Blaming the Victim: Perceptions About Incarcerated Sexual Assault Victim Culpability Among a Sample of Jail Correctional Officers

Research examining correctional officer perceptions about the sexual victimization of inmates is rare. This research offers a first glimpse of what personal, job-related, and attitudinal factors influence blaming incarcerated sexual assault victims among a sample of 376 jail correctional officers in one state. Surveys are utilized to elicit understanding about officer perceptions of incarcerated victims. Findings indicate that jail correctional officer blaming of incarcerated sexual assault victims is highly correlated with perceptions about rape myths and homosexuality. Specifically, officers who adhere to rape myths and disapprove of homosexuality are more likely to blame incarcerated victims of sexual assault. This study is a first to examine factors correlated with jail correctional officer blaming of incarcerated sexual assault victims. The results are useful in understanding the perspectives of jail correctional officers and experiences of victims incarcerated in jails. Implications for correctional institutions and authorities include attending to the issue of sexual assault in correctional facilities, understanding staff perceptions that are related to this issue, training of staff, and classification of inmates.     

Negotiating the Marcellus: The Role of Information in Building Trust in Extractive Deals

New technology has expanded the opportunities for energy companies within the United States, often bringing them into populated communities and requiring them to negotiate deals with landowners. This case study focuses on how one group of landowners in northeastern Pennsylvania creatively reimagined the process of negotiating in a natural gas deal. They used collective bargaining for leverage, and the Internet and social media to level the informational playing field. These techniques allowed them to develop trust within the group and ultimately with one company, as they sought to protect their environment and enhance their financial gain.     

Family planning and world health

She is coauthor of the 1987 and 1988 editions of State of the World;and author or coauthor of several Worldwatch papers, including: “Our Demographically Divided World” and “The Future of Urbanization.”     

Further Tests of the Women and Peace Hypothesis: Evidence from Cross-National Survey Research in the Middle East

This research report replicates, extends, and adds a longitudinal dimension to a recently published analysis focusing on the relationship between sex and attitudes toward international conflict, and specifically on the hypothesis that women are more peace-oriented than men. The study being replicated utilized public opinion data from Israel, Egypt, Palestine, and Kuwait. The present report extends the analysis, employing one additional data set from Israel, two additional data sets from Palestine, and new data sets from Jordan and Lebanon. In contrast to findings from studies conducted in the United States and Europe, none of the nine Middle Eastern data sets yields a statistically significant relationship between sex and attitudes toward international conflict. The article considers possible reasons for the difference between findings from the Middle East and those based on research in the West. Emphasizing the notion of salience, it hypothesizes that characteristics of the conflict about which attitudes are held may be more important than country or regional attributes in determining the applicability of the women and peace hypothesis.     

MALTREATED CHILDREN'S ABILITY TO ESTIMATE TEMPORAL LOCATION AND NUMEROSITY OF PLACEMENT CHANGES AND COURT VISITS

Research examining children's temporal knowledge has tended to utilize brief temporal intervals and singular, neutral events, and is not readily generalizable to legal settings in which maltreated children are asked temporal questions about salient, repeated abuse that often occurred in the distant past. To understand how well maltreated children can describe temporal location and numerosity of documented, personal experiences, we assessed 167 6- to 10-year-old maltreated children's temporal memory for changes in their living arrangements and prior visits to court. Small percentages of children were capable of providing exact temporal location information (age, month, or season) regarding their first or last placement or court experience, or numerosities for placements or court visits. Greater knowledge of current temporal locations did not predict better performance. However, older children's performance for several temporal judgments was better than chance, and their reports were not largely discrepant from the truth. Findings suggest caution when questioning maltreated children about when and how many times prior events occurred.