Assessing offenders' risk of future violent behavior continues to be an important yet controversial role of forensic psychologists. A key debate is the relative effectiveness of assessment methods. Specifically, actuarial methods (see Quinsey et al., 1998 for a review) have been compared and contrasted to clinical and structured clinical methods (see e.g. Hart, 1998; Webster et al., 1997). Proponents of each approach argue for its superiority, yet validity studies have made few formal comparisons. In advancing the available research, the present study examines systematically the type of forensic case (i.e., sexual violence versus nonsexual violence) and type of assessment method (i.e., actuarial, structured clinical, and unstructured clinical). As observed by Borum, Otto, and Golding (1993), forensic decision making can also be influenced by the presence of certain extraneous clinical data. To address these issues, psychologists and doctoral students attending the American Psychology Law Society conference were asked to make several ratings regarding the likelihood of future sexual and nonsexual violence based on data derived from actual defendants with known outcomes. Using a mixed factorial design, each of these assessment methods were investigated for its influence on decision-makers regarding likelihood of future violence and sexually violent predator commitments. Finally, the potentially biasing effects of victim impact statements on resultant decisions were also explored.

OF THE THESIS Name: Bc. Lada Broklová Specialization: Addictology Head of the thesis: Mgr. Jaroslav Šejvl Opponent: JUDr. Michaela Štefunková, Ph.D. Pages: 91 The name of the thesis: THE RELATIONSHIP OF ALCOHOL AND MURDERS OF WOMEN IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC - CASE STUDIES Abstract: The aim of the thesis is to analyze committing murders by women who are under the influence of alcohol. The theoretical part focuses on explaining the concepts and characteristics of the alcohol, crime, violent crime and the concept of alcohol as a criminogenic factor. There are the chapters specifically aimed at women and alcohol and women-murderess. The first part summarizes the essentials of what was published in this issues. The work is accompanied by several illustrative charts. The practical part focuses on qualitative research using methods of analysis of court files. The work is conceived as case study, detailed studies of three cases of murders committed by women under the influence of alcohol. Using the method of trapping patterns alcohol career perpetrators, the effect of alcohol on the offense, personality structure of perpetrator and the crime were monitored. It was found that the examined cases are without departing from the cases commonly described in the literature. Perpetrators at the time of crimes were...

The women and peace hypothesis suggests that women are more likely than men to choose peace and compromise over violent conflict, whether as ordinary citizens or as government leaders. I test this concept by analyzing the percent of women in the parliaments and executive cabinets of 93 nations over a 31-year-period, comparing these figures to the presence of violent interstate conflicts for each country-year. Controlling for wealth, democratic status, national capabilities, military expenditures, and contiguity, I find moderate support for the women and peace hypothesis. This support continues when democratic system type is interacted with the measured office. While women do not affect a nation’s likelihood of violent conflict to the same degree that other, well-documented predictors do, the effect of women in higher office is nonetheless still significant.

This study sought to explore whether PTSD symptoms in detained adolescents were differentially related to high and low patterns of emotional reactivity, as determined based on callous-unemotional (CU) traits and emotion dysregulation. Analyses revealed four distinct groups based on these criteria: a low/no trauma control group with few PTSD symptoms, and three groups whose PTSD symptoms were distinguished by symptoms of emotional numbing. The study sought to determine whether these profiles were related to distinct patterns of aggression and delinquency. Results revealed that the low/no PTSD symptom group exhibited the least aggression and delinquency. Further, results indicated that higher CU traits and violent offending are associated with a combined PTSD symptom profile. Results suggest a relationship between PTSD symptoms, delinquency, aggression, and CU traits. Findings provide support for the existence of a secondary variant of CU youth who are more emotionally dysregulated and prone to both arousal and emotional detachment.

This thesis investigates the relationship between violent conflicts and sexual and reproductive health in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The aim of the thesis is to investigate how war affects demographic outcomes across individual life courses. The thesis contributes to the research field by linking macro level conflict data measuring the intensity and frequency of violent conflict with micro level data on women’s sexual and birth histories and infant deaths across time and place. The results show that war affects infants’ survival and women’s sexual and reproductive health and behavior. The first study finds an increase of premarital first sexual intercourse during the violent conflicts in Rwanda. The second study finds evidence of a delay in the fertility transition due to the Congolese war and the lingering conflicts in East DRC. The third study suggests that the Congolese war affects infant mortality, but only post-neonatal mortality. Despite consistent evidence that conflict affects the everyday life of women and children, the mechanisms that explain this relationship are largely unknown. This thesis identifies important gaps in the research that limit our understanding of the mechanisms at work. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Submitted.</p>

Violent Crime and Its Prevention Abstract This thesis deals with violent crime and its prevention. This topic is broad, therefore only few aspects are included into this work. I focused mostly on phenomenology of violent crime, worldwide comparation and prevention of crime. The violent crime is a traditional criminologic topic, but despite that, it is still very actual. My goal was to chart violent crime and its prevention. This work is divided into six chapters. In the first chapter, basic concepts are defined. The focus of a second chapter is on phenomenology, state, dynamics and extent of the violent crime in Czech Republic and in countries, that I have chosen. In the following chapter, the state of violent crime is compared in-between some chosen countries through index crime of homicide. Crime in United States and Great Britain is compared in more detail later in this chapter. In the same chapter, relapse and latent crime is also described. In the third chapter, perpetrator of violent crime, various kinds of typology, ratios between men and women in sense of numbers of offences and age composition of offenders are discussed. Victims, victimization, types of victims, forms of experiencing harm and impact of violent crime on the victim is the main topic of the fourth chapter. The fifth chapter deals with...

[pt] A reciprocidade é um tema clássico nos estudos antropológicos, mais frequentemente abordada mediante perspectivas positivas de interação, como a troca de favores e dádivas; no entanto, a violência motivada pela troca de hostilidades e ofensas revela uma parte negativa, que insistimos em recalcar: os ciclos de vingança, as desforras. Tendo em vista entender vingança e honra enquanto elementos culturais, este trabalho procura diagnosticar como tais aspectos estão inseridos em um contexto de reciprocidade violenta, sobretudo na realidade brasileira. Para tal, examinaremos dentre outros fatores as lutas de famílias, o banditismo social, a relação entre os poderes público e privado ao longo da história e as representações culturais que simbolizam e reconstroem vingança e vingador no imaginário popular brasileiro. / [en] Reciprocity is a classical theme among anthropological studies, more frequently considered under positives perspectives of interaction, as the exchange of favors and gifts; however, the violence motivated by the exchange of hostilities and offenses reveals a negative part, strongly repressed: the cycles of revenge, the retaliations. Aimed at understanding vengeance and honor as cultural elements, this work seeks to diagnose how these aspects are inserted in a context of violent reciprocity, especially in Brazilian reality. Therefore, we will examine the blood feuds, the social banditism, relations between public and private powers throughout history and cultural representations that symbolize and helped to forge vengeance and avenger at people s imagination.

Submitted in accordance with the partial requirements for the degree of Masters in Community Based Counselling Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Witwatersrand, 2017 / Although research on violence has gained momentum over the last 3 decades, very little work on situational factors involved in violent enactments has been undertaken in South Africa. As a means to address this limitation, the aim of this project was to better understand the phenomenology of violence. Embedded in a psychosocial approach, the study subjected data collected through three staggered semi-structured interviews with nineteen incarcerated perpetrators of violent crime to a twostage secondary data analysis using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The first phase, aimed to provide a broad general phenomenological reading of these fifty-seven interviews. Thereafter, a more strategic and theory driven analysis was performed, building on the broader reports of the phenomenology of violence and the perceived situational factors. The evidence suggests that neoliberal policies and ideology may have a significant role in production of violent crime in the South African context, informing not only the behavioural repertoire of its constituency, but, also coming to shape the way in which perpetrators make meaning of their lifeworld and perpetration of violent crime. The analysis also found that impairments in mentalization appeared to play a role as a situational determinant in violent enactments, and interestingly it appeared to be influenced by a number of other relevant situational factors (e.g. the presence and use of illicit substances, peer and social presence and pressure, indicators of a possible threat to their wellbeing, the presence of gangsters, the presence of indicators of conspicuous consumption, as well as, indicators of the presence of moral disengagement). As such, this study provides strong support for further research aimed at understanding the ways in which violence comes to be produced by the structural processes of neoliberalism, it’s influence on the subjectivity of individuals in neoliberalized contexts, and its arguably corrosive effect on marginalized communities by way of its divestment, as well as, its arguably negative sociocultural impact. The project’s overall contribution to psychosocial approaches to violence lies in its demonstration of the value of bridging theories that span work on moral disengagement, conspicuous consumption, neoliberalism, mentalization theory, phenomenology, and violence. / XL2018

Denna studie syftade till att undersöka hur svenska kvällstidningar porträtterar manliga och kvinnliga våldsbrottsförövare. Vidare syftade studien till att undersöka mönster kring de svenska kvällstidningarnas språkbruk som appliceras när kvinnliga respektive manliga våldsbrottsförövare beskrivs. Data samlades in genom en strukturerad granskning av 114 nyhetsartiklar i Sveriges två största kvällstidningar. Därefter analyserades data genom en kvalitativ tematisk analys. Resultatet av studien visade att de svenska kvällstidningarna porträtterar kvinnliga och manliga våldsbrottsförövare på olika vis. Kvällstidningarna var mer benägna att använda ett mildare språkbruk och positivare begrepp när man beskrev kvinnliga förövare än när manliga förövare porträtterades. Slutsatserna av denna studie var att kvällstidningarna bidrar till att upprätthålla de könsnormer som råder i samhället, där män beskrivs som starka och försörjande medan kvinnor beskrivs som utsatta och omhändertagande, även när man beskriver personer som begått grova brott. Diskussionen förs kring vad dessa skillnader kan innebära ur ett kriminologiskt sammanhang. Bland annat angående hur kvällstidningar kan påverka samhällets uppfattningar om kvinnliga respektive manliga våldsbrottsförövare och vad denna porträttering kan medföra för konsekvenser i en kriminalpolitisk kontext / The purpose of this study is to highlight how the Swedish newspapers portray male and female violence offenders and to investigate the language used when describing and writing about male and female violence offenders. Data was gathered through a structured investigation of 114 articles from two of the biggest newspapers in Sweden. The method used was a qualitative theme analysis. The result of this study shows that Swedish newspapers portray male and female violence offenders differently. The Swedish newspapers were more likely to use a softer and more positive tone when describing female offenders compared to when describing male offenders. The conclusion of this study is that Swedish newspapers are entertaining the gender norms set by society, where men are commonly described as strong breadwinners and women described in terms of being vulnerable and caring, even when describing violence offenders. The discussion in this study revolves around the impact these differences can have from a criminology perspective. The study also discusses the potential impact and effect the newspapers can have on society’s understanding of female and male violence offenders

Abstract [en] On 27 April 2017 Sweden was struck by an Islamic terrorist attack which with various terrorist attacks in Europe, lead to increased Islamophobia and far-right populism in the country. This has seemingly led to Swedes becoming more prone to believe Islamophobic conspiracy theories. Such as the notion that Muslims are terrorists and Islam a violent religion from which terrorism springs to life. This twisted perception and further Islamophobia can lead to Muslims being perceived as a potential threat, due to being associated with terrorism. Since radicalization has been linked to social alienation and discrimination, the concern regarding increased Islamophobia in Sweden and what consequences it has on radicalization among Muslims in Sweden is warranted. Islamophobia is a form of discrimination against Muslims, but research regarding radicalization has not fully integrated the concept of Islamophobia with Islamic terrorism and its radicalization. This despite the increase of global Islamophobia and the witnessed increase of Islamic terrorism in forms of [Western] foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), as well as home-grown cells and planned lone wolf attacks in recent years, which all indicate a potential increase in Islamic radicalization. As Islamophobia, far-right populism and extremist sentiments are growing in Sweden, this thesis presents a desk study through a qualitative text analysis, to investigate how the current climate and development affects Muslims in Sweden, and whether they are excluded as a result to presumably enhance national security. This is done through an abductive approach with an analytical framework focused on radicalization processes and the perspectives of inclusion and exclusion. The potential correlation between Islamophobia and radicalization among Muslims, where Sweden is used as an example to exemplify the consequences of Islamophobia regarding Islamic radicalization and security through exclusion contra development through inclusion is presented in this desk study.