School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    A CHILD IS BEING MUTILATED
    Rogers, J (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2009)
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    Mentoring, Social Capital and Desistance: A Study of Women Released from Prison
    Brown, M ; Ross, S (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2010-04)
    Mentoring ex-prisoners is an increasingly popular tool in the burgeoning field of offender reintegration and resettlement. Yet surprisingly little is known about what makes mentoring effective and indeed even whether it can be effective within the domain of criminal justice. This article proceeds in two parts. First, drawing upon desistance theory it attempts to develop a theoretical underpinning for mentoring practice with ex-offenders that would identify appropriate targets for mentoring practice, including the development of social capital or connectedness. Part two of the article utilises data from research on a women's mentoring program in Victoria, Australia, to understand how one key dimension of desistance — social capital — is recognised by women as a domain of need and those women's perceptions of the way mentoring may deliver gains in social connectedness and capital. The article concludes with a discussion of the distinctly gendered nature of women's postprison experiences and the way in which these factors shape both the process of desistance and the nature of mentoring interventions.
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    The Pathways Model of Assault A Qualitative Analysis of the Assault Offender and Offense
    Chambers, JC ; Ward, T ; Eccleston, L ; Brown, M (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2009-09)
    Research on offending behavior rehabilitation suggests that offenders would gain the maximum benefit from programs that reflect the individual needs of different types of offender. Multivariate theories of offending behavior are thus required to inform individualized rehabilitation. The aim of the current study was to construct a multivariate model for the prolific offense of assault. Qualitative methodology was used to construct a descriptive model of assault for 25 adult assault offenders. The model incorporated the development of violent behavior, types of anger, violence motivation, and the assault offense. The model consisted of 14 categories, 10 of which allowed for individual differences in behavior. A total of 35 participant transcripts were then coded through the model where the individual differences occurred. Five main offense types were found. The characteristics of the types of assault offense gave indications for how rehabilitation may be targeted for each group.
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    VANQUISHING THE ENEMY OR CIVILIZING THE NEIGHBOUR? CONTROLLING THE RISKS FROM HAZARDOUS INDUSTRIES
    Haines, F (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2009-09)
    Inclusion of the local community in a continuous dialogue aimed at reducing the risks posed by hazardous industries such as chemical plants and oil refineries is an increasingly common feature of some regulatory regimes. This article explores the implications of this regulatory shift for the reduction of risk through research undertaken in a major Australian city. The study found that local communities, when given a formal voice in regulatory regimes, did push industry to consider an extended range of risks. These risks included the risk of explosion or major chemical spill threatening health and the environment (termed here actuarial risks) but also concerns about the orderliness within the local neighbourhood and proper relationships between industry and community (risks of a more socio-cultural nature). Further, the escalation of political risk was critical in determining which actuarial and socio-cultural concerns of the community were listened to. Regulatory innovations involving increased accountability of hazardous industry to the local community may increase pressure on targeted industry to reduce risk, but the ensuing risk management is likely to involve political and socio-cultural as well as actuarial risks.
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    The Screen of the Crime: Judging the Affect of Cinematic Violence
    YOUNG, A (Sage Publications, 2009)
    Discussions of screen violence polarize around the question of whether images can cause people to behave differently. Proponents of this position point to the influence of images in other contexts; its critics reject the implication that individuals can be so simplistically motivated. Such debate is intensified by events such as the Columbine or Virginia Tech shootings, where cultural products are named as the causes of lethal violence. This article engages with the assumption that the violence in violent imagery is a relatively homogeneous category. It explores paradigms of cinematic violence through the analysis of exemplary scenes from four representative films ( The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs , Natural Born Killers and Elephant), each of which has been linked to violence flowing in and from the image. Each shows multiple killings in highly graphic ways, yet each deploys different representational techniques to produce a range of affective responses in the spectator. As such, the article seeks to answer the question of how to judge the affect of cinematic violence and to investigate the implication of the spectator in the affects and aesthetics of screen violence.
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    Our Desires are Ungovernable: Writing Graffiti in Public Spaces
    HALSEY, M ; YOUNG, A (SAGE Journals, 2006)
    Our aim in this article is to contribute to the body of research on graffiti by considering some of the hitherto hidden aspects of graffiti culture. Drawing on detailed interviews with graffiti writers, we examine four main themes: motivations for graffiti writing; thresholds dividing ‘art’ from ‘vandalism’; writers’ reactions to ‘blank’ surfaces; and graffiti’s relation to other types of crime. We orient our discussion towards the affective dimensions of the activity in the hope that the words of writers become a visible and productive presence in urban (and academic) space.
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    Crime, liberalism and empire:: Governing the Mina tribe of northern India
    Brown, M (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2004-06)
    Cultural analyses of empire inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) have focused on certain artefacts of imperial thought, representing them as emblematic of a totalizing Orientalist discourse. This article examines one such case in nineteenthcentury India: the identification and legal notification of communities as Criminal Tribes. Taking the case of the Mina tribe of northern India, an attempt is made to illustrate how strategies like the criminal tribes policy fall far short of reflecting some broad and monolithic approach to governance. By examining the divergent views of orthodox and authoritarian strains within British liberalism, and showing how they were directly reflected in quite different approaches to governing the Minas, the article reveals the criminal tribesman as less an archetype of British crime control strategy than the product of a limited and partial examination of the colonial archive. It is hoped that the present investigation of the case of the Mina tribe will provide a more complex and sophisticated understanding of the doctrines and strategies under which Britain governed its empire.