Emotionally triggered involuntary violent behaviour not attributed to a mental disorder: conceptual criteria and their reliability. This study conceptualised emotionally triggered involuntary violent behaviour (ETIVB), developed criteria for the identification of ETIVB, and examined their validity and reliability. South Africa criminal courts allow for a defence called “non-pathological criminal incapacity”. It refers inter alia to extreme emotional arousal triggering involuntary violent behaviour. This is usually called an “emotional storm” or a so-called “psychological blow automatism”. Psychiatrists are often called to give expert testimony in this regard, but there is no conceptual clarity or criteria upon which to base it. This difficulty is compounded by the requirement set by the criminal courts that the behaviour may not be attributed to a mental disorder (in this thesis the terms mental disorder and mental illness are used interchangeably). The first advance in obtaining clarity was afforded by focusing on the behaviour as distinct from 1) legal and jurisprudential considerations as well as 2) whether the behaviour is (not) attributed to mental disorder. The subsequent research questions driving the study were, “what counts as ETIVB?” In particular, what counts respectively as „emotional triggered‟, „involuntary‟, „violent‟, and „behaviour‟. Through conceptual methods suggested in the work of J.L. Austin, draft ETIVB-criteria were developed and then repetitively applied to a set of 28 cases. Twenty seven of these cases involved a charge of murder. The other one had behaved violently, but was not charged. The criteria were refined and their content validity derived by a repetitive to-and-fro process between comparative exploration of the concepts and their empirical application to the set of cases. The criteria were formulated into an instrument by which a psychiatrist can identify ETIVB. In addition provision was made to record whether ETIVB is, or is not, attributed to specific causes including mental disorder, but only as an attribution that follows after ETIVB has been identified. The ETIVB-instrument was subjected to reliability testing among 14 psychiatrists and 10 psychiatrists in training. They applied the ETIVB-criteria to a set of 5 externally validated case summaries. The participants had first been trained in the use of the instrument by considering other example cases. Statistical analyses of inter-rater reliability were performed. The modified kappa agreement ranged from 0.388 (fair) to 0.636 (substantial) across study cases for all criteria A.1 – H.1. The criteria for violence had exceptionally high inter-rater agreement, all being 0.947 and higher. The complexity of the ETIVB-construct transpired when inter-rater reliability analyses were compared between cases in that different cases posed different challenges for inter-rater agreement. The reliability testing across cases however, showed which less agreed-upon items would benefit from refinement. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / gm2015 / Psychiatry / PhD / Unrestricted

In recent years, deep learning, a critical technology in computer vision, has achieved remarkable milestones in many fields, such as image classification and object detection. In particular, it has also been introduced to address the problem of violence detection, which is a big challenge considering the complexity to establish an exact definition for the phenomenon of violence. Thanks to the ever increasing development of new technologies for surveillance, we have nowadays access to an enormous database of videos that can be analyzed to find any abnormal behavior. However, by dealing with such huge amount of data it is unrealistic to manually examine all of them. Deep learning techniques, instead, can automatically study, learn and perform classification operations. In the context of violence detection, with the extraction of visual harmful patterns, it is possible to design various descriptors to represent features that can identify them. In this research we tackle the task of generating new augmented datasets in order to try to simplify the identification step performed by a violence detection technique in the field of Deep Learning. The novelty of this work is to introduce the usage of DensePose model to enrich the images in a dataset by highlighting (i.e. by identifying and segmenting) all the human beings present in them. With this approach we gained knowledge of how this algorithm performs on videos with a violent context and how the violent detection network benefit from this procedure. Performances have been evaluated from the point of view of segmentation accuracy and efficiency of the violence detection network, as well from the computational point of view. Results shows how the context of the scene is the major indicator that brings the DensePose model to correct segment human beings and how the context of violence does not seem to be the most suitable field for the application of this model since the common overlap of bodies (distinctive aspect of violence) acts as disadvantage for the segmentation. For this reason, the violence detection network does not exploit its full potential. Finally, we understood how such augmented datasets can boost up the training speed by reducing the time needed for the weights-update phase, making this procedure a helpful adds-on for implementations in different contexts where the identification of human beings still plays the major role.

Background: The media have an influential role within society and with media becoming increasingly more accessible over a number of different platforms it is important to comprehend what information is being received by audiences in order to then understand the consequences. Sweden has a reputation of being one of the most reputable countries, however a new, less flattering image has been emerging. There is a growing interest in what is happening in Sweden, especially since US President Donald Trump made his illusive comments in February 2017. Aim: The aim of this study is to explore how news sources in the Western world portray crime in Sweden. Two central questions are examined, (1) what crimes in Sweden are reported in western newspapers, and (2) what are the dominant themes in western newspaper’s discussions of crime in Sweden? Method: Qualitative content analysis was employed to evaluate 249 newspaper articles gathered through NewsBank database. Content of these articles became data which was coded via a data-driven coding frame. Data was partially double coded in an attempt to check consistency. Results: Part one results find that the most popular crime type in Western media crime in Sweden reports are violent crimes. A total of 111 articles in the sample written exclusively about specific events, 76 of which are violent offences. Part two of results explores the broader discourse. Conclusion: The focus on violent crimes is linked to a political discussion surrounding growing support for populist politics. The predominant narratives are, that immigration is to blame for rising crime levels, and Sweden’s identity crisis.

Introduction. This study examines the age-specific risk factors associated withradicalization that could contribute to Swedish research and responsible investigativeauthorities. Specific knowledge of individual risk factors for radicalization isremarkably limited, especially compared to what we know about other forms ofviolence.Methods. A total of 1240 cases are included after a data cleaning of the PIRUS-dataset. An exploratory factor analysis examined youths (<21), adults (>22), and a noage-specific group.Results. The younger population tends to have more often been abused as a child,had some traumatic experience, and are currently part of a gang. In comparison, theolder population tend to have alcohol or drug abuse problems and more unstructuredtime, have a radicalized friend and have actively searched for their radicalized group.The All-group shares a variety of variables with the age-specific groups.Conclusion. The results imply a need for specified risk factors according to age. Theage-specific analysis provides a deepened understanding of age-specific risk factorsthat contribute to radicalization and make individuals susceptible to radicalizedgroups. Since different authorities are responsible for minors and adults and alreadywork with a risk factor approach, the findings in this essay imply that the authoritiesshould investigate their current policies and update them to age-specific risk factors ifnecessary.

How do the media react in the face of a violent phenomenon involving actors both embraced and marginalized by society? One such phenomena – the McArthur murders – encapsulates this dynamic considering how the media explained the murders to their audiences. McArthur, a white LGBTQ+ man, murdered over a seven-year period specifically targeting male victims of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent associated with the LGBTQ+ community and geographic area in Toronto, Canada. The victims embodied a variety of marginalized identities including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigration status and houselessness. It is in this context that this qualitative study finds itself, investigating media coverage of the McArthur murders in two mediums/Canadian outlets. The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper representing newspaper coverage, and a podcast produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Uncover: The Village representing podcast (or audio) media. Considering the context of the McArthur murders and the identities of the actors involved, the study is focused on how normativity and deviancy are constructed through mediatized eyes (or frames). Through a blend of deductive and inductive framing analysis relying on a queer phenomenologically-inspired theoretical framework, the study’s aim is threefold: (1) to uncover what frames are most prevalent across both outlets, (2) to understand, using deductively applied frames, how both outlets construct the events of the McArthur murders and, (3) to understand the interplay between mediatized reification or mitigation of normativity. The analysis found that both newspaper and podcast were most concerned with attributing responsibility in their coverage, which introduced the queer phenomenological understanding of institutions into the analysis, a pattern which continued throughout each deductively applied frame. Moreover, connections to analogous sets of murders in 1970s Toronto broadened the implications of the study across time. Finally, the analysis showed that rather than solely reifying or mitigating normativity, both outlets’ coverage despite similarities and differences, are illustrative of normativity and deviancy’s ongoing orientation towards one another. The conflict between societally standard and aberrant is shown to be a constant over time, after death, and across contexts – a dynamic relationship which has significance for how media scholars might approach cross-medium analyses of complex phenomena in further research.

Violent islamistic extremism has together with violent right-wing extremism been marked as the highest probable threat for potential terrorist attacks in Sweden. Research within violent extremism has shown a certain level of consensus around what factors drive radicalization. A consensus about theories or models that most adeptly explain its causation is however not prevalent within the academic community. This paper presents a model based on conclusions drawn from the Social Identity Theory (SIT) and will test this model's relevance by analyzing empirical data from interviews made with five practicing Muslims. The interviewees' attempts to explain factors of radicalization have been analyzed by being compartmentalized into an ideological- or identity-based continuum. Factors of radicalization able to be explained by the SIT-model have been categorized as identity-based explanations, whereas factors depending on knowledge, ideology, or religion have been categorized as ideology-based explanations. Most of the experienced factors could be explained by the SIT-model, while only some of two interviewees` experiences could be categorized as ideology-based. The significance of the empirical data from this research and its implications will be presented in the chapter of discussion along with previous research and its theoretical framework; recommendations for de-radicalization and continued research will be given at the end.

Dissertation Title: Transforming Violent Masculinities: Nigeria's Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Programme in the Niger Delta Abstract Gender mainstream in security studies has been erroneously equated with the introduction of women in security practices. Hence, gender analysis of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programmes have largely underestimated the importance of also considering men's gender identity. Breaking this pattern, this dissertation examines the ability of the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration approach adopted in the Niger Delta to change or consolidate violent masculinities among ex-combatants. The selected case study is of special relevance to the topic at hand since the conflict in the Niger Delta has been partly attributed to the constructions of masculinity that prevail in this Nigerian region. Following previous research in the field of critical masculinities and feminist peacebuilding, the paper reveals that the transformative potential of the Presidential Amnesty Programme is extremely limited, exclusively offering a way of expressing positive masculinities as part of the economy. This is the result of the Nigerian government's decision to adopt a minimalist approach to DDR that pays full attention to ex-combatants as individuals rather...

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The main objective of this study is to analyse the concept of civil disobedience by providing an overview of its historical development; its objectives and strategies, and how this was applied in South Africa by the United Democratic Front in the 1980s. The sub-objectives were to determine if civil disobedience as a concept is going through, or has gone through any notable changes since its inception; to assess the extent to which United Democratic Front policies and strategies were in accordance with civil disobedience; and to briefly compare manifestations of civil disobedience in South Africa in the pre-1994 period, with some manifestations in the post-1994 period. The study included an assessment of the Defiance Campaign, analysing its impact and demise. It focused on the ANC strategy of mass action and assessed the role of the Pan African Congress. It outlined the formation of the UDF, assessing its vision, broad principles, organisation and objectives. Certain assumptions were assessed in the concluding chapters, namely that civil disobedience has developed into a broader concept than the original concept of passive resistance; that the policies and strategies of the United Democratic Front initially resembled some aspects of civil disobedience but eventually deviated from this due to a change in strategy; and that some contemporary manifestations of civil disobedience in South Africa resemble certain methods used in the 1980s, but the objectives differ. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Political Sciences / MA / Unrestricted

The primary aim of this thesis is to assess whether and to what extent serious crime and specifically violent and organised crime, poses a national security threat to South Africa since 1994. To achieve this, the study focuses on serious crime in South Africa before 1994; serious crime trends and characteristics between 1994 and 2009; crime prevention and national security polices developed after 1994; public perceptions of safety and security after 1994; and the consequences of serious crime. In this regard three assumptions were formulated for assessment namely: − South Africa exhibits many of the national security issues of the developing world, as manifested in predominately internal threats to security. − Serious crime is one of the main threats to South Africa’s national security, and continues to have an extremely negative impact on all spheres of life, especially on the country’s social, economic, security and political environments. − There has been increasing concern over the occurrence of crime, particularly serious crime, in South Africa since 1994, despite certain statistical decreases. All three of the assumptions could be verified in the study. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Political Sciences / DPhil / Unrestricted