Coercive Contexts Research Articles

Counteracting Informal Coercion from Within Coercive Contexts: Can a Wrong Approach Be Practiced Rightly?

Counteracting Informal Coercion from Within Coercive Contexts: Can a Wrong Approach Be Practiced Rightly?

The impact of testosterone-lowering medication on recidivism in individuals convicted of sexual offenses.

Treatment of individuals who have committed sexual offences with Testosterone-Lowering Medication (TLM) is a comparatively intrusive kind of intervention, which regularly takes place in coercive contexts. Thus, the question of efficacy, but also the question of who should be treated, when and for how long, are of great importance. Recidivism rates of TLM-treated high-risk individuals (+TLM; n = 54) were compared with high-risk individuals treated with psychotherapy only in the same forensic outpatient clinic (-TLM; n = 79). Group differences suggested a higher initial risk of + TLM (e.g. higher ris-assessment, previous convictions). Despite the increased risk, after an average time at risk of six years, +TLM recidivated significantly less often and significantly later than - TLM (27.8% vs. 51.9%). Such an effect was also found for violent (1.9% vs. 15.2%), but not for sexual (5.6% vs. 10.1%) and serious recidivism (5.6% vs. 10.1%), which could be explained partly by the small number of cases. In the course of treatment, TLM proved to be a significant variable for a positive process, whereas a high risk-assessment score indicated a rather negative course. In total, n = 19 individuals had stopped their TLM treatment, of these 31.6% recidivated. The results support the efficacy of TLM, particularly in the group of high-risk offenders.

Can mental health practice benefit from procedural justice theory? A critical analysis on the opportunities and pitfalls of procedural justice to address coercion and human rights issues in psychiatry

The theory of procedural justice, derived from social psychology, is employed in numerous fields of study concerned with the quality of interactions involving individuals in positions of authority. Although this theory is increasingly cited for its potential to promote approaches aimed at mitigating the effects of psychiatric coercion and better respecting individuals' rights, empirical literature provides limited insights into how procedural justice could be translated into practice. It is important, therefore, to examine the theoretical and practical implications of such an orientation. Based on a critical analysis of existing literature, this article will discuss the potential contributions and limitations of procedural justice applied in the field of mental health and psychiatric nursing. Procedural justice has limitations regarding solutions for human rights violations in psychiatry. It nonetheless allows a focus on the quality of interactions with individuals in coercive contexts, in addition to considering the social and identity-related implications of psychiatric coercion.

Intersexual Agonism in Gray Langurs Reflects Male Dominance and Feeding Competition

Male-female agonism varies throughout the primate order with males often dominating females, especially in sexually dimorphic species. While intersexual agonism has been attributed to sexually coercive contexts, it can also occur for other reasons and intersexual dominance may be influenced by the adult sex ratio. If the proportion of males is high, certain males will regularly lose against other males. Loser-effects may then pave the way for some females to dominate these males, an effect that has been described in a few primate species. Here we investigated the frequency, general style, and context of agonism among gray langurs (Semnopithecus spp.). Data were collected at two study sites, at Jodhpur, India (one group), and at Ramnagar, Nepal (two groups). The adult sex ratio varied between 0.077 and 1.000 males to females. At both sites, data on agonistic interactions (aggression and submission) were collected in continuous focal animal and ad libitum sampling techniques during 1,945 contact hours (including 1,220 focal animal hours, total). Although aggression intensity was low, high directional consistency and the rare occurrence of counteraggression suggested a despotic dominance style, a likely prerequisite for dominance effects based on adult sex ratio. Aggression by females against males was very rare and mainly occurred in the defense of offspring. We found little evidence for partial female dominance regardless of adult sex ratio. In a few cases in which a female had a higher dominance index than a male, she did not dominate this male in dyadic encounters. Agonism by males directed at females occurred mainly in a feeding context while male policing and a sexual context were both rare. The latter was mostly restricted to females after they had harassed a sexual interaction or after they had behaved proceptively toward a male. Our study suggests that across species the effect of adult sex ratio on female dominance might be more variable than previously suggested. The fact that most agonism between males and females occurred over food identifies intersexual feeding competition as a new research avenue with potentially important consequences for existing ideas on the costs and benefits of group life and composition.

Post-incident reviews after restraints-Potential and pitfalls. Patients' experiences and considerations.

WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE SUBJECT?: Restraint has negative psychological, physical and relational consequences for mental health patients and care providers. Several countries have implemented seclusion and restraint (S/R) reduction programmes in which post-incident reviews (PIRs) including patients and care providers are one of several strategies. Existing knowledge indicates that PIRs have the potential to contribute to S/R prevention, but knowledge of the patients' perspectives on PIRs is scarce. WHAT THE PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: The paper provides in-depth knowledge about patients' experiences of being participants in PIRs after restraint events. Patients experience PIRs to result in being strengthened and developing new coping strategies. The paper reveals pitfalls when planning and conducting PIRs that make patients experience PIRs as meaningless, feel objectified or long for living communication and closeness. The patients' mental state, the quality of the relationships and the services' care philosophies, influence patients' experiences of PIRs as supporting their personal recovery processes or as continuation of coercive contexts. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: Patients' vulnerability during the PIRs must be acknowledged. Trusted persons or advocacy must support the patient in the PIR and thus reduce the power-dependence imbalance. The PIR must be conducted in a supportive, non-punishing atmosphere. Patients must influence planning for the PIR concerning time point and participants and themes to be discussed. The PIR forms should be extended to support the patients' empowerment and well-being. ABSTRACT: Introduction Post-incident reviews (PIRs), including patients, nurses and other care providers, following incidents of restraints are recommended in mental health services. Few studies have examined patients' experiences and considerations concerning PIRs. Aim The study aims to explore patients' perspectives on PIRs in relation to how they experience participation in PIRs and further view PIRs' potential for care improvement and restraint prevention. Method We conducted a qualitative study based on individual interviews. Eight current and previous inpatients from two Norwegian mental health services were interviewed. Results The patients experienced PIRs as variations on a continuum from being strengthened, developing new coping strategies and processing the restraint event to at the other end of the continuum; PIRs as meaningless, feeling objectified and longing for living communication and closeness. Discussion PIRs' beneficial potential is extended in the study. The findings highlight however that personal and institutional conditions influence whether patients experience PIRs as an arena for recovery promotion or PIRs as continuation of coercive contexts. Implications for practice We recommend patients' active participation in planning the PIR. PIRs should be conducted in a supportive atmosphere, including trusted persons, emphasizing and acknowledging a dialogical approach.

Learner engagement as social justice practice in undergraduate emergency care education: An exploration of expectations, impediments and enablers for academic success

Background. It is uncertain how descriptions of learner experiences and expectations can influence learner engagement in prehospital emergency care education in South Africa (SA). Improved access to higher education may imply a greater diversity of life experiences and academic needs. However, neither this diversity nor the consequent disengagement-engagement differential has been documented for the emergency care student body in SA. Objectives. To explore the expectations of, impediments to and enablers for success in undergraduate emergency care education. Methods. A concurrent (embedded) mixed-methods design was employed. Through a prospective online survey, 115 of 249 emergency care learners who were registered in 2014 - 2018 were sampled. Qualitative responses were thematically analysed from a process of mind mapping and dyadic contrasting of codes. Results. Three propositions emerged: ( i ) the paradox of programme motivation and subject hindrance suggests that participants were intrinsically and extrinsically motivated for programme completion, but experienced hindrances at the subject level; ( ii ) there was a perception of insufficient academic interaction and engagement; and ( iii ) while there were divergent experiences and expectations, coercive contexts for premature attrition in emergency care education prevail. Conclusions. Sacrifices made by respondents to overcome challenges were identified as a profound loss of time, money and relationships. Extrinsic factors affecting learner success included competing demands, institutional structure/processes, teaching quality and online teaching and learning. A learner-centred approach is therefore posited, given expression through learner engagement. If engagement is to become a meaningful social justice practice, then monoculture ideation in emergency care education must be challenged.

The engagement of young people in drug interventions in coercive contexts: findings from a cross-national European study

Background The engagement of young people has been a neglected area in youth justice and drug policy and practice. This paper explores the concept of ‘engagement’ in relation to drug interventions in custodial and community settings in different European countries. Methods Interviews were undertaken with young people (aged 14–25 years) in contact with the criminal justice system who use illegal drugs and with practitioners involved in the delivery of interventions for our target group in Denmark, Italy, Poland, and the UK. Results The key techniques to engage young people were described in similar terms across the countries. These included forming relationships based on trust, honesty, and empathy, setting goals collaboratively, and employing practitioners with lived experience and understanding. The objectives and activities on offer are often constrained by criminal justice contexts. Conclusions Despite the differences between the countries in terms of criminal justice systems and the structure of drug interventions, there were remarkable similarities in the ways young people and practitioners described effective engagement. Strong emphasis on operational engagement to ensure positive relationships between young people and practitioners was important in the design and delivery of interventions. Practitioners working in criminal justice contexts need to have flexibility and autonomy to work creatively to find ways to engage, connect, and inspire young people.

“Some of us need to be taken care of”: young adults’ perspectives on support and help in drug reducing interventions in coercive contexts in Denmark and the UK

This paper provides an account of young people’s experiences of and perspectives on help and support in drug reducing interventions. It is based on interviews with young people age 14–25 who were in contact with the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and, at the same time, participated in a drug reducing intervention. The interview data forms part of the EU funded EPPIC project. Two main themes emerged from the young peoples’ accounts that cut across different types of interventions and social systems in both countries. The first revolves around the ‘system’ of welfare, criminal justice, health and educational services and the barriers young people encountered in navigating the system to find help. The second revolves around the young people’s experiences with professionals, including what they appreciated and what they found problematic in professionals’ approach to them. Basing our analysis on data from two different countries, we are able to emphasize similarities in the young peoples’ perspectives, despite being enrolled in different drug reducing and CJS interventions. The insights gained indicate a need for systems and service changes that can facilitate a better balance between building individual resilience and providing appropriate, timely and adequate support within a ‘resilience-building’ environment.

“In strength” not “by force”: Re-reading the circumcision of the uncircumcised ἐν ἰσχύι in 1 Macc 2:46

This article challenges the dominant reading of 1 Macc 2:46, both that (a) the syntagm ἐν ἰσχύι means coercion and that (b) the literary context of 1 Maccabees understands the circumcising of the uncircumcised in 2:46 as coercive. An analysis of the lexical semantics of ἐν ἰσχύι in ancient Greek literature shows that it never referred to coercion, but primarily referred to the means by which an action was accomplished (“by strength/might/power”). Admittedly, ἐν ἰσχύι can occur in coercive contexts (e.g. Wis 16:16). However, coercion is not a part of the syntagm itself, but arises out of the surrounding literary circumstances. Rather than as one who forces circumcision upon others, the literary context of 1 Macc 2:46 presents Mattathias as a liberator who reinstates circumcision for those who had been prevented from circumcising their children due to persecution. Josephus, our earliest reception of 1 Macc 2:46, is a witness to this reading.

Migration diplomacy in the Global South: cooperation, coercion and issue linkage in Gaddafi’s Libya

Despite a recent resurgence in research on the politics of migration, foreign policy analysts have yet to approach cross-border population mobility as a distinct field of inquiry. Particularly within the Global South, scant work has theorised the interplay between migration and interstate bargaining. This article proposes the framework of migration diplomacy to examine how mobility features in states’ issue-linkage strategies, in both cooperative and coercive contexts. Drawing on Arabic, French and English primary sources, it empirically demonstrates the salience of its framework through an analysis of Libya’s migration diplomacy towards its Arab, African and European neighbours under Muammar Gaddafi.

Care, Closeness, and Becoming “Better”: Transformation and Therapeutic Process in American Adolescent Psychiatric Custody

AbstractIn the United States, young people are remanded to psychiatric custody for the institutionalized treatment of mental illness, behavior disorders, and emotional disturbances, and forced to participate in this therapeutic system. Anthropological investigations of therapeutic process have focused on individuals actively seeking and engaging in treatment or a therapeutic process. Does transformation require a person fully accept the therapeutic system? Is a coerced therapeutic process still effective? This article engages with these questions by situating the therapeutic process in psychiatric custody for American adolescents. The youth in treatment accept that transformation and even healing take place but locate the etiology and form of this change differently than the official treatment paradigms. This case study illustrates that transformation and therapeutic process as multifaceted, especially in coercive contexts, and the efficacy of the therapeutic process as shaped by the life stage and political contexts of those engaged in the process.

The Aesthetics of Qualitative (Re)search

The author offers a reflexive recount of an ethnography conducted at a tourist heritage site. Inspired by critical writings on the aesthetics of (social) scientific practices and texts, the author examines ethnographic practices that take place in the conjoined coercive contexts of tourism and national commemoration. A number of affinities between ethnographic, touristic, and commemoration practices are highlighted, and so are the epistemologies on which they rest and types of knowledge(s) that they help produce. These affinities include the role of authenticity and unmediated encounters, collecting and documenting practices, and lastly practices involved in presentation of artifacts (data vs. souvenirs). The narrative account/recount that the author offers involves visual images, and an examination of the technologies that produce and process them. These present the centrality if visuality in both contexts of tourism (photography, gaze, seeing) and contemporary ethnographic practices and the ways that visual images tell and conceal stories concerning the production of knowledge in social science research.

ASSERTION AND CAPITULATION

AbstractThe context or manner of an utterance can alter or nullify the speech‐act that would normally be performed by utterances of that sort. Coercive contexts have this effect on some kinds of seeming assertions: they end up being non‐assertoric, and are merely capitulations. An earlier version of this view is clarified, defended, and extended partly in response to a useful critique by Roy Sorensen. I examine some complications that arise regarding resistance to speaking under coercion when ideological or religious commitments are implicated.

Beyond “Authenticity”: Migration and the Epistemology of “Voice” in Mary Prince’s History of Mary Prince and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba

In “Beyond ‘Authenticity’: Migration and the Epistemology of ‘Voice’ in Mary Prince’s History of Mary Prince and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba ,” I suggest that the idea of “authenticity,” often deployed in feminist and postcolonial readings of women’s narratives, is too narrow a construct to be as productive in literary scholarship as it has been assumed. A parallel claim is that Mary Prince’s 1831 slave narrative offers a historical precedent and maintains a contemporary textual precedent in 20 th -century diasporic texts like Maryse Condé’s 1986 neo-slave narrative I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem . In both of these narratives, “authenticity” is obscured as migration and travel profoundly shape women’s identity politics. Much of the scholarly criticism that surrounds these texts, however, often presents both Prince and Tituba as independent, speaking subjects, each with a “true voice.” Such criticism, while well-intended in its attempt to offer and recuperate liberating presentations of women’s “voices,” maintains singular and limited understandings of a monolithic “black” or “female” experience.

Cops and Robbers: Selective Literalism in American Criminal Law

Police often ask people to consent to a search of their person or possessions. Many people agree to allow such searches because they interpret the officers' ostensible “requests” as indirect commands. Yet courts routinely interpret police utterances in this situation as requests. A similar issue arises in the context of custodial interrogation. People being interrogated are inclined to invoke their right to counsel in relatively indirect or tentative terms. Yet courts often conclude that the suspect did not really “request” the presence of counsel. We refer to this inconsistency as “selective literalism,” by which we mean that courts selectively consider pragmatic circumstances in interpreting the speech of suspects. Using analytical tools from linguistic theory, this article explores how courts employ selective literalism. It further examines some of the consequences of this inconsistent use of interpretive devices, both practically and jurisprudentially.

Evaluation practice and the tricky issue of coercive contexts

Recently, the study of evaluation theory and practice has been elevated to a position of prominence. However, while evaluation theory is burgeoning, failure to consider situations of coercion and oppression renders evaluation practice fundamentally deficient. In this paper the search for appropriate methods of evaluation for use in coercive contexts is initiated. Based on Flood and Jackson's (1991) recommendation for the use of Ulrich's Critical System Heuristics (1983) in coercive contexts, the principles of this methodology are used to guide the search. Following the alignment of Critical System Heuristics with Stake's Responsive Evaluation (1980), the potential contribution of critical evaluation methodologies to the general field of critical management studies is assessed.

Enhancing the process of methodology choice in total systems intervention (TSI) and improving chances of tackling coercion

The process of Choice in TSI is reexamined in this paper. Previously, methods2 have been understood to have a given and immediate purpose and are employed when this is judged to be most suitable in the circumstances. In this paper we suggest that methods can be operated in ways that meet purposes not provided by their founding theoretical underpinnings. We develop this argument by pointing to cases where cybernetic or soft methods are driven by purposes and principles given to emancipatory methodology—in a quest to address more effectively issues of coercion. This may be necessary when explicit and direct employment of emancipatory methodology is not sensitive enough to political dynamics, where certain people may feel overly threatened by its language and consequently feel the need to subvert its use. We develop a defence for thisoblique use of cybernetic and soft methods in coercive contexts, and extend the argument to suggest that all methods can be employed in such a way.

Hard and Soft or in Coercive Contexts

Hard and Soft or in Coercive Contexts

Hard and Soft or in Coercive Contexts

Hard and Soft or in Coercive Contexts