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Most punishment theories acknowledge neither the full extent of the harms which punishment risks, nor the caring practices which punishment entails. Consequently, I shall argue, punishment in most of its current conceptualizations is inconsistent with treating offenders as equals qua persons. The nature of criminal punishment, and of our interactions with offenders in punishment decision-making and delivery, risks causing harm to offenders. Harm is normalized when central to definitions of punishment, desensitizing us to unintended harms and obscuring caring practices. Offenders may be partially silenced and excluded by mainstream criminal justice practices which limit interaction between offenders and practitioners. When we ignore significant harms, or silence and exclude, we treat others as passive nonsubjects. This partially objectifies offenders, and is inconsistent with treatment as equals. Penal theories employing harm-centred and harm-normalizing definitions of punishment can provide few resources to help practitioners either avoid, or recognize and respond to, harms. Care ethics, by contrast, motivates the avoidance of harm, ongoing inclusive engagement, and respectful interaction with others. I argue that defining punishment without presupposing harm facilitates the identification of morally problematic harms, and recognition of caring practices. I offer a principled argument, and political and pragmatic supplementary arguments, for responding to offenders without intentional harm and with care. Principles drawn from care ethics can help to strengthen mainstream criminal practices by structuring decision-making and action. Bottom-up alternative criminal justice practices share some values with these proposed guiding principles, allowing a partial test of the principles. I consider examples of restorative justice practices, therapeutic jurisprudence, community justice and other problem-solving court practices, in addition to considering how well mainstream punishment practices measure up to these principles. My analysis illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the principles, and how they might contribute to securing treatment as equals for offenders in mainstream practices.

Up to a third of cancer patients have been shown to use some form of complementary or alternative medicine (CAM), with hospices being the largest provider of this care in the UK. The high demand for CAM among UK cancer patients and increasing political pressure to develop CAM services has led to a more integrative approach to cancer care, though progress is hindered by a narrow focus on medical determinants of efficacy. Subsequently, calls for a wider research perspective have been made in order to encourage a more complex and multi-dimensional analysis of this provision. The importance of setting and in particular, ‘place’, is recognised by the field of health geography, and it is suggested there is a need for a focus on how ‘place’ affects CAM and vice versa. There is little mention of hospice as a place for such research, yet as the largest provider of complementary therapies (CT) to cancer patients in the UK, hospices represent an important area for research. Though some studies have engaged with geographical perspectives and metaphors, there has been no consideration of hospices as places in themselves, which have utilised a humanistic geographical framework. This study explores patient, staff and therapist interpretations of their experiences of a hospice day care unit as a place. It seeks an understanding of how space and place affects, and is affected by the use and provision of complementary therapies within a hospice day care unit. The concept of therapeutic landscapes (TL) was initially proposed as an analytical framework. However, through the analysis of the data it was evident that concepts from humanistic geography combined with a phenomenology of medicine provided a more fitting conceptual framework for a critical examination of the data. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach has been adopted. The sample incorporates day care patients, complementary therapists and healthcare professionals. Photo-elicitation interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation and postcard diaries have been used. Twenty-three participants (6 therapists – 6 health care staff and 11 patients) were interviewed using a combination of these data collection methods. I propose three existential modes of being that characterised the patients’ experiences of hospice day care as a place. Drifting - characterised by states of uncertainty and anxiety; Sheltering characterised by homeliness, familiarity, and security; and Venturing, characterised by seeking and exploring new experiences, places and spaces. Through an examination of these modes, it was discovered that patients found ‘home’, both within the self and within the world. This was possible through various facets of the hospice including complementary therapies, which were seen as an integral part of the holistic landscape of care.

The first chapter of this thesis critically reviews the existing literature on Restorative Justice (RJ) for crimes of sexual violence. It considers whether RJ has a contribution to make to the psychological wellbeing of survivors, provides clinicians working in the field of sexual violence with an insight into the potential strengths, weaknesses and gaps in the evidence base for RJ for sexual violence and makes recommendations for further research. The reviewed literature revealed some evidence that supports the use of RJ for crimes of sexual violence. In particular, survivors and professionals who had experienced RJ first-hand reported positive outcomes. However, due to the sensitive nature of sexual violence and the potential for re-traumatisation of the survivor, it was clear from the reviewed papers that RJ needed to be approached with caution. Indeed, where RJ was employed, extensive preparation was consistently identified as a key element to its success. The aim of the second chapter is to gain an in-depth understanding of the perspectives of staff on inter-agency responses to survivors of sexual violence. Professionals from the National Health Service and voluntary sector were interviewed using focus group methodology. Data from focus groups was analysed using thematic analysis. The results highlighted that individual and organisational barriers impacted on services' ability to work together and respond effectively to survivors. The final chapter provides a reflective account of the process of conducting a qualitative research study with professionals who work with survivors of sexual violence. Reflections focus on the impact of emotions on sexual violence research. The account considers both personal and epistemological factors relevant to the research process.

This research dissertation is carried out on behalf of the Stauros Foundation, a Christian agency which endeavours to offer pastoral care and support to people with an alcohol dependency problem. The sample population consisted of 207 individuals who completed a questionnaire that covered five categories of interest, for example, background biographical, alcohol and family background, drinking habits, effects of drinking habits and perceived pastoral needs.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

As a consequence of economic change and urban decline, stigma has become a feature of many neighbourhoods in western industrialised cities. Based upon the experiences of two housing estates located on the periphery of the Scottish city of Dundee, this thesis investigates the processes involved in the creation of poor neighbourhood reputation and examines the ways in which stigma influences residents. The study uses qualitative data from a large number of in-depth interviews and focus groups with residents, non-residents and professional stakeholders to illuminate how stigma was understood and experienced from different perspectives. The thesis argues that although the activity of labelling represents a pervasive social enterprise that is generally carried out with no intention to cause harm, it can have inadvertent consequences of negative discrimination and disadvantage. This assertion is demonstrated in the context of neighbourhood stigma and its ability to exert a powerful influence on the material and psychological well being of residents, which contributes towards their experience of disadvantage and exclusion from important aspects of economic, social and cultural life. The thesis also proposes that neighbourhood stigma is more harmful where disadvantage already exists, thereby perpetuating stigma and intensifying social exclusion. The thesis concludes by offering suggestions for tackling the problem of poor neighbourhood reputation and stigma in regeneration initiatives.

The results from this study indicated that the accessibility of negative alcohol memory associations was higher in alcohol contexts as participants generated more alcohol-related responses to the negative alcohol-related behavioural outcomes. As no effect of context was observed for positive alcohol memory associations, it was postulated that this type of memory association might become activated prior to or during decisions to consume alcohol. In addition, the results indicated that activated negative memory associations might not exert an influential role over decisions to consume alcohol. The results form this study provided further support for the Alcohol-Related Association Memory model of alcohol use. The findings from the series of studies provided support for the Alcohol-Related Association Memory model of alcohol use. In addition to replicating previous research findings, concerning the relationship between alcohol use and positive outcomes of this behaviour, the research findings showed that a relationship between alcohol use and negative outcomes of this behaviour is evident when an appropriate assessment tool is used. In addition to demonstrating that alcohol memory associations are strengthened in relation to current alcohol consumption level, the results from Study 3 showed that the length of an alcohol consumption history relates to the strength and subsequent accessibility of positive and negative alcohol memory associations. It was also indicated that activated negative alcohol memory associations might not exert an influential role over behavioural decisions. Alcohol association memory research, conducted thus far, has shown that there is a relationship between alcohol consumption experience and strength of alcohol memory associations. However, the effect that activated memory associations have on actual alcohol consumption, has not yet been established. Therefore, future research suggestions address this issue.

This is essentially a study of social control processes as they relate to juveniles. It takes the form of a case study which focuses on one institution for children under the age of 16 years. The institution in question is part of a wider system which defines itself as welfare oriented and seeking to act only in `the best interests of the child'. It is distinguished from the majority of other institutions in the system in that its remit is to hold children securely, and to that end it has a prison-like physical design. But within the official rhetoric which describes and rationalises the juvenile justice system, the prison aspects of this particular institution are denied; deprivation of liberty is defined as part of an overall caring process and is justified in terms of the child's need for treatment. This particular use of incarceration and its construction in treatment terms provide a stark example of what is seen in this study as a central conflict within the juvenlile justice system. In the course of the study the conflict emerges at an empirical level as a gap between the system's rhetoric and its practice. The sudy is set within a particular historical and conceptual framework which forms the wider theoretical background to describing and understanding the role of official rhetoric which does not describe or reflect practice within the system. Committal and treatment practices associated with the institution are examined using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The resultant demonstrable gap between rhetoric and practice is considered in the light of relevant historical, conceptual and empirical studies.

Italy is characterised by large sub-national disparities between the less developed South and the more developed Centre-North. It comes at no surprise, therefore, that it has a complex history of population flows from the South to the rest of the country. This thesis focuses on a new trend in the dynamics of internal population flows: whilst historically unskilled workers constituted the bulk of Italian migrants, in recent years, the high skilled have become increasingly mobile. As the high skilled are a crucial input to both innovative activity and economic growth, their spatial movements can potentially affect the dynamics of local development and as such, deserve thorough investigation. The work analyses this internal brain drain, focusing on recent university graduates. As a group, they are especially interesting to study: not only because, as they transit between study and work, they are particularly prone to move, but also because they have, so far, largely been neglected by scholars. Whilst the existing literature has mostly compared spatially mobile to spatially immobile individuals, this thesis distinguishes between returners (who leave the region of study to move back to their home region), migrants (who leave the region of study to move elsewhere) and stayers (who remain in the region of study). This tripartite taxonomy enables us to identify new insights on the dynamics of spatial mobility. The study draws upon a wide and interdisciplinary literature and builds an original theoretical framework to analyse the knowledge flows generated by mobile graduates. Through this framework, it carries out a comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of human capital mobility, at the micro, meso and macro level. The main contribution of the thesis is to explain the links between graduate flows and regional innovation. In addition, the study also explores the consequences of migration on job-satisfaction and the social nature of spatial mobility itself. Methodologically, it applies a wide array of econometric techniques to a survey on graduates’ entry in the labour market, developed by the Italian statistical office (ISTAT). At the policy level, the study sheds light on the connection between higher education, innovation and regional development, providing a new perspective on the long-standing debate on Italian sub-national inequalities