The Governance of Sexual Offending Across Europe: Penal Policies, Political Economies and the Institutionalization of Risk

This article examines why England and Wales have comparatively one of the most stringent systems for the governance of sexual offending within Western Europe. While England and Wales, like the USA, have adopted broadly exclusionary, managerialist penal policies based around incapacitation and targeted surveillance, many other Western European countries have opted for more inclusionary therapeutic interventions. Divergences in state approaches to sex offender risk, particularly in relation to notification and vetting schemes, are initially examined with reference to the respective theoretical frameworks of ‘policy transfer’ and differing political economies. Chiefly, however, differences in penal policies are attributed to the social and political construction of risk and its control. There may be multiple expressions of risk relating to expert, lay, moral or emotive aspects. It is argued, however, that it is the particular convergence and alignment of these dimensions on the part of the various stakeholders in the UK – government, media, public and professional – that leads to risk becoming institutionalized in the form of punitive regulatory policies for managing the dangerous.

Relations Between Political Violence and Child Adjustment: a four-wave test of the role of emotional insecurity about community

This study further explored the impact of sectarian violence and children's emotional insecurity about community on child maladjustment using a 4-wave longitudinal design. The study included 999 mother-child dyads in Belfast, Northern Ireland (482 boys, 517 girls). Across the 4 waves, child mean age was 12.19 (SD = 1.82), 13.24 (SD = 1.83), 13.61 (SD = 1.99), and 14.66 years (SD = 1.96), respectively. Building on previous studies of the role of emotional insecurity in child adjustment, the current study examines within-person change in emotional insecurity using latent growth curve analyses. The results showed that children's trajectories of emotional insecurity about community were related to risk for developing conduct and emotion problems. These findings controlled for earlier adjustment problems, age, and gender, and took into account the time-varying nature of experience with sectarian violence. Discussion considers the implications for children's emotional insecurity about community for relations between political violence and children's adjustment, including the significance of trajectories of emotional insecurity over time.