Harsh Punishment Research Articles

And Love Itself by Drago Jancar

Reviewed by: And Love Itself by Drago Jancar Elizabeth Fifer DRAGO JANCAR And Love Itself Trans. David Limon. Dallas. Dalkey Archive Press. 2022. 352 pages. ALTHOUGH HE IS RELATIVELY UNKNOWN in the United States, the philosophical and historical sweep of the fiction of Slovenian author Drago Jancar has been compared to Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, and Günter Grass. Jancar was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2011 and in 2014 received the Best Foreign Book Prize and the Kresnick Award for best novel of the year for I Saw Her That Night. In And Love Itself, a World War II novel, Jancar asks if love can exist in wartime. Its title comes from Byron's poem "So We'll Go No More a Roving": "For the sword outwears its sheath, / And the soul outwears the breast, / And the heart must pause to breathe, / And love itself have rest." These lines accurately summarize the action. Sofia and Valentin's prewar romance will return to the narrative again and again but only as memory. Jancar skillfully changes points of view, from the peasants in the villages to the Resistance fighters in the woods adjacent to the front lines. When people speak Slovene instead of German or Russian, it signals their nationalism. Intermingling present and past, he moves around the war years to provide a Slovenian perspective. From their hidden camps the Partisans sing, "We bring thunder to the devil, / With weapon in hand. / Write justice in the blood, / Demanded by our land." Fierce love for their land fuels their fighting spirit. That land's occupiers threaten harsh penalties for not speaking German. They decimate the population either by murdering people on the spot or sending them to camps on trumped-up charges. The army of occupation and the Resistance each use interrogation to test loyalty. Trust is a scarce commodity—both sides fear infiltration. Successive waves of armies pass through—Germans, Russians, Partisans, bandits—each taking their toll on the local populace. In scratched photographs, faces appear blurred, looking out of ruined windows. As they push the Germans out, the Russians kill collaborators. When factions disagree about guilt, Slovenes fight Slovenes, brother against brother. The hour of victory brings revenge. Love and poetry can conquer everything except war. Jancar has created a tender love story about the impossibility of love, about heroism without reward. Elizabeth Fifer Center Valley, Pennsylvania Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Status Offences Against Children in Malaysia: A Necessary Evil or Unfairly Discriminatory?

In Malaysia, juvenile delinquency is a severe problem. Enacting status offences is one of the legislative remedies to the situation. Status offences refer to the acts that are not criminal per se but become offences because the perpetrators are children. Status offences are covered by a number of legal provisions in Malaysia. This paper aims to look into Malaysia's status offences, the rationale behind them, and whether they violate the equality clause under Article 8(1) of the Federal Constitution. This study applied doctrinal legal research methodology that focused on the legal principles in the statutes and legal institutions. This study conducted doctrinal analysis of case law, legal provisions, legal texts, and databases. This study found that the parens patriae concept explains status offences in public policy. Furthermore, the judicial interpretation of Article 8(1) allows for a distinction to be made between children and adults. The major findings of this research is that in Malaysia, there are wide arrays of laws that can be considered as status offences targeting children. This essay finds that status offences are still relevant but that diversion and rehabilitation should precede harsh penalties when dealing with child offenders. This research suggests that future research focuses on status offences from the perspective of children’s right to life and liberty.

Chronic Absenteeism and Its Impact on the Learning Outcomes of Primary Grade Students in India

This article addresses one of the most critical yet overlooked problems of the excessive absence of students in primary grades in India. Considering the intuitive link between students’ attendance and achievements, this article empirically investigates the incidences and causes of chronic absenteeism while examining the variations in the attainment of foundational skills of primary students. Using data from the India Human Development Survey, round II, the authors find a continuous decline in the attainment of foundational skills among students as the absenteeism rate increases from ‘normal’ to ‘chronic’, clearly indicating that attendance works! Further, the logistic regression model shows that poor health conditions of a child, larger school distance, extra school working hours, teaching factors and harsh punishments are among the major contributing factors leading to chronic absence among students. Early attention and strict policy interventions are required due to their direct implications on the cognitive growth of young minds and the quality and productivity of the overall school education. JEL Codes: I21, I24, I28

An Investigation of School Characteristics Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya

The Education Sector in Kenya has faced many challenges particularly school dropouts, which is an indicator of low internal efficiency during the past two decades. The Kenyan government came up with 100% transition rate from primary school to secondary school in 2018 to increase access to secondary school education which will in turn result in increased completion rates. This study sought to investigatee School Characteristics Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya for the period between the year 2019 and 2022. This study examined why students drop out of school and suggested recommendations on what can be done about it. This study was guided by the objective: to investigate the school-related factors leading to school dropout. The study was based on The Classical Theory of Equal Opportunities and Social Darwinism which assert that each person is born with a given amount of capacity, which, to a large extent, is inherited and cannot be substantially changed. Descriptive Survey Research Design was used to collect data from Principals, teachers and students of the sampled Mixed Day Secondary schools. Piloting was carried out. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. Percentages and Frequencies were used to analyze the data. Analysis was done by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It was found out that the following school characteristics lead to students dropout; poor performance, expulsion, school dislike, long distance to school, gender violence, inadequate learning resources, harsh punishment and hatred towards a teacher. The study suggests three recommendations to curb school dropouts. The findings are hoped to benefit the teachers, school principals and other school managers as well as the Ministry of Education to put necessary measures in place to curb the dropout problem. The findings will also add new knowledge to the existing one.

A Review of the Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Adolescent Depression under the Influence of Chinese and American Culture

The probability of depression in contemporary adolescents is increasing, and the parenting style is closely related to it. Chinese and American scholars have conducted a lot of experiments and research discussions based on their own national conditions, but there is still a lack of comprehensive papers to compare and analyze the research conclusions of the two countries. The purpose of this study is to make a comparative analysis of the relevant research results on the influence of parenting styles on adolescent depression under Chinese and American culture, and to summarize the similarities and differences between Chinese and American parenting styles on adolescent depression. The study found that Chinese and American teens were also at greater risk for depression; In terms of the correlation between parental rearing style and adolescent depression, there is a significant correlation between the variables both in China and the United States; Parents of depressed adolescents in both China and the United States showed excessive use of harsh punishment, interference, denial, and overprotection. At the same time, the emphases and attitudes of depression related research in China and the United States are different.

The verdict to N. Sarkozy: Corruption in public sector and corporate corruption in the eyes of society

Corruption is a multifaced and controversial phenomenon, attracting attention of various social sciences. Conflictology considers corruption as a conflict destroying the social structure. Corruption entails the clash of different interests including interests of largescale business, government, and interests of specific officials. Society treats corporate and public governance corruption differently, aggravating the conflict and the counteraction against corruption. The court decision of 2021 sentencing the 23rd President of France Nicholas Sarkozy allows to demonstrate the controversies in public opinion to the corruption in public governance and corporations. Besides the general scientific methods, the authors addressed to the survey of students studying politics. Corruption in public governance is explicitly considered to be a menace to the society and criminal offence. Corruption in corporations is a menace from the public opinion perspective, but, at the same time, it is considered a constrained and acceptable form of work albeit unethical. Largescale corporations are issuing ethical codes with anticorruption provisions, however in fact they are inefficient and ignored by their employees. Admitting corruption to be a constrained phenomenon more harsh penalty for corrupted top managers is at the same time desirable. The corruption scandals around ex-president of France Sarkozy demonstrate the reputation losses of big multinationals while their top managers escaped the responsibility and fell out of the social opinion spotlight. The research shows the fission of interests and sophistication of social conflict around corruption.

The Female Poisoner’s Fate: Accounting for Lenient Outcomes in New South Wales, Australia, 1855-1955

Most scholarly histories of the female poisoner use high-profile cases to explore the cultural, social, political and legal construction and repercussions of women’s poisoning crimes. Yet, the study of notorious poisoners has obscured how most women tried for poisoning were treated by the courts. By deploying a longitudinal analysis of women prosecuted for murder or attempted murder by poisoning, this article challenges the feminist historiographical and criminological consensus that women poisoners are invariably demonised by the press and subjected to harsh penalties by the courts. It examines the former penal colony of New South Wales, Australia, from the mid-1800s to the mid-1950s, over which time 47 women were prosecuted and just one was executed. Through four case studies, it illustrates the prosecution outcomes that befell most women tried for poisoning. This lenience cannot be attributed solely to the race, ethnicity, class, and sexual respectability of women on trial for poisoning. Analysing the female poisoner’s fate must also take into consideration victim-offender relationships, the purported motives of accused women, the nature of specific poisons, the statutory framing of poisoning, and the shifting context of penal politics.

State Child Maltreatment Policies and Disparities in Substantiation: A Study of State-Administered Child Welfare Systems in the U.S.

Although several studies have examined child and family factors associated with substantiation, less research has explored the role of state child maltreatment policies in substantiating cases of alleged maltreatment. In parallel, there is growing pressure to reduce racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities across the span of a child welfare case. We examined the relationship between state child maltreatment policies and substantiation, with child race/ethnicity as a moderator of this relationship. Data came from the 2019 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) and the State Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Policy Database. Using a series of multi-level binary logistic models, we calculated the odds of substantiation based on child characteristics (e.g., child age, number of types of alleged maltreatment) and state policies (e.g., state definitions of maltreatment that include exposure to domestic violence, harsh punishment). Approximately 17% of the variance in substantiation occurs between states. Although we did not find a direct effect of state policy on substantiation, there were significant interaction terms, in that inclusion of exposure to domestic violence, harsh punishment, or educational neglect in state policy was more strongly associated with substantiation for children of color than white children. Implications for policy and research are explored.

Tempering the Taste for Vengeance: Information About Prisoners and Policy Choices in Chile

Punitive anti-crime policies in the Americas have contributed to steadily increasing rates of incarceration. Harsh penalties are often demanded by citizens, making them attractive to politicians. Yet the contextual determinants of participation in crime are rarely understood by the public. In this article, we employ a survey experiment conducted in Chile in order to examine how the provision of information about the prison population shapes tastes for punitive anti-crime policies. Respondents in the treatment group received information about the low educational attainment of prisoners. This information led to substantial changes in policy preferences. Tasked with allocating resources to anti-crime policies using a fixed budget, treated respondents assigned between 20% and 50% more to socially oriented anti-crime policies (relative to punitive policies) than respondents in the control group, and they reduced their support for “ iron fist” policing. Our findings suggest that providing information to citizens might change the policy equilibrium in the Americas.

Genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality predict harshness of recommended punishment.

Genetic essentialism is a set of beliefs holding that certain categories have a heritable, intrinsic, and biological basis. The current studies explore people's genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality, how such essentialism relates to beliefs about appropriate punishment, and the kinds of judgments and motivations that underlie these associations. Study 1 validated a novel task, in which respondents estimated how possible it would be for a child to inherit criminal behavior from a sperm donor with whom they had no contact. Studies 2-4 used this task to address how genetic essentialist beliefs related to the harmfulness of a crime and the harshness of recommended punishment. Results indicated a tendency to essentialize both low- and high-harm crimes, though genetic essentialism was higher for more harmful crimes. Moreover, genetic essentialist beliefs predicted recommendations for harsher punishments, with retributive and protective motivations, as well as perceptions of recidivism risk, partially mediating this association. Further, Studies 3 and 4 found that genetic essentialism positively predicted support for harsh punishments such as the death penalty, as well as support for directing financial resources more toward law enforcement and less toward social support. Lay theories about criminality may have profound implications for decisions about appropriate punishment for wrongdoers, as well as broader policy decisions about crime, punishment, and resource allocation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

The Criminalization of the Cannabis Plant: Decolonizing the Harmful Enforcement

The paper examines the history and current state of cannabis-related laws and enforcement and argues for reformed policies. The history of cannabis laws has been used to control, punish, and oppress marginalized groups of people and reinforce the power structures that were established during colonial rule. The discriminatory policies have disproportionately especially hurt Black, Brown, and Indigenous people with harsh punishment for those who use the cannabis plant which has various medicinal, social, religious, cultural, and textile uses. The strict laws that criminalize cannabis harm society by enforcing an environment that empowers violent organized crime groups and pharmaceutical companies who profit off cannabis being illegal. Cannabis reform including decriminalization and legalization may be a viable option for many nations to consider as a harm reduction strategy.

An evaluation of parental attitudes and attachment in children with primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis: A case-control study

Enuresis is a common childhood disorder associated with the lack of bladder control that would be expected based on the child's age or developmental stage. Enuresis affects the lives of both children and their parents due to the burden it entails in daily life. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the dimensions of attachment between children with enuresis and their mothers, as well as the relationship with parental attitudes. This study included 70 children were diagnosed with primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) based on the guidelines of the International Children's Continence Society (ICCS) along with 70 children with not enuresis and any psychiatric disorders. We asked the mothers of all participants to complete the Parental Attitude Research Instrument, and the children to complete The Experiences in Close Relationships Scale Revised - Middle Childhood. Both groups in our study were well balanced in terms of gender, age, and sociodemographic data. Children with enuresis were found to score higher on the anxiety and avoidance dimensions of the attachment scale with statistical significance (p<0.01). Also, on the scale completed by the mothers of children with enuresis, the subtests indicating overprotective parenting and strict discipline presented significant differences (p<0.01). Data obtained in our study demonstrate that enuresis can have a negative effect on the mother-child attachment and parental attitudes. The use of harsh language or punishment by the mother in response to the failure of the child to achieve nocturnal dryness may affect the attachment between the mother and the child, and cause the child to experience negative emotions such as shame, anxiety, embarrassment, frustration, and loneliness. We think that it would be useful to evaluate the mother-child attachment and the crisis experienced by the family after each wetting incidence in combination with parental attitudes and behaviors in the treatment of enuresis cases.

Child abuse-related homicides precipitated by caregiver use of harsh physical punishment

BackgroundPhysical punishment (PP), which may involve the use of physical force, has been linked to negative effects in children and can escalate to abusive or harsh PP, resulting in injury or death. ObjectiveTo examine characteristics associated with fatal abuse involving caregiver use of harsh PP. MethodsData were from the National Violent Death Reporting System in 40 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for years 2012–2018. Qualitative analysis was used to code textual material into categorial data, and logistic regression was used to examine associations between various characteristics and harsh PP. ResultsApproximately 4 % (n = 87) of the 2414 abuse-related homicides were known to have been precipitated by caregiver use of harsh PP. In adjusted models, homicides had greater odds of being harsh PP-related when incidents involved mothers' male companions (versus fathers), victims had a previous nonfatal injury (versus no previous nonfatal injury), and another adult participated in the fatal incident or had awareness of prior abuse/neglect (versus those without this characteristic). Two common precipitators of caregivers' use of harsh PP were: 1) child had a bathroom-related accident/soiled clothes (23.0 %; n = 20), and 2) child disobeyed a directive given by the perpetrator (17.2 %; n = 15). ConclusionsThis study highlights characteristics associated with fatal abuse precipitated by caregiver use of harsh PP. Children were physically punished for developmentally normative behaviors. Ensuring caregivers are aware of and use effective parenting practices that focus on use of nonphysical discipline and promote healthy child development, may help decrease harsh PP and physical abuse-related homicides among children.

The right to exit as national and transnational governance: The case of Eritrea

AbstractIn this article, we seek to explain some of the seeming paradoxes of extreme restrictions on the right to exit in the case of Eritrea. While the government has denied passports and exit visas to all but a few categories of Eritrean resident citizens in order to avoid a mass exodus from the country, and imposed harsh punishments on those found crossing the border illegally, the government has also institutionalised policies to “welcome” absconders back. We argue that restrictions on the “right to exit” make this ostensibly more conciliatory position possible because they constitute such a powerful tool of both national and transnational governance. We show the long‐term impacts that people's inability to leave Eritrea legally has on their access to other rights, in particular the right to family life, and how this enables the Eritrean government to continue to discipline people's behaviour long after they have crossed the border. Alongside the ways in which the Eritrean government thus benefits financially and politically from large‐scale emigration from the country, despite its protestations to the contrary, we show how limits on the right to exit provide yet another way for authoritarian governments to exercise transnational reach.

Crime and (a Preference for) Punishment: The Effects of Drug Policy Reform on Policing Activity

Researchers still know very little about the incentives of police. Using geocoded crime data and a novel source of within-city variation in punishment severity, I shed light on enforcement behavior. I find a 13 percent decrease in drug arrests in parts of a city where drug sale penalties were weakened. There is no displacement of nondrug offenses. If offenders are significantly deterred by harsher penalties, as the law intended and Becker’s model of criminal behavior predicts, drug arrests should increase in areas with weaker penalties. My results are therefore consistent with police officers treating enforcement effort and punishment severity as complements. I also find that citywide crime and drug use do not increase after the reform. I thus call into question the War on Drugs view of punishment and suggest that certain types of enforcement can be reduced without incurring large public safety costs.

Review: En tela de juicio: Justicia penal, homicidios célebres y opinión pública (México, siglo XX), by Elisa Speckman Guerra

Review: <i>En tela de juicio: Justicia penal, homicidios célebres y opinión pública (México, siglo XX)</i>, by Elisa Speckman Guerra

Robachicos: Historia del secuestro infantil en México (1900–1960)

This heartfelt and disturbing book investigates the heinous crime of child abduction from 1900 through 1960 in Mexico City. Drawing on compelling analyses of newspapers, legislation, films, comic books, and juvenile court records in Mexico City, Susana Sosenski reveals the emotional and economic connotations of abducted children as cultural symbols and how the fears about child abduction shaped the parental experience and public perception of kidnapping. Child kidnappers, or robachicos, engaged in different (if occasionally overlapping) types of abduction or kidnapping (for example, ransom kidnapping and extortion, kidnapping by women due to a “desire to be mothers,” parental kidnapping by men who inflicted gender violence on former partners, and the abduction of children for labor and sexual exploitation). Sosenski brilliantly argues that media and citizen fears in response to the abduction of children from well-to-do families resulted in prescribed harsh punishment for perpetrators of child abduction. However, such particular moments of heightened fear in moral panics paved the way for the exclusion of children from public spaces and sustained the impunity and negligence of the Mexican authorities in relation to child abduction.Sosenski has organized her primary sources in a sophisticated argument structured in five chapters that allow her to develop the thesis on how the fear of child abduction, propagated in the print media's massive coverage, increasingly expanded to new technologies of radio, movie newsreels, and comic books and exacerbated class, racial, spatial, and gender disparities in Mexican children's lives. Chapter 1 introduces the moral panics over child kidnappers in Porfirian Mexico City; Sosenski notes how anti-Blackness shaped heightened fear in reports about the abduction of poor children for work in Oaxaca and Yucatán. Chapter 2 unveils the economic and emotional value of children in working-class and middle-class households and the strangers who seized or kidnapped children for labor and sexual exploitation. Sosenski persuasively investigates how common understandings of girls' sexuality fed into family-based concepts of honor and chastity; she shows how the practices and narratives of girls' bodies have perpetuated rape culture in Mexico. Chapter 3 shows how, in the autumn of 1945, the sensational coverage of the kidnapping of Fernando Bohigas, a light-skinned two-year-old from a middle-class family, shaped the response of well-to-do Mexicans to child abduction and resulted in the formation of civic associations and support for the return of the death penalty (which had been eliminated in 1929). The middle-class 29-year-old María Elena Rivera Quiroga, the boy's kidnapper, became a cause célèbre in the public sphere by making a case that she had abducted Bohigas because of her “desire to be a mother” (p. 131). Newspapers, including La Prensa, Novedades, El Nacional, and Magazine de Policía, also encouraged readers to participate in identifying potential child kidnappers in Mexico City.In chapter 4, Sosenski highlights that, pressured by readers in the aftermath of six-year-old Norma Granat's ransom kidnapping, lawmakers increased punishment for kidnappers from five to forty years and equated the crime of child abduction with the most serious form of homicide (p. 166). The 1955 reform of the 1931 penal code after Granat's kidnapping redefined the crime of child abduction as the “unlawful removal of a child under the age of 12 by those who do not exercise full parental authority” (p. 166). In chapter 5, Sosenski highlights how the gendered perspectives of boyhood and girlhood shaped depictions of child kidnapping in press, film, radio, and comic books while promoting the enclosure of children in homes under parents' strict supervision and the surveillance of children by police in public spaces.Sosenki's main contribution to Mexican cultural history and to the burgeoning field of the history of emotions is her employment of emotions as an analytical category, which allows her to examine how new narratives and images of child abduction were disseminated in mass media and consumed avidly by urban audiences. Sosenski convincingly engages multiple historiographies and scholarship across fields in sociology, children's studies, geography, and media studies. This book is an indispensable reference for understanding the emergence of new forms of criminal behavior and police practices that revolve around child abduction and the increasingly rapacious journalistic exploitation of violence against children in Mexico City. Although the book's focus is Mexico City, it will certainly become a reference for students and scholars interested in furthering their research on the extent to which the linkages of fear and childhood in mass media and radical journalism shaped the mechanisms by which the Partido Revolucionario Institucional ruled provincial cities since the Cold War. Future studies might elucidate how the conceptions of order and fear articulated by tabloids, crime sheets, and magazines reached far beyond the middle class and shaped the experiences of youth and policing in the growing informal neighborhoods that housed the vast majority of Latin America's urban poor.

Tribal Rights in the Novel Uyarathin Thalvukal (Lows of Elevation)

Human rights are great. To make man live as a human being. It is common to all, regardless of country, race, language, or religion. The United Nations organization and the Constitution of India have taken various initiatives to protect these human rights. However, it can be seen here and there that the dominant class finds pleasure in suppressing the poor and exploiting their labour. The poor, who live in ignorance and fear, are subservient to the dominant class without even being aware of their rights. The only category of such simple people is the tribals living in the hills. Since neither the government's help nor the welfare schemes have reached these people, they are living in a very lower position than the common poor living on the plains. In his novel "Uyarathin Thalvukal", Su.Samudram has recorded the lives of Malayalis, the tribals living in the Kalvarayan Hills. This novel emphasizes that even though they live in the high mountains, their lives are at a very low level without any rights. The essence of their labour is absorbed into the luxurious life of the Jagirs living on the plains. Their lives were ruined by exorbitant taxation and harsh punishments. When they are freed from the Jagirs, their lives are filled with misery by the forest officials. The women of the Kalvarayan hills fall prey to the physical hunger of the dominant class. The purpose of this article is to examine and highlight the rights that have been violated in the lives of these people who have no food to eat and who do not have proper treatment for their ailments through the novel "Lows of Elevation".

COMMUNITY-BASED AND RESTORATIVE-JUSTICE INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE OVER-POLICING

COMMUNITY-BASED AND RESTORATIVE-JUSTICE INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE OVER-POLICING