What do prisoners want? Current concerns of adult male prisoners

Abstract

Recently, positive approaches to offender rehabilitation, focusing upon offenders’ strengths, have gained prominence. Proponents have criticized existing rehabilitation models as focusing too much on offenders’ deficits. Goal perspectives, which provide a structure for therapy, may unite these two approaches. The Personal Concerns Inventory: Offender Adaptation (PCI:OA) is a semi-structured interview that identifies offenders’ current concerns or goals. The goals identified by a sample of 129 convicted adult male prisoners are reported here. A range of positive, anti-criminal goals were expressed, including stopping offending, improving self-control, finding and keeping jobs, having stable accommodation, quitting drink and drugs, changing support networks, and finding new leisure pursuits. Furthermore, prisoners expressed life-enhancing goals, such as improving their lifestyle, gaining work experience, having good family relationships, gaining skills, and getting fit and healthy. The PCI:OA may prove useful as a motivational procedure, a basis for developing positive, goal-focused interventions, and a tool for outcome evaluation.     

Framing and perceptions of stalking: the influence of conduct severity and the perpetrator–target relationship

Research has demonstrated that the way in which questions are presented (i.e. framed) has the capacity to influence responses to subsequent questions. In the context of stalking, perception research has often been framed in terms of whether or not particular behaviours constitute stalking. The current research investigates whether the framing of the opening question (question frame), conduct severity and the perpetrator–target relationship influence perceptions of stalking. Two studies employed experimental 3×3 independent factorial designs: one to examine question frame and conduct severity, the other to examine question frame and the perpetrator–target relationship. Participants in both studies (total N=449) were presented with vignettes and asked to answer six questions relating to the behaviour described. Question frame was found to impact on the classification of behaviour, with a greater proportion of participants indicating that the behaviour represented harassment or stalking rather than an illegal act. Consistent with previous research, conduct severity and the perpetrator–target relationship influenced perceptions of stalking. However, there was no evidence to suggest that the framing of the opening question influenced these perceptions. The implications of these findings for previous perception research are discussed.     

Differing patterns of marriage between a city and villages in 18th century Korea: The case of Taegu Area

While the urban area was increasingly filled with middle- and low-status residents, the rural area was dominated by high-status settlers whose number increased because of migration from the city and natural growth. Remarkable differences existed between urban and rural marriage features such as marriage age and rate of remarriage. The more sincere adoption of the high-status marriage culture in the rural area may be attributed to its occupational homogeneity. In the rural agrarian settings, landlords, self-cultivators and tenants shared a similar living pattern and value system based on the agricultural cycle. The urban area, however, exhibited a variety of work patterns of local functionaries, artisans and merchants. Many middle- and low-status people might well have found the high-status culture of the rural area incompatible with their own.     

Ideological Congruence among European Political Parties

Do European political parties represent the ideology of their voters well? This research aims to provide an empirical appreciation of the levels to which Members of Parliament (MPs) ideologically represent their electorate within political parties in 12 European countries. The variable used is left–right self-placement and representation is measured through congruence. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, MPs express greater ideological extremism than voters. Second, MPs have biased perceptions on the positioning of their electorate. Third, New Left parties exhibit higher levels of representation than the other parties. This article's findings reveal that only the second hypothesis can be supported without restrictions.     

China and Europe: engagement,multipolarity and strategy

Abstract

Ever closer relations between China and Europe over the last decade have sparked speculation about an emerging axis or balance of power vis-à-vis the United States. China, the European Union and its key member states have expressed a preference for a more balanced international order based on multilateral institutions. Despite a rapid and extensive expansion in economic and political relations between China and the European Union, there is no evidence for balancing against the United States in strategic areas. Rather, the variations in the positions of China, the European Union and the United States can more accurately be seen as policy or interest bargaining. Because the European Union does not share US security interests in the Asia-Pacific region, the European Union and its key member states can seem at variance with the US position on China. Bargaining over the failed attempt to lift the European Union's arms embargo against China shows that the European Union and the United States are not so far apart on strategic issues in the Asia-Pacific.     

Constructing patient–psychiatrist relations in psychiatric hospitals: the role of space and personal action

This essay investigates the role of space and personal action in the construction of patient–psychiatrist relations at psychiatric hospitals. In order to explore such a theme, the writings of R.D. Laing prove to be salutary. This is namely accredited to Laing's tenet that the staff and patients of a psychiatric hospital are institutionalised by both physical structures and personal action. A central approach taken in this essay is to explore Laing's theory through an inter-textual reading of Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1967) and Erving Goffman's Asylums (1961).     

Diamond signs: generic stones and particular gems

Analysis of narratives from ethnographic research with diamond consumers representing the target market (largely middle-class white women between 20 and 50 years of age) reveals how symbolic associations promoted by industry are refracted through interpretations of both adverts and diamonds in general, but shows that local contingencies (basic attitudes and knowledge about diamonds and their production, circumstances of acquisition, and personal histories) are significant in determining meanings of people's own specific diamonds. Far from being batch absorbers of advert discourse, consumers are idiosyncratic, creative, and sometimes playful interpreters, and furthermore may distinguish between these strategies and those suggested by adverts or as performed by others. These findings are in part explicable on introducing for diamond consumption an important distinction between type and token, whereby a token is a specific instantiation of a generic type. This approach contributes to developing methods supple enough to capture consumers’ multi-dimensional interpretive strategies.     

Rethinking the New ENP: A Vision for an Enhanced European Role in the Arab Revolutions

This article assesses European responses to the Arab uprisings and, in particular, the introduced change in the European Union policy toward its southern neighborhood. The presented analyses provide a profound scrutiny and assessment of the new version of the European Neighbourhood Policy, empirical evidence of persisting security considerations post-2011 in Euro–Arab relations, and a more elaborated vision of future Euro–Arab relations, attempting to balance between three considerations: security, democracy, and governance.     

Civil Society after Democracy: The Evolution of Civic Activism in South Africa and Korea

The phase of democratic consolidation can significantly impact the motives, dynamics and objectives of civil society. Its internal roles, dynamics and power balances are significantly altered by the advent of democracy, due to shifting resources, political opportunities and a general reframing of goals and objectives. By adopting a definition of civil society as an ‘arena’ (which highlights the continuously evolving composition and leadership of civil society) and borrowing a number of theoretical dimensions from social movement theory (which underline the importance of resource mobilization, political opportunities and conceptual framing processes), the article shows that the advent of democracy has posed a number of challenges to civil society organizations in Korea and South Africa. Moreover, the consolidation of democracy has inevitably changed the nature of government–civil society relations. While in South Africa institutional politics reasserted itself in the first years of democracy, thereby sidelining organizations and movements concerned with public accountability and good governance (which have only recently resurfaced through the action of new social movements), in Korea corruption and lack of transparency immediately marred the dawn of democracy, providing civic movements with a fertile terrain to galvanize civic mobilizations vis-à-vis the lack of responsiveness of the political class.     

Assessing the reset: successes and failures in the Obama administration's Russia policy, 2009–2012

Critics of the Obama administration's ‘reset’ with Russia claim that it has failed to improve bilateral relations and has conceded too much to Russia at the expense of American interests. In fact, the reset has delivered significant improvements in key areas and established the institutional basis for continued cooperation in the future, benefiting both states. Although disagreements remain on several important issues including missile defence, humanitarian intervention, and democracy, the reset has been broadly successful on its own terms, which were always limited in scope and based on a pragmatic recognition of the limits of possible cooperation. Future progress is uncertain, however – obstacles include differences of national interest; the complicating effects of relations with third party states and the impact of domestic politics. A continuation of the pragmatic approach underpinning the reset represents the best chance for stability in the US–Russia relationship.