According to Zillmann (2000) viewers function as “untiring moral monitors”; relentlessly coming to moral judgments about the actions and motives of protagonists and antagonists. How does this “moral monitoring” apply to morally ambiguous crime TV drama that features unlawful protagonists? The current exploratory study is based on qualitative interviews (N = 3 × 20) that aimed to provide insight in the grounds of moral evaluations of three selected episodes of mobster drama series The Sopranos. Viewers of three distinctive moral subcultures (i.e., prisoners, law enforcement agents, and civilians) were interviewed. The results revealed that the majority of prisoners and law enforcement agents grounded their moral evaluations mostly in their professional opinions and experiences, and came to fairly strict, yet different moral evaluations. In contrast, most of the civilians had a more “lenient” association with narratives and characters. Civilians generally based their evaluations on the morally ambiguous story world, and therefore showcased more nuances in their moral judgments.
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Little is known about the link between fatherhood and reoffending among people released from prison. This study examined the association between fatherhood, residential status, and registered reconviction rates using data from a Dutch pre-trial prison cohort sample (N = 845, 42.5% fathers). The results show that fathers who co-resided with a partner and children 6 months after release from prison were significantly less likely to be reconvicted 18 months after release than non-fathers and fathers who did not reside with a partner and children. This paper concludes that fathers’ larger family context and reoffending risk factors need to be viewed in conjunction to understand the relationship between fatherhood and reoffending after release from prison.
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Women and girls represent only a minority in the penitentiary system and in forensic mental health care. About 6%–10% of both prison and forensic psychiatric populations in Western countries comprise women (see for the most recent offi cial statistics in the UK w ww.gov. uk/government, in Canada w ww.statcan.gc.ca, and in the US w ww.bjs.gov) . However, there seems to be widespread agreement that in the past 20 years female offending has been on the rise, especially violent offending and particularly among young women ( Miller, Malone, and Dodge, 2010; M oretti, Catchpole, and Odgers, 2005) . Overall, a disproportionate growth of females entering the criminal justice system and forensic mental health care has been observed in many countries (for reviews, see Nicholls, Cruise, Greig, and Hinz, 2015; Odgers, Moretti, and Reppucci, 2005 ; Walmsley, 2015) . In addition, it should be noted that the ‘dark number’ for women is suggested to be bigger than for men. Offi cial prevalence rates of female offending might constitute an underestimation as women usually commit less reported offences, for example, domestic violence (N icholls, Greaves, Greig, and Moretti, 2015) . Furthermore, it has been found that – if apprehended – girls and women are treated more leniently by professionals and the criminal justice system. Generally, they receive lower prison sentences and are more often admitted to civil psychiatric institutions instead of receiving a prison sentence or mandatory forensic treatment after committing violence ( Javdani, Sadeh, and Verona, 2011 ; Jeffries, Fletcher, and Newbold, 2003 ). Hence, although female offenders compared to male offenders are a minority, female violence is a substantial problem that deserves more attention. Our understanding of female offenders is hindered by the general paucity of theoretical and empirical investigations of this population. In order to improve current treatment and assessment practices, our knowledge and understanding of female offenders should be enlarged and optimised (d e Vogel and Nicholls, 2016 ).
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