Lucien X. Lombardo

Mental Health Work in Prisons and Jails Inmate Adjustment and Indigenous Correctional Personnel

Mental health efforts in prisons and jails most often ignore the mental illness prevention capabilities of main-line correctional personnel. By focusing on inmates with drug dependencies or severe psychiatric disorders, traditional mental health services have failed to come to grips with the problems created for “normal inmates” by the conditions of confinement. This article argues that indigenous correctional personnel might supplement the efforts of professional treatment staff by learning to assist inmates in coping with the stress produced by everyday institutional living conditions.

Talking Past Each other about Sexual Harassment: An Exploration of Frames for Understanding

Sexual harassment, a form of violence against women, occasions considerable debate but little communication. Using newspaper reports as texts, the authors identify four common media frames that not only raise different expectations about defining behavior as harassing and people as harassers, but also suggest different courses of action in response to the behavior. The judicial frame compares behaviors to legal policies or statutes and suggests reactive strategies. The victim frame emphasizes harm or injury to the victim(s), suggesting social change. The initiator frame defines the (mis)behavior as acceptable and implies that no change in behavior is necessary. The social science frame, structured around reliable and valid operational definitions, integrates the other approaches.

A Comparative Analysis of the Corporal Punishment of Children: An Exploration of Human Rights and U.S. Law

Using a comparative perspective, this paper explores two approaches to child/adult relationships and the practice of corporal punishment: a human rights perspective and a traditional perspective reflected in U.S. law. Source material for our analysis draws on statutes, court decisions, and human rights conventions relating to the status of children and corporal punishment. Legislation and case law reflecting each perspective are presented and analyzed. Discussions of the nature of and reasons for differences include: the absence of human rights principles as a touchstone for U.S. law, the avoidance of linking corporal punishment and violence in the law, and the persistence of a colonial model of child/adult relationships structured around adult dominance and control of children. In contrast, a human rights model has at its core the human dignity of the child. This approach extends human rights to children and discourages corporal punishment and oppressive relationships between adults and children. Finally, this paper discusses the value of bringing a human rights approach to our understanding of child/adult relationships and the use of corporal punishment against children.

Peace education and childhood

Peace studies and peace education are multifaceted processes focusing on diverse audiences from children in elementary grades to those involved in political negotiations at the highest levels. This paper addresses the foundational importance of including conflict embedded in adult-child relationships in peace education. It conceptually grounds assignments for university level courses designed to teach concepts linked to peace education through the vehicle of understanding violence against children. Such learning is designed to liberate students from the hegemony of adultism, the colonial relationship between adults and children and in turn to contribute to the advancement of peace education. Such pedagogy reflects the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s call for educational measures to protect and support children’s human dignity. Such an approach is especially relevant for peace education, as a large body of research across disciplines has provided substantial evidence of a significant relationship between childhood experiences of violence and subsequent juvenile and adult behavioral and social problems including conflict and violence. The approach and assignments described in this paper reflect insights about the use of narratives of childhood experiences, the etiology and effects of violence against children and the reproduction of conflict and violence across generations.

Law reform, child maltreatment and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Scholars and practitioners stress the need for systematic research on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its potential impact on childrens rights. Our study focused on one aspect of implementation - law reform. Drawing primarily on reports to the CRC Committee for 179 countries, results show for most countries, implementation is limited and focused far more on child-welfare than child-rights based legislation. The relationship of measures of law reform/legal regime (most notably, the existence of customary law and laws banning corporal punishment) to childrens experience of rights, child physical abuse and mortality, is analysed and theoretically grounded. Language: en

Nation Building and Social Control: Observations from Ivory Coast and Tanzania

Crime control is but one of many areas of life where governments attempt to influence the lives of their citizens through formal state institutions. Within the context of Third World countries, the ‘reality’ of government as nation is something which must be tested if we are to interpret more accurately comparative crime and crime control information. Utilizing Ecksteins distinction between ‘social-polity’ and ‘political society,’ this paper analyzes observations from the Ivory Coast and Tanzania and attempts to demonstrate the practical utility of viewing crime control efforts within the more general context of the nation-building process. Within the context of nation-building, we can 1) better understand the implications of the “nationhood assumption” for comparative criminological research; 2) better interpret “social defense” efforts in the Third World context; and 3) better see the implications of government penetration into private decisions in the developed world.

Lessons from the Third World for Understanding American Criminal Justice

This paper argues for and attempts to demonstrate the case for including materials related to the operation of Third World criminal justice in courses dealing with American criminal justice system. The author argues that an examination of the contexts and processes of criminal justice in Third World nations increases ones ability to understand and critique the history and operations of our criminal justice enterprises. The Third World context offers laboratories for testing assumptions about American criminal justice without the implicitly pervasive ideological overtones we come to accept unquestionably in our own system simply because it is the one in which we operate. Within the context of poverty, “dual societies,” chronic political instability, the struggle for economic development, and colonialism, the Third World offers an opportunity to study the interaction and impact of law, politics, economics, social control, and social change on the development and operations of criminal justice. Using exampl...

Non-Governmental Organisations and the un Convention on the Rights of the Child

This study seeks to contribute to knowledge of the implementation of the U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc). Focus was restricted to one of eight General Measures of Implementation – involvement of civil society, in particular, non-government organisations (ngos), in the implementation and monitoring of the crc. The study had three aims: (1) to develop initial indicators of ngo involvement; (2) to explore level of ngo activity; and (3) to explore which aspects of ngo involvement might have an effect on extending human rights to children in the most fundamental area of protection from violence.Results indicate that most State Parties (sps) have at least one ngo member and 50 per cent had a National Coalition member in the Child Rights Information Network (crin). Regarding activity, at least one alternative ngo report was submitted to the crc Committee for most sps. Analyses of Concluding Observations indicate that the Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concerns about most sp’s involvement with ngos and found very few governments encouraging ngos to take a child-rights focus. Overall, few indicators of ngo involvement were related to lower rates of child physical abuse – what appeared most important was having a government that encourages ngos to have a child-rights focus. Reasons for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

HUman Dignity and Children : Operationalizing a Human Rights Concept

This is an exploratory study of perceptions of human dignity in childhood as recalled by young adults. Our goal is to discover the range of dimensions, sources and experiences, both those that supported and violated, of the concept of human dignity. This research, drawing on responses from over two hundred university students, may help to develop a language with which to explore the concept of human dignity in a broader, more systematic way. The approach taken here permits us to move beyond the ‘legal’ frame that often confines us to discussions of the extremes of child abuse and neglect, to a frame that frees us to explore the meaning and real life experiences with human dignity in childhood and the impacts on later life. Violating and not supporting human dignity in childhood helps produce a world populated by adults who, having been harmed as children, go on to harm and violate others as adults. If our goal is to have a world populated by children who were nurtured to flourish into child-centered adult...