Restoring ordinariness for women offenders: why every wing matters

Abstract

Psychologically informed planned environments (PIPEs) are specifically designed environments where staff members have additional training to increase their psychological understanding of their work. This understanding enables them to create a safe and supportive environment which can help facilitate the development and improvement of those who live there. They aim to maximise ordinary situations in order to support development and to approach this in a psychologically informed way, and by paying particular attention to issues relating to personality disorder. Since PIPEs have been introduced into the Criminal Justice System in 2011, significant improvements in institutional behaviour have been observed. This paper considers the development of the therapeutic environment of a PIPE Unit and in particular its translation for women in custody. Reflecting upon narratives taken from focus groups within a female PIPE Unit in England, it will theorise why, for many women, the environment plays a significant part in their recovery and progression in prison. Although this paper focuses on a PIPE environment, it is suggested that observations can also be transferred to other forensic environments, including therapeutic communities, enabling environments, treatment services, hospital wards, normal wing locations and so forth.     

The Impact of Children on Intimate Partner Abuse Victims’ Service-Seeking

Intimate partner abuse is a major problem. This is especially true when there are children present. In attempt to stop the cycle of abuse, it is of critical importance to understand the impact children have on the relationships and the decision-making process of those involved. This research is part of a larger project examining the help-seeking behaviors of victims of intimate partner abuse. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 26 victims of intimate partner abuse who eventually sought services. This paper reports on how children affect the decision of their parent to either seek services while in an abusive situation or to postpone seeking services. This study focuses on 19 of those respondents with children. Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses were conducted. This paper utilizes part of the qualitative data relating to the import of children in the decision-making process. Analysis reveals that for all respondents, children were important to their decision-making process. Several themes related to children were identified, including those who identified leaving the situation and seeking services because of their children and those who postponed seeking services because of their children. Implications for prevention and intervention in cases of intimate partner abuse will be discussed.     

Differential Parental Treatment,Sibling Relationships and Delinquency in Adolescence

The present study examined the moderating effect of the quality of the sibling relationship on the longitudinal association of parental treatment with theft, vandalism, and violence in adolescence. Participants were 416 sibling pairs which were studied over a one-year period. The younger siblings were aged 13 to 15, the older siblings 14 to 17 at Time 1. No significant effects were found for mixed-sex dyads. For same-sex dyads, the results suggested that when the relationship was of poor quality, younger boys who felt treated less favorably by their mothers were most likely to show high levels of vandalism and violence, while younger girls who felt treated less favorably were most likely to show high levels of theft. No such effects were found for older siblings. These findings indicate that differential parental treatment and the quality of the sibling relationship have gender-specific effects on adolescents’ delinquency and have a different meaning for younger than for older siblings.

From the Asian Boyz to the Zhu Lian Bang (the Bamboo Union Gang): A Typological Analysis of Delinquent Asian Gangs

Developing a typology for delinquent and criminal gangs has a long history in criminology and criminal justice. Although many typologies have been proposed in the past eight decades, the great majority of these classifications are based on the consideration of one single factor. This approach obviously oversimplifies the nature of gangs and may give gang researchers an impression that gangs of a certain category differ totally from those of another category. The author of this paper argues that differences between gangs are relative, not absolute. To demonstrate this point, a nomenclature on Asian gangs based on the different combinations of the three factors of political belief, organizational layout, and political connection is suggested. According to this nomenclature, Asian gangs can be conceptually categorized as STP, SEP, STN, SEN, ITP, IEP, ITN, and IEN types.

Identity and its verification

The European Commission's eJustice Strategy seems to contemplate that all lawyers will be issued with an ‘identity card’ card, perhaps intended to include a key for making digital signatures. The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) is proposing to introduce such a card. The purpose of this article is to clarify what ‘identity’ is and what is involved in verifying it, and to offer some general observations about identity cards. Although written with the eJustice proposals in mind, nevertheless the purpose of this article is to address the topic in its widest sense, which means it affects identity and its verification, whatever the circumstances.     

ANALYSIS OF MEDIATION AGREEMENTS OF FAMILIES REPORTING SPECIFIC TYPES OF INTIMATE PARTNER ABUSE

The purpose of this study was to carefully measure Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA) behaviors among a large ( n  = 864 couples) sample of pairs of husbands and wives who were mandated to attend divorce mediation and then to: categorize the behaviors into theoretically-driven types of IPA, determine the number of cases screened out of mediation for any reason, and investigate whether measured outcomes of mediation (primary physical and legal custody) were related to IPA. Results indicated that rarely was IPA not reported—the most frequently reported IPA behavior was psychological abuse (98% of wives; 97% of husbands), followed by physical abuse (58% of wives; 54% of husbands), escalated physical abuse (62% of wives; 50% of husbands), and sexual intimidation, coercion and rape (56% of wives; 29% of husbands). Rarely were couples reporting IPA screened out of mediation (5%), and rarely were supervised parenting time or restrictions on contact between parents included in mediated agreements made by couples reporting IPA (6.5%). The overall level of IPA was unrelated to the specific terms of mediated agreements; however, by far the most frequent type of mediated agreement the couples' negotiated in mediation was for primary physical custody to go to the wife and for the husband and wife to have joint legal custody (59% of cases). Analysis of the implications of these findings and policy recommendations are included.     

当代中国婚姻家庭的变化与家庭法的完善

随着我国现代化发展,传统的家庭结构与家庭关系已经发生了许多变化。现行婚姻家庭法律却仍然建立在以合法婚姻为中心的传统道德价值观基础之上,未能适应时代的发展,如：回避规范同居家庭、对单亲家庭和隔代家庭关系缺乏应有调整、收养条件苛刻等等。因此,我国家庭立法应当进行大幅度的修改,以道德观为中心的家庭立法应当转向为以调整家庭成员关系为中心的家庭法,以适应现实社会。     

Sexual victimization against transgender women in prison: Consent and coercion in context

In this article, we conjoin two long‐standing lines of inquiry in criminology—the study of prison life and the study of sexual assault—by using original qualitative and quantitative data from 315 transgender women incarcerated in 27 California men's prisons. In so doing, we advance an analysis of the factors and processes that shape their experience of sexual victimization in prison. The results of qualitative analysis of 198 reported incidents of sexual victimization exhibit a range of types of sexual victimization experienced by transgender women in prison and reveal the centrality of relationships to their experiences of victimization. Findings from logistic regression models buttress the qualitative results, highlighting a factor that consistently and powerfully indicates vulnerability to sexual victimization is involvement in consensual sexual relationships with male prisoners. Together, the data demonstrate the prominence of intimate partner violence in prison, complicate the distinction between consent and unwanted sexual experiences in the lives of transgender women in prisons for men, and shine a light on the workings of gender in a total institution that privileges heteronormativity at the expense of the safety of transgender women in prisons for men. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of timely policy concerns.     

‘Ménages irréguliers’: interracial liaisons in colonial Indochina, 1905–1938

This article explores the history of relationships between Vietnamese women and French men in colonial Indochina as well as the multiplicity of perspectives on these unions. Relationships between Vietnamese women and French men were shaped by a lack of social integration and the skewed sex ratio among the French populations in the region. For French colonizers, these unions complicated the legal and social criteria for ‘being French’ in the colony and were perceived as both a practical necessity and a political threat. Vietnamese discourse on interracial unions demonstrated a preoccupation with changing sexual norms as well as preservation of cultural traditions. By engaging with both Vietnamese and French sources, the article moves away from mainstream colonial Eurocentric parlance that typically cast Vietnamese women as dominated and powerless, and instead highlights the women’s various degrees of agency as well as different motivations and practices in interracial unions.