Les médias : source de victimisation

With the advent of the Bill of Rights, making the offender less accessible, journalists are falling back more than ever on the victim to feed their daily tales of victimization.The author analyses the various forms this source of victimization takes; for some victims, they are generally crimes that are spectacular and violent, and are often perpetrated against the most susceptible and vulnerable victims.Each type of media (radio, dailies, weeklies, television) represents a particular way of adding to the suffering of the victim, and each has its way of “exploiting” the victim. The victim becomes a tool of the media, both commercially and ideologically, often with the connivance of the police, who also uses the victim for its purposes.The victim is portrayed in stereotype, according to the type of victimization reported and the offender implicated, creating a guilty or innocent victim, and literally depriving him of his own account of his victimization to make it an object of curiosity that sells well.Finally, the author analyzes how the police and the media, by interaction, can exploit the victim under the pretext of prevention or crime control and even through certain phenomena such as the reporting of crime waves promoting fear of crime. The article concludes that the media should have more respect for victims of crime

Green Looks Good on You: The Rhetoric and Moral Identity of Conscious Consumption Blogs

Conscious consumption blogs are at the center of a particular online community where eco-friendly products are popularized. Through the lens of these blogs, this paper analyzes discourse around identity, purchasing, sustainability, lifestyle, community, and activism, to investigate the forces at work in the conscious consumption movement and identify where there is a need for a shift towards a more political environmentalism. As an environmentalist strategy, conscious consumption disproportionately centers the consumer angle, constructing personal possessions as symbols of sustainability. Language analysis reveals strong individualistic messages about personal belief, preference, and benefit which overwhelm any sense of communal good. Instead, motivation is tied to personal morals (holding oneself accountable for the environmental impact of consumption). In place of organized action, the goal of conscious consumption is self-fulfillment as a result of progressing on one’s personal journey. This is encouraged through self-education, voluntary awareness campaigns and leading by example. Overall, conscious consumption blogs’ strong emphasis on self improvement contributes to individualization of responsibility, discouraging followers from collectively imagining new political possibilities outside of individual households

Evaluating Community Advocacy in Response to Mayor de Blasio’s Homeless Shelter Development

In the United States, cities like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., the three metropolitans that are wealthy and have excessive cost, all share one common struggle: homelessness. With a policymaking effort regarding homelessness that were experimented within a highly dependent system of mayoral administration, hence my paper primarily focuses on new homeless shelter policy under NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term that started in 2017 until 2022. Under his 2017 plan ‘Turning the Tide on Homelessness’, the City has targeted to open new ninety shelters across the City by 2022. Under his 2017 plan ‘Turning the Tide on Homelessness’, the City has targeted to open new ninety shelters across the City by 2022. This target has drawn different responses from local neighborhood community level that has forced the City to engage in complex situations, such as opposition and protest that require clear communication to push the goal to happen. Community advocacy and the way local residents negotiate has been central in influencing the City to open a new homeless shelter, with the notion that the local will always challenge any siting if its within their neighborhood area, activating their ‘not in my back yard’ (NIMBY) response that arises by simply selfish or uninformed beliefs and responses by residents. This paper uses single case study (n=1) on West 58th St. Coalition in Manhattan to support detail examination based on the hypotheses that community advocacy that takes place in an affluent neighborhood (higher median income, higher educational attainment, higher median gross rent than the City’s average) is more likely to be powerful to oppose the City’s plan on developing new homeless shelter in their neighborhood. This community is chosen as a case because it has more accessible resources, therefore, it can provide more support to this research. To provide a fair comparison, West 58th St. will be supported by the other cases of community advocacy from different place such as Crown Heights shelters in Brooklyn and Maspeth shelters in Queens

Barriers in Educating Homeless Children and Youth

Across America, homeless students face a myriad of barriers that impede education and school access and success of homeless children. The purpose of this study was to determine the barriers to enrollment and school success for homeless students. The ultimate goal was to provide information to parents, teachers, administrators, and school districts that could serve as a vital resource tool in educating homeless students while removing barriers. The participants consisted of 215 certified teachers, school administrators, and homeless liaisons in 23 school districts representing the populations that provide afterschool instruction to homeless students. The study was conducted in the spring of 2003 using a survey that consisted of demographic information, and questions were asked concerning the educational barriers to enrollment for homeless students and barriers to school success faced by homeless students. Results of the data analysis revealed that 36.3% of respondents were at and over 41 years of age. A very large percentage were female (81.9%). Respondents were experienced educators for the most part, with 31.2% having over 25 years of teaching/administrative experience. Also, 43 % had worked in the after-school program for homeless students less than 4 years. The data indicated that a majority of the respondents\u27 highest educational level obtained was a bachelor\u27s or master\u27s degree. The findings of the study revealed that lack of transportation, lack of school records, and state guardianship/residency requirements were moderate barriers to school enrollment. Results also revealed that lack of parental involvement, frequent absenteeism, and frequent mobility were perceived as major barriers to school success

Assessing the Experiences of Women who have Suffered Intimate Partner Violence Living in Shelters

According to the Centers for Disease Control on National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence in 2010, more than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Throughout history, someone they knew has most often victimized women. Over the past thirty years, feminist organizers of the domestic violence (DV) movement powered public awareness regarding the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) dominantly. This led to the development of a network of shelters and other support services for victims, and altered the criminal justice system’s response to survivors (Goodman & Epstein, 2008). Homelessness in the lives of intimate partner victims cannot be underestimated as violence in the homes of women is one of the factors leading to their homelessness (Bassuk, Buckner, Weinreb, Browne, Bassuk, Dawson & Perlojf, 1997). This study presents a qualitative study of the subjective experiences of women who have survived intimate partner violence and are staying at shelters. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four survivors. The interviews highlighted the forms of support the women received as shelter residents, and their perceptions on improvement strategies to make their stay in shelters more successful. Findings portrayed that women appreciated the assistance they received to meet their physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological needs. However, residents emphasized emotional and physical needs as paramount in the forms of support they received. Suggestions to make shelter stay of residents more successful included encouraging support groups for survivors and children, as well as a reduction in restrictions that governed shared spaces of shelter residents. KEYWORDS: Intimate partner violence, women, survivors, shelters, subjective experience

The Transformation of Homeless Adolescent Mothers into Adult Leaders: Adolescent Pregnancy and Adolescent Reform

This phenomenological investigation recruited six female leaders using a convenient sampling method from social media connections and Governors State University’s graduate student distribution email lists to recruit leaders who were once homeless teenage mothers and resided in residential homeless shelters, foster families or without stable living arrangements. The women ranged in ages from 22 to 52. There was no restriction on race, ethnicity, or religion. The study included all women who were once homeless teenage mothers, yet ultimately attained a level of leadership within their chosen profession. Data uploaded into NVivo 11 from surveys and interviews were transcribed and coded using NVivo 11’s software system. The categories and codes collected through this software system were reexamined to see if NVivo 11 software system missed any important words or word phrases. Results indicated that each subject had unresolved issues or missing needs during adolescence. Findings further suggest that despite participants’ initial beliefs, early-fantasized romance did little to fulfill previously unmet needs. Results also indicated that family issues affected participants’ decision to leave home. Four respondents from six participants had experienced the divorce of their parents that initiated self-destructive behavior. Findings further showed that teens had to reach a certain maturity level before realizing their leadership ambitions; the majority of subjects expressed being inspired by their babies to pursue leadership ambitions, with one subject who attributing God as the guiding force in her pathway to leadership

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth experiencing homelessness: A qualitative study

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted youth experiencing homelessness (YEH). During the coronavirus outbreak, millions of people’s health worldwide was negatively affected. In addition to poor physical health, society’s mental health was affected by political discourse, viral mitigation factors, social distancing, and distrust of both the media and government. Decades of research with those experiencing homelessness suggest that the housing insecure suffer from a litany of poor outcomes. Their physical and mental health are negatively affected by traumas and illnesses suffered prior to, and during, their transience. This study takes a phenomenological approach to examining how the COVID-19 pandemic affected YEH. Participants were screened to fit the study criteria and then they engaged in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis coding was used to analyze and identify themes and subthemes that developed from the interviews. Ten themes and eighteen subthemes emerged from these interviews. These themes and their respective sub themes are: Isolation (forced isolation and self isolation), Family Strife (Became homeless during COVID-19 pandemic and experienced homelessness prior to COVID-19 pandemic), Education (self educational apathy and perceived educator apathy), Loss (lost opportunities and loss of resources), mental health (suicidal ideation), catching COVID-19 (worried about contracting coronavirus and not worried about catching coronavirus), systemic failures (legal system, university, government), friendships (fading friendships and strengthened bonds), resiliency, financial insecurity (inability to obtain or sustain employment and no access to money)