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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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of psychopathology including substance use disorders in a sample of detained female systematic offenders.Design/methodology/approach – All case files of female systematic offenders who had been subjected to a special court order for systematic offenders in the period 2004-2014 were studied. A total of 81 fairly complete case files were selected for the study. These were all systematic offenders as they had been sentenced for at least 25 offences with an average of 102 offences over a period of 17.5 years. Findings – All except one woman were addicted to substances in the past year, with an average duration of addiction of 21 years. In addition, 53 per cent were diagnosed with another DSM Axis I disorder and 73 per cent were diagnosed with a personality disorder. Furthermore, 32-59 per cent were found to haveintellectual dysfunctions. In total, 12 per cent had one type of the above disorders, 43 per cent two types, 31 per cent three types and 14 per cent all four types. The prevalence rates of these disorders were higher than those reported in other prison studies.Research limitations/implications – It is concluded that female systematic offenders can be characterised as problematic in many respects. Even in such a problematic group treatment can be provided.Originality/value – The present study is the only study that provides prevalence data of mental disorders among female systematic offenders.
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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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