Jaimie Zander

Social media (SM) platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (now ‘X’) have become primary sources of crime news information for many, with SM being used by both news organisations and police agencies as a means of information dissemination. As such, the sentiment of comments made on SM posts can provide a useful snapshot of attitudes about crime and justice. The present study examines whether sentiment on crime and policing-related posts differs between information sources. A sentiment analysis of comments made in response to crime and policing-related posts on Facebook and Twitter (X) from January to May 2022 was conducted. Sentiment scores of comments made on Australian news publishers’ posts were compared with comments made on the Western Australian Police Force’s posts. Overall, comments made on news posts were negative in sentiment whilst comments made on police posts were positive. This finding was true for all crime-related posts, as well as across subcategories of violent crime, non-violent crime and policing-focused comments. The distinct differences in sentiment expressed between the two information sources highlight how news and police audiences respond differently to crime and policing-related content on SM. Such differences in sentiment between the two groups pose implications for how SM users perceive issues of crime, justice and police legitimacy. Further research may examine other state police SM pages as sentiment is likely to differ across jurisdictions and socio-cultural contexts.

Existing models of forgiveness do not easily accommodate victims of crime. Therefore, this article presents an examination of the meaning of forgiveness from the perspective of crime victims. A grounded theory approach was adopted to analyse the data from a series of semi-structured interviews carried out with victims of serious violent offences. Results indicated that victims generally thought forgiveness was both positive and beneficial. Whereas major models of forgiveness emphasize the interpersonal nature of forgiveness, victims of crime conceived of the construct as strongly intrapersonal. Forgiveness was comprised of four parts: self-awareness, letting go, perspective-taking and moving on. Each of these aspects was examined in light of the data and contrasted with existing literature. This study establishes a new area of forgiveness research and provides further insight into the psychological experience of victims of crime.

Criminogenic needs are now well established in the fields of psychology and criminology as factors that identify risk of criminal behaviour and recidivism. We propose that an inflated sense of entitlement may also be identified as a criminogenic need. An examination of the literature revealed an extensive variety of descriptions pertaining to an inflated sense of entitlement from character excesses to character deficits. However, whilst the wide variety of notions may be correct, there has been no mention, nor acknowledgement, of the origin of the concept of a sense of entitlement. In this article we will illustrate how an inflated sense of entitlement underpins criminal behaviour in general and violent behaviour in particular by using the framework proposed by Plato. An inflated sense of entitlement is then is discussed in response to each of the criteria required to be classified as a criminogenic need. This notion is purely theoretical and will benefit from qualitative exploration and quantitative investigation.

An attribution model was used to explore whether a male offender’s ethnicity impacted on how responsible he was judged to be for his offending behaviour in a sample drawn from the Perth metropolitan community in Western Australia and how severe the imposed sentence was perceived to be. While an offender’s ethnicity had no direct effect on judgements of responsibility and sentence severity, the causal factors for an offence were attributed as more stable when the offender was identified as an Indigenous Australian. Responsibility was predicted by attributions of controllability for both Anglo-Australian and Indigenous offenders, and locus of control for Indigenous offenders only. Severity of sentence was predicted by locus of control for both Anglo-Australian and Indigenous offenders; stability for Indigenous offenders; and being male and responding to a violent offence for Anglo-Australian offenders. A number of theoretical and practical implications arising from these findings are discussed.

Critics of restorative justice claim that its popularity is based on 'humanistic sentiment' and suggest that the process is incapable of achieving its aim of restoring victims and offenders. The current study sought to establish if restorative justice is capable of restoring victims and offenders in a meaningful manner, or if the process simply results in a superficial renovation of the impact of crime. Seventy-two victims and offenders participated in a community group conference model of restorative justice and were compared on outcome variables with a control group of victims and offenders who underwent a conventional court process. Results demonstrate that the process is capable of impacting upon variables associated with the criminal act. Furthermore, it is argued that a reduction in offending behaviour and victimisation impact are realistic outcomes of the restorative justice processes. Finally, regression analysis indicated that victims were satisfied with the restorative justice process as a result of their greater participation rather than their satisfaction with reparation or restitution.

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), developed by Davis (1980), provides an excellent multidimensional measure of empathy for the general adult population, the domain for which it was developed. Its use has subsequently expanded into other areas, for example criminal psychology. In this domain empathy is a critical variable in theoretical accounts of criminality and particularly of violence. For many researchers within the field of criminal psychology, the IRI has become the instrument of choice for the assessment of empathy. However, the psychometric properties of the scale, when used with a criminal population, have not been investigated. This paper reports the results of an investigation into the reliability and component structure of the IRI using a sample of violent offenders. The Personal Distress subscale was found not to be reliable when used in an offender population. Furthermore, when used to assess offenders, principle components analysis did not confirm the four-subscale structure of the IRI. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in relation to offender assessment in general.

Previous research in Perth, Western Australia, finds a disturbing amount of prejudice against Indigenous Australians. At the forefront of much prejudice research has been the distinction between old-fashioned and modern prejudice. We constructed an Attitude Toward Indigenous Australians scale from items originating from qualitative data. We found that negative attitudes were predicted by collective guilt about past and present wrongs to Indigenous Australians (collective guilt directly linked to Indigenous issues, as well as collective guilt generally). Negative attitudes were also predicted by a lack of empathy for Indigenous Australians, and affective perspective taking generally. Socio-demographics (e.g. a lack of education) predicted negative attitudes, which indicate the necessity of taking both social-psychological and socio-demographic factors into account when examining the nature of prejudice. A number of practical implications arise from these findings.