Individual determinants of punitive attitudes towards sexual and domestic abuse offenders

Purpose –individual factors predicting punitive attitudes toward sexual and domestic offences and offenders have received little attention, which this paper aims to address. Design/methodology/approach - in Study 1, 137 participants completed a 25-item online questionnaire exploring individual factors hypothesised to predict punitive attitudes towards four sexual crimes: rape, paedophilia, incest and bestiality. In Study 2, 100 participants completed a similar questionnaire exploring individual factors hypothesized to predict punitive attitudes towards male and female emotional, physical and sexual abusers. Findings - the standard multiple regression models of Study 1 found that Age (i.e., being older), Belief in a Just World and Gender (i.e., being female) were predictors of harsher punitive attitudes. The models of Study 2 found that the low score on the Social Dominance scale was the most common predictor. Research limitations - this survey-based project presents a nuanced picture that could be complemented by the inclusion of a wider range of more complex factors and follow-on qualitative studies. Practical implications – the key message from this study is to inform the public on the role of personality factors in developing punitive attitudes. Social implications – it is vital to increase the legislators’ and the people’ awareness of the factors shaping the public impressions of criminal justice processes and evidence-based treatment effectiveness

Examination of religious identity meta-stereotypes when defying its relevant source through outgroup helping.

The present paper addresses a deficit in research on indirect and direct sources of threat to meta-stereotypes in strategic outgroup helping. In Study 1 (N = 70), where the source of threat to participants’ own religious identities was directly relevant, offers of help were made only if the available forms of help were pertinent to negating the negative religious stereotypes or if such offers could put the stereotypes in favorable light. This pattern also held in Study 2 (N = 97), where the source of threat to participants’ religious identities was peripheral and therefore indirect. Taken together, it appears that it is not so much the directness of sources of threat to meta-stereotypes as the possibility of meaningfully rebutting the negative stereotype or presenting it in favorable terms that matters in strategic outgroup helping

Factors behind support for harsher punishments for common and uncommon offenders

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore individual factors predicting support for harsher punishments for relatively common and uncommon serious offenders. Design/methodology/approach - In Study 1, 120 UK participants (60 males and 60 females; mean age =37.31 SD=16.74) completed a survey exploring the extent to which they supported harsher punishments (SHP) for first time and repeat fraud, sexual and violent offenders. In Study 2, 131 participants (70 Britons and 61 Singaporeans; 69 females and 62 males; mean age=31.57; SD=10.87) completed a similar survey exploring their support for life sentence without the possibility of parole (SLSWP) for rather uncommon repeat offenders (i.e. drug traffickers, human traffickers, serious sexual offenders). Findings - Study 1 found that right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) was an SHP predictor for first time and repeat fraud, violent and sex offenders. Study 2 found that national identity (i.e. how British or Singaporean participants felt) played a similar role to Study 1's RWA in being a positive SLSWP predictor for repeat human traffickers and drug traffickers of both sexes, as well as male sex offenders. In contrast to the hypothesis, however, participants' locations did not appear to play a statistically significant role. Research limitations/implications - This survey-based research reveals a nuanced and quite consistent picture that could benefit from the inclusion of socio-economic factors and other cross-cultural comparisons. Practical implications - The key message from this study is to inform the public on the role that right-wing authoritarianism and national identity play in their SHP and SLSWP. Social implications - It is vital to increase the legislators' and the public awareness of the role that national identity and RWA seem to play. Originality/value - The paper offers insight into factors behind people's punitive attitudes towards specific crimes regardless of geo-cultural location. © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited

Out of the shadows: A young woman's journey from hiding to celebrating her identity

In April 2019 the UK government reported that little progress had been made to remedy social outcomes inequality between Roma and the wider population, recommending further recognition of Roma, for example in census data, to enable identification of Roma, their needs, and how to meet those needs. In this article we present an account of one Roma woman’s journey from hiding her identity to celebrating it. We expose five critical incidents that challenge and mould her sense of identity and career aspiration, with insights into her hopes and dreams as she reflects upon the barriers she faces and attempts to overcome. The narrative enhances understanding of the intersection of experience and ethnic identity formation, Marcella’s (pseudonym) case study emerges verbatim through quotes; we do not alter or correct her English. In our exploration, we follow the six classical steps recommended in case study analysis (Yin, 2009) and ground some of the key analytical concepts in Goffman’s theories of stigma (1963) and theatrical performances in everyday life. We conclude by identifying key parallels in her experience, relevant regardless of socioeconomic status to further debate on the nature of internalised shame, stigma and class

The Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in George W. Bush’s ‘War on Terrorism’ Rhetoric.

Despite considerable literature on the Bush administration’s war on terrorism rhetoric, little attention has been paid to its discourse of moral disengagement, leaving an important and still relevant gap that this paper aims to address. Rather than approaching this gap in terms of an archival historical analysis that is disconnected from the present, it proposes an exploratory revisit of the rhetoric that the benefits of hindsight might enrich and, we argue, aid in understanding connections to the current post-invasion turmoil and the gradual ISIS takeover. Having subjected nineteen presidential speeches to qualitative content analysis, we identified a number of moral disengagement mechanisms: moral justification, advantageous comparisons, and attribution of blame, dehumanisation of the enemy, the use of sanitizing language, diffusion of responsibility and minimization of harm. We also identified novel themes relating to American excellence/patriotism, religious ideals and fear- arousing appeals, offering original contributions to the existing literature and advancing our understanding of dynamic, real-world, and highest stakes moral disengagement whose parallels can be identified in today’s political discourses. The detailed analysis unveils the apparent paradox of propagating moral disengagement through a thread of arguments that interweave diversity with uniformity, complexity with simplicity, in effect alerting the reader to the processes of moral desensitisation that the past, current and future “warmongering” political discourses may often rely upon

Is Extreme in the Eye of the Beholder? An Experimental Assessment of Extremist Cognitions

Scholars have extensively discussed the topic of “online radicalization,” often seeking to understand the form and function of online extremist material. However, this work has neglected to examine the role that the Internet plays alongside individual personality factors in the process through which someone develops violent extremist cognitions. This article aims to extend the understanding of the role of personality differences in the effect of exposure to extremist material online. In this study, we experimentally measure the short-term psychological consequences of exposure to extremist material on extremist cognitions. We use a between-group experimental design in which participants are shown extremist propaganda with either pre- or post-counter messages. Our results indicate that trait personality, and specifically aggression, may be more influential than exposure to extremist propaganda in influencing extremist cognitions. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of future research directions

Gangs in Asia: China and India

The problem of gang crimes dates back to the first cities founded thousands of years ago. Its traces can be even discerned in the draconian Hammurabi code of ancient Mesopotamia. To various extents and in many different forms, including muggings, pickpocketing, prostitution and turf wars, it has also plagued ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman cities, giving ruling classes nightmares and heavily curbing the frequency of their evening walks. Today’s cities across the world continue to be afflicted by them. Although today’s gangs differ, in the increasingly globalized and interconnected world, they also share many characteristics, which have been explored in great depth and with a particular focus on the ‘Western’ culture. This relatively short review will cover the issue of gang crime in the rising superpowers of China and India. Given the scarcity of available data, it will be limited, but it is hoped that it will inspire further focus on these places that tend to be undeservingly ignored in the academic discourse of the West. © 2016, Canadian Center of Science and Education. All rights reserved

Murder on Maneuver: Exploring green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan

Green-on-blue attacks have a devastating psychological, tactical, and operational effect on military operations in Afghanistan. In spite of this, no empirical research has offered a data-driven examination of these attacks, leaving a gap that this article aims to address. By analyzing a large (yet inevitability incomplete) open-source database developed on these attacks, we present data on the perpetrators and victims of these attacks. We also investigate whether green-on-blue attacks are related to the number of civilian casualties in that area; finding that (unlike wider insurgent violence) they are not. Instead, we find that it is the number of troops present within a Regional Command that is positively correlated with the likelihood that a green-on-blue attack will occur. We discuss the implications of these findings with reference to future issues of force protection

Anxiety about Digital Security and Terrorism and Support for Counter-terror Measures

Purpose: This paper aims to determine the potential predictors of anxiety about digital security, terrorist threats and support for high-tech counter measures. Design/methodology/approach: In Study 1, 195 participants indicated their anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites. In Study 2, 107 participants indicated their anxiety about domestic terrorism, international terrorism and extremist groups. In Study 3, 261 participants indicated their support for high-tech counter terrorism measures. Findings: Study 1 suggests that whereas anxiety about digital security systems, data protection and social networking sites were positively predicted by right-wing authoritarianism, anxiety about social networking was also negatively predicted by time spent online. Study 2 shows that time spent online was a negative predictor of anxiety about domestic terrorism. Study 3 indicates that the strongest positive predictor of support for all the measures was right-wing authoritarianism, followed by national identity. Research implications: The findings show the relevance of terror management theory to digital security and counter-terrorism. Practical implications: It appears that right-wing authoritarianism and national identity may serve as mechanisms for people to subjectively counter the presented threats. This notion may inform relevant policy and practice aimed at making communities safer and potentially help introduce counter-terror measures with less public backlash. Social implications: When designing counter-terror measures, policy makers should consider compound national identities (e.g., Catalan or Basque people). Originality/Value: The paper makes contribution to underexplored areas of terrorism anxiety and support for counter-terror measures

Interoperability: maintaining clear superordinate goals, reducing task complexity, and optimizing team size to ensure inter-agency action implementation in critical incident decisions.

This study demonstrates how naturalistic decision-making (NDM) can be usefully applied to study ‘decision inertia’ – Namely the cognitive process associated with failures to execute action when a decision-maker struggles to choose between equally perceived aversive outcomes. Data assessed the response and recovery from a sudden impact disaster during a 2-day immersive simulated emergency response. Fourteen agencies (including police, fire, ambulance, and military) and 194 participants were involved in the exercise. By assessing the frequency, type, audience, and content of communications, and by reference to five subject matter experts’ slow time analyses of critical turning points during the incident, three barriers were identified as reducing multiagency information sharing and the macrocognitive understanding of the incident. When the decision problem was non-time-bounded, involved multiple agencies, and identification of superordinate goals was lacking, the communication between agencies decreased and agencies focused on within-agency information sharing. These barriers distracted teams from timely and efficient discussions on decisions and action execution with seeking redundant information, which resulted in decision inertia. Our study illustrates how naturalistic environments are conducive to examining relatively understudied concepts of decision inertia, failures to act, and shared situational macrocognition in situations involving large distributed teams