not only functions to integrate different modes together when multimodal discourse is conceptualized as a finished product, it also constitutes essential text-forming resources for semantic expansions across language and images during the ongoing contextualization of meanings in real time.