将过程思想引进立法研究的思考

立法过程是立法研究的一个重要方面。过程思想提供了一种新的方法论视角,使我们动态地、联系地观察立法过程,全面、完整地把握其规律性。有关过程和立法过程的思想观点有助于我们加深认识立法过程的内涵、特点和复杂性,并可以在立法实践中具体应用。     

Cascading Bias of Initial Exposure to Information at the Crime Scene to the Subsequent Evaluation of Skeletal Remains,

Thirty‐eight participants took part in a study that investigated the potential cascading effects of initial exposure to extraneous context upon subsequent decision‐making. Participants investigated a mock crime scene, which included the excavation of clandestine burials that had a male skeletal cast dressed either in female or gender neutral clothing. This was followed by a forensic anthropological assessment of the skeletal remains, with a control group assessing the same male skeletal cast without any clothing context. The results indicated that the sex assessment was highly dependent upon the context in which participants were exposed to prior to the analysis. This was especially noticeable in the female clothing context where only one participant determined the male skeletal cast to be male. The results demonstrate the importance of understanding the role of context in forensic anthropology at an early stage of an investigation and its potential cascading effect on subsequent assessments.     

Building from the ground up: exploring forensic mental health staff’s relationships with patients

Recovery-orientated care is becoming generally accepted as the best practice, and continued development in the ways it is practiced is necessary to ensure improvement of ongoing care. Forensic patients often experience double stigmatization (the dual stigma of mental illness and offending behaviour) and during admission to hospital may lose touch with their community supports. While working through their personal recovery, patients develop therapeutic relationships with their multidisciplinary team members. When positive, these relationships can enhance a patient’s recovery. Clinical staff members participated in 88 in-depth interviews, which were transcribed, reviewed, and analysed using thematic analysis. From analysing the data, main themes and subthemes emerged related to staff’s perceptions of therapeutic relationships. When developing relationships, staff need to overcome receptiveness issues by increasing trust through understanding their preconceptions, reducing stigma, sharing innocuous stories, and giving patients the time they need. The key pillar underpinning all traits ascribed to patients and staff is collaboration and approaching treatment protocols with a social approach is essential to enhancing recovery. Staff shared a holistic view of recovery that incorporated the benefits of positive relationships and the need to create a sense of home within the institution.     

Unsupervised Routine Activities as a Mediator of the Parental Knowledge–Delinquency Relationship

The principal aim of this study was to examine the relationship between parents (parental knowledge) and peers (unsupervised routine activities) in predicting delinquency. Enlisting all 1,170 male members of the Pathways to Desistance study and a causal mediation model, baseline and Wave 1 measures of parental knowledge and unsupervised routine activities were cross-lagged and then regressed onto Wave 2 delinquency. Consistent with the view that parenting precedes peer influence when it comes to predicting delinquency, the target pathway (baseline parental knowledge → Wave 1 unsupervised routine activities → Wave 2 delinquency) achieved significance and the comparison pathway (baseline unsupervised routine activities → Wave 1 parental knowledge → Wave 2 delinquency) did not. These results suggest that weak parental knowledge may increase delinquency by failing to divert the child from involvement in unsupervised routine activities with peers.     

Voluntary policing in Sweden: media reports of contemporary forms of police–citizen partnerships

Many Western-style democracies have witnessed a general shift in the distribution of crime prevention responsibility, away from the state and increasingly to citizens themselves. Civil society is today more and more often called upon as an additional policing resource. This article explores the phenomenon of voluntary citizen participation in policing in Sweden, based on an analysis of 9280 news-media articles. One state-sanctioned (the Volunteers of the Police) and one autonomous civic (Missing People Sweden) initiative were examined, from their respective start until 2017, to understand the role played by police–citizen partnerships in the establishment and legitimation of voluntary policing forms in Sweden. A high degree of integration between police and volunteer work was found, enabling not only effective citizen participation, but also having an influence on police operations. The more effective and publicly visible the voluntary policing bodies were, the more pressure there was on the police to defend its legitimacy, ally itself with the volunteers and regulate the latter’s activities while holding them responsible for their actions. Arguably, however, with the police–citizen relationship being one of integration and mutual dependence, the division of labour and the accountability of both parties risk becoming blurred or even confused.     

Evaluating Brazilian South–South Cooperation in Haiti

I focus on evaluating Brazilian development and humanitarian cooperation in Haiti to answer how emerging providers such as Brazil are contributing to global development through cooperation. The paper establishes criteria for evaluation, arguing that global standards for aid effectiveness need to be expanded. I argue that when assessed on ownership, efficiency and sustainability, cooperation holds several advantages and limits, such as misplaced assumptions that Brazil’s approach is appropriate elsewhere. The discussion is rooted in the context of Haiti in order to underline how outcomes are not pre-determined, but rather depend on the model’s interaction with the partner context.     

Changing perspectives in cognitive interviewing

A study is presented which investigated aspects of a specialist method for taking evidence from witnesses known as ‘Cognitive Interviewing’. Specifically, the study sought to evaluate four techniques used in this form of interviewing, namely the Report All, Reinstate Context, Change Order, and the Change Perspectives mnemonics. The findings suggest that while none of these mnemonics significantly increased inaccuracy, all but the Change Perspectives mnemonic facilitated recall of accurate information. The findings are discussed in terms of the applied functional utility of each of the mnemonics and the Cognitive Interview procedure in general.     

Recall of unpleasant emotion using memory-enhancing principles

Abstract

Two experiments are presented to examine the issue of memory for past emotions. Participants rated their emotional reactions on the occasion of watching a film, and in a subsequent session, they were asked to recall and rate the emotion as experienced when viewing it. In the first experiment, participants underestimated unpleasant emotion at recall, but their recall was improved with the presentation of a visual cue pertaining to the emotion-inducing film event. In the second experiment, participants were assisted in probing perceptual aspects of the event by means of memory-enhancing instructions underlying the Cognitive Interview. These participants consistently recalled emotional intensity, as compared to participants in the unassisted recall condition who underestimated prior emotion. This research suggests that ratings of prior emotion are easily influenced by features of the retrieval context, and that consistent recall may be achieved by memory-enhancing principles of the Cognitive Interview.     

The role of cognitive distortions in paedophilic offending: Internet and contact offenders compared

Abstract

Cognitive distortions are held to contribute to sexual offending against children in a number of theoretical explanations of such crimes. However, not only is there little or no direct evidence in support of the centrality of cognitive distortions in offending but recent research has questioned whether the concept has explanatory power. Cognitive distortions are variously seen as necessary for the offender to offend against children, as post-offending justifications for the offence, or as reflecting distorted patterns in the offender's upbringing. This paper explores the role of cognitive distortions in sex offending by comparing the distortions of contact sex offenders against children with Internet child pornography offenders without contact offences against children. A new cognitive distortions questionnaire was developed which was suitable for administration to Internet offenders who had no contact offences against children as well as being suitable for contact offenders. It was found that some cognitive distortions are frequently agreed with by sex offenders against children whereas others were seldom or never agreed with. Little support was found for earlier typological approaches to the cognitive schema of sex offenders against children. Contrary to the expectation that contact offenders would have more cognitive distortions, it was found that Internet offenders had more cognitive distortions that children are sexual beings. Furthermore, there were no differences in cognitive distortions justifying the offence. However, offenders with a previous history of offending were more likely to admit to cognitive distortions which justify their offending. It is accepted that cognitive distortions are readily recognized in interviews with sex offenders against children. Nevertheless, it is argued that there is a need for new research to stimulate a new understanding of the nature and role of cognitive distortions in sex offending.     

Moral judgement,cognitive distortions and empathy in incarcerated delinquent and community control adolescents

Abstract

Immature moral judgements, cognitive distortions and low empathy could contribute to criminal offending and are often targeted in interventions aimed at reducing risk of recidivism. We compared 58 delinquent 13–18-year-olds, incarcerated in youth homes in Sweden (29 males, 29 females) with 58 (29 males, 29 females) community control adolescents individually matched on age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic position. Self-report questionnaires examined moral judgement, cognitive distortions, and empathy. Delinquent adolescents exhibited less mature moral judgements and more cognitive distortions than control adolescents. However, no association between delinquency status and self-reported empathy was found. In addition, girls reported more mature moral judgements, less cognitive distortions and more empathy than boys did. Moral judgement and empathy were positively correlated and both measures were negatively correlated with cognitive distortions. Our data support the idea that moral judgement and cognitive distortions are important treatment targets for juvenile delinquents, whereas empathy may be less meaningful to address directly.