Clare Crole-Rees, Jack Tomlin, Natasha Kalebic, Morwenna Collings, Neil P. Roberts and Andrew Forrester
People in prisons have a high prevalence of poly-traumatisation throughout their life span. The behavioural and emotional sequalae of trauma are likely to be managed across the…
Abstract
Purpose
People in prisons have a high prevalence of poly-traumatisation throughout their life span. The behavioural and emotional sequalae of trauma are likely to be managed across the whole organisation. However, there is still a lack of clarity about the key components of a trauma-informed approach within the custodial context. This study aimed to gather in-depth knowledge of staff views on the components of an optimal trauma pathway in a prison and the organisational factors that influence its implementation.
Design/methodology/Approach
The authors’ research design is qualitative, involving in-depth, semi-structured interviews with eight members of staff from different professional backgrounds at a single prison in the UK that houses sentenced and remand prisoners. Data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Findings
Three super-ordinate themes were identified within the data. Firstly, components of a trauma-informed pathway included sub-themes of asking about what has happened and knowing how to respond; providing specialist approaches; enabling residents to cope; screening and detection; and a compassionate relational approach. Secondly, organisational factors were associated with sub-themes of culture and leadership, resources and systems and processes. Thirdly, staff factors were associated with sub-themes of skills development and training, staff well-being and support and staff attitudes.
Practical implications
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD in prisons are under-detected, and there are complex psychosocial factors within prisons that mediate the effectiveness of psychological therapies.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first exploration of staff perspectives on the components of a trauma-informed pathway within custodial settings. Future directions should involve the piloting and evaluation of the components of the trauma-informed pathway, with a focus on longer-term outcomes and exploration of the organisational factors that impact on effectiveness.
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Marek Palasinski and Neil Shortland
The purpose of this paper is to address individual factors predicting punitive attitudes towards sexual and domestic offences and offenders have received little attention.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address individual factors predicting punitive attitudes towards sexual and domestic offences and offenders have received little attention.
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 hypothesised 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/implications
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.
Originality/value
This relatively modest paper offers insight of personality factors into people’s punitive attitudes shaping actual legislation.
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As the foremost gossip in Ambridge, Susan Carter can lay claim to being the most powerful character in The Archers. Ridiculed for her social aspirations, Susan is bolstered by her…
Abstract
As the foremost gossip in Ambridge, Susan Carter can lay claim to being the most powerful character in The Archers. Ridiculed for her social aspirations, Susan is bolstered by her proximity to the world of privilege through her son’s marriage to Alice Aldridge and her husband’s status as chairman of the parish council. Within the village, Susan is both feared and ridiculed, giving her an ambivalent status in the narrative, yet she is pivotal in her role at the heart of the ‘information superhighway’ of gossip within the community. Her role is tantamount to that of a Greek chorus, commenting on and judging the actions of her acquaintances, her position aided by her job as manager of the village shop, at the heart of village dealings. This chapter situates Susan within the tradition of gossips in British popular culture, exploring discourses centring on middle-aged femininities and working-class cultures. I will examine how Susan’s character is informed by the comic tradition of the unruly working-class matriarch, who is both strong and powerful, yet whose excessive talk reinforces the social divide that she longs to overcome.
Shannon L. Rawski, Emilija Djurdjevic and Leah D. Sheppard
Findings regarding the relationship between biological sex and job stress remain inconsistent. In the present chapter, we suggest that this is due to the overly simplistic and…
Abstract
Findings regarding the relationship between biological sex and job stress remain inconsistent. In the present chapter, we suggest that this is due to the overly simplistic and synonymous treatment of biological sex and gender. Specifically, researchers have operationalized gender as sex, neglecting the inherent complexity of the gender construct. To address this, we take a more nuanced approach and develop a theory around the effects of biological sex and gender on job stress, considering how sex, gender, sex-based prescribed gender roles and work roles interact to create role conflict. We predict that a lack of congruence between any of the aforementioned variables results in various types of role conflict, leading to stress, and requiring coping. Drawing on the literature on role conflict, emotional labor, and facades of conformity, we introduce the concept of gender façades as a coping mechanism. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Marek Palasinski and Neil Shortland
The purpose of this paper is to explore individual factors predicting support for harsher punishments for relatively common and uncommon serious offenders.
Abstract
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.
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Neil J. Fletcher and Rory J. Ridley-Duff
This paper aims to investigate the intersection between corporate governance and management accounting information within the board meeting of an English further education college.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the intersection between corporate governance and management accounting information within the board meeting of an English further education college.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical fieldwork uses an interventionist approach. Board members’ mental models of a management accounting boundary object are analysed.
Findings
The paper supports Parker (2007) and Cornforth and Edward’s (1999) observation that within a board meeting, collaborative “micro-management” type talk is considered to lie outside the acceptable remit of non-executive and executive board member interaction. Such an attitude can prevent an intertwining of management accounting information and other mental models of an organisation occurring. This can preclude management accounting information from rendering an organisation visible, in an expansive manner, within a boardroom.
Research limitations/implications
Interventionist researchers working within the black box of the board are encouraged to design more radical and collaborative interventions than the interview/report format used here.
Practical implications
Non-executive directors might benefit from being offered the opportunity to interact with management accounting information outside the formal board meeting and committee structure.
Originality/value
A deeper understanding of how directors’ mental models, boardroom behaviours and attitudes influence their interaction with management accounting information is offered. Insight into the limitations of using management accounting information in the boardroom is developed.
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David C. Wyld, Sam D. Cappel and Daniel E. Hallock
In their book Megatrends 2000, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene (1990) stated that one of the ten “megatrends for the 1990's would be the rise of “The Age of Biology.” One of…
Abstract
In their book Megatrends 2000, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene (1990) stated that one of the ten “megatrends for the 1990's would be the rise of “The Age of Biology.” One of the central forces behind this societal shift which is occurring right now, they say, is research into understanding human genetics and the rise of biotechnology. The scientific knowledge regarding human genetics and the technology to examine an individual's genetic makeup have grown at a rapid pace, especially in the last decade as a result of the Human Genome Project. This venture has been labelled alternatively as “mediocre science” (Roberts, 1990b: p. 804) and as “biology's Holy Grail,” (Nelkin and Tancredi, 1989: p. 14). It is indisputably a monumental scientific undertaking, likened to the drive to put a man on the moon in the sixties (“The Geography of Genes,” 1989). This knowledge and the resultant trends will likely prove to be important factors not only in our future economy, but also in the nature of how we understand ourselves.
Ricarda Hammer and Tina M. Park
While technologies are often packaged as solutions to long-standing social ills, scholars of digital economies have raised the alarm that, far from liberatory, technologies often…
Abstract
While technologies are often packaged as solutions to long-standing social ills, scholars of digital economies have raised the alarm that, far from liberatory, technologies often further entrench social inequities and in fact automate structures of oppression. This literature has been revelatory but tends to replicate a methodological nationalism that erases global racial hierarchies. We argue that digital economies rely on colonial pathways and in turn serve to replicate a racialized and neocolonial world order. To make this case, we draw on W.E.B. Du Bois' writings on capitalism's historical development through colonization and the global color line. Drawing specifically on The World and Africa as a global historical framework of racism, we develop heuristics that make visible how colonial logics operated historically and continue to this day, thus embedding digital economies in this longer history of capitalism, colonialism, and racism. Applying a Du Boisian framework to the production and propagation of digital technologies shows how the development of such technology not only relies on preexisting racial colonial production pathways and the denial of racially and colonially rooted exploitation but also replicates these global structures further.
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The premise that the U.S. Supreme Court never veers too far off from the dominant national political coalition (Dahl, 1957) has become widely accepted among social scientists…
Abstract
The premise that the U.S. Supreme Court never veers too far off from the dominant national political coalition (Dahl, 1957) has become widely accepted among social scientists today. To fulfill that promise, however, the confirmation process for justices must serve as a plebiscite through which the public can ratify or reject future justices based on their views. Unfortunately, modern confirmation hearings have become an exercise in obfuscation, providing little meaningful dialogue on important issues. Because conservative Republican presidents have made the lion's share of appointments in recent times, social conservatives have most often benefited from a process that has severed the link between Supreme Court nominees and the polity they must serve.