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Introduction: This article addresses the processes that led to the recognition of LGBT rights in Brazil, the role played by civil society mobilization, and the interaction between the Federal Supreme Court and the National Congress in these processes. Methods: The study's primary method is document analysis. Our sample was established in 2021 and includes four court decisions and 93 law proposals presented from 2011 to 2020 by 83 legislators whose profiles are also analysed (data collected in 2021). Moreover, the article references secondary source interviews conducted in 2017 and 2018. Results: The Federal Supreme Court was responsible for all the LGBT rights recognized at the federal level in Brazil. Our data shows that federal legislators, on the other hand, have been unable to make bills focused on LGBT rights (pro or against) pass. Some highlights from the results show that 46.2% of the proposals on the matter are contrary to those rights, and 48.2% of the legislators who mobilize the matter are affiliated with the Evangelical Bench, an influential conservative institution in the Brazilian National Congress. Although not yet able to make law proposals pass, those legislators with a conservative profile tend to use LGBT rights as political currency by presenting bills or making speeches against these rights. They also play a role in not allowing pro-LGBT rights achievements in the legislative arena. Aware of the legislators' profile, civil society organizations tend not to focus all their efforts on this arena and to take or create legal opportunities, even though the path through courts still represents several obstacles. Moreover, although the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court has shown a willingness to decide on LGBT rights, the outcomes of the rulings depend on the composition of the body, which is influenced by nominations made by the president. That is, the same court Brazil has relied on to recognize LGBT rights could be responsible for denying them had it had the same powers but different members. Conclusions: While the deadlock in the Federal Congress persists, and the judicial decisions that recognized LGBT rights remain effective, LGBT persons continue to exercise their conquered rights. However, the conservative wave in Brazil places the country in a context of uncertainty and vulnerability with regard to LGBT rights. Policy Implications: This study's contribution lies in showing why Brazil is an unpaired case when it comes to LGBT rights recognition and how vulnerable these conquered rights are in the country. The article provides an overview of the recognition processes taking multiple arenas and actors into account. Therefore, the analyses and the database of law proposals fill a gap in the literature and can contribute to future work from both scholars (for example, other studies from the database) and practitioners (for example, the development of legal mobilization frames and strategies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The encounter between torture victims and the legal system is mostly dismissive. Thus, victims have repeatedly submitted complaints regarding alleged torture to the relevant authorities, but these cases are often rejected. A common reason for rejection is the inconsistency within and between testimonies, which can give the impression that the victim is fabricating the story and then undermines the legal case. This paper reviews the reasons that could explain the disparities in the testimonies of torture survivors. It relates to six facets that, taken together, increase the likelihood of inconsistency: (a) detention and interrogation, (b) flaws in normal memory, (c) psychological processes, (d) physical/medical aspects, (e) sociocultural factors, and (f) interview barriers. Examples are provided for each of these reasons for the discrepancy in testimonies. A discussion of the relevance in the field of psychological injury follows this. The study provides recommendations for legal and medical experts working with torture and other traumatized victims regarding the use of the Istanbul Protocol, collaboration, and education to enhance understanding, clarify inconsistencies in testimonies, and support cases in court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries such as Britain and the US, court witnesses must declare they will provide truthful evidence and are often compelled to publicly choose between religious ("oath") and secular ("affirmation") versions of this declaration. Might defendants who opt to swear an oath enjoy more favourable outcomes than those who choose to affirm? Two preliminary, pre‐registered survey studies using minimal vignettes (Study 1, N = 443; Study 2, N = 913) indicated that people associate choice of the oath with credible testimony; and that participants, especially religious participants, discriminate against defendants who affirm. In a third, Registered Report study (Study 3, N = 1821), we used a more elaborate audiovisual mock trial paradigm to better estimate the real‐world influence of declaration choice. Participants were asked to render a verdict for a defendant who either swore or affirmed, and were themselves required to swear or affirm that they would try the defendant in good faith. Overall, the defendant was not considered guiltier when affirming rather than swearing, nor did mock‐juror belief in God moderate this effect. However, jurors who themselves swore an oath did discriminate against the affirming defendant. Exploratory analyses suggest this effect may be driven by authoritarianism, perhaps because high‐authoritarian jurors consider the oath the traditional (and therefore correct) declaration to choose. We discuss the real‐world implications of these findings and conclude the religious oath is an antiquated legal ritual that needs reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been significant investment by police agencies in the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs). Preliminary evidence suggests that when used in the context of domestic and family violence, BWC footage may strengthen evidential cases and prosecutions. There is, however, a paucity of research examining the merits of and risks posed by the use of BWC footage in DFV incidents and legal proceedings. Notably absent in much of the literature are the views and experiences of police officers who, as initial owners of BWC footage, are likely to affect how it is produced and interpreted. This paper presents findings from the first Australian study to examine how police officers, as users and operators of BWC technology, perceive the use of BWC footage in DFV-related civil and criminal legal proceedings in two Australian state jurisdictions: Western Australia and Queensland. While broadly supportive of BWC technology, police respondents, especially those from specialised DFV units, identified various benefits and limitations to using BWC footage in the context of DFV, including that BWCs have the potential to capture DFV upon police call-outs, but can be limiting insofar as they do not show ongoing patterns of violence. Our findings highlight the importance of exercising domain-specific, rather than a 'one size fits all' approach when it comes to understanding the benefits and limitations of BWC technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using generic language to describe groups (applying characteristics to entire categories) is ubiquitous and affects how children and adults categorize other people. Five-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults ( N = 190) learned about a novel social group that separated into two factions (citizens and noncitizens). Noncitizens were described in either generic or specific language. Later, the children and adults categorized individuals in two contexts: criminal (individuals labeled as noncitizens faced jail and deportation) and noncriminal (labeling had no consequences). Language genericity influenced decision making. Participants in the specific-language condition, but not those in the generic-language condition, reduced the rate at which they identified potential noncitizens when their judgments resulted in criminal penalties compared with when their judgments had no consequences. In addition, learning about noncitizens in specific language (vs. generic language) increased the amount of matching evidence participants needed to identify potential noncitizens (preponderance standard) and decreased participants' certainty in their judgments. Thus, generic language encourages children and adults to categorize individuals using a lower evidentiary standard regardless of negative consequences for presumed social-group membership.

Copyright of Revista CESUMAR: Ciências Humanas e Sociais Aplicadas is the property of Revista Cesumar - Ciencias Humanas e Sociais Aplicadas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since its emergence as a coherent field of study a half century ago, legal socialization has moved to the forefront of conversations about legal reform across multiple fields. Amidst all this work, however, there is surprisingly little scholarship on an obvious, but understudied question: Does the law itself recognize legal socialization? Knowing whether, and how, American law recognizes its need to legally socialize the citizenry toward democratic norms is a critical step for bridging the divide between legal socialization scholarship and social policy reform. For this essay, we consider all 50 state constitutions, including all previous versions. Our analysis focuses on several specific areas where the text explicitly or implicitly addresses the law as a socializing agent. What we find is a diverse landscape of state law that ranges from silence to indirect and direct endorsement of legal socialization as a purpose of law, an obligation of the state, and a right of the individual citizen. Yet we also find that these acknowledgments are complex and at times contradictory, reflecting deep fissures between the law's commitments to democratic republicanism and its anti‐democratic commitments to the maintenance of privilege and overt oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a pilot project implemented in Milwaukee's Juvenile Court, which was designed as a preliminary feasibility study to assess whether a change in court procedures could alter young offenders' engagement in the court process and enhance their relationship with the juvenile court judge. Participants in the pilot engaged in regular monthly conversations with the juvenile judge and other legal actors in an informal context focused on collaborative planning and problem solving. The procedural justice and legal socialization literature suggests that these changes in interactions and relationships might facilitate the development of a "consensus" orientation to legal authority associated with a shared trust in the law and a voluntary acceptance of its legitimacy. This paper offers an evaluation of the pilot project using a quasi‐ethnographic approach based on observational data and interviews with participants. Although the original focus of the pilot was on the relationship between the young offenders and the judge and on the impact of that relationship on the youths' attitudes, it became evident, over the course of the study, that the impact of the engagement was felt on both sides of the relationship, and that it was not limited to the judge and the youth. The paper explores the potential value of "reciprocal socialization"—socialization of legal authorities by the subjects with whom they interact—to the successful achievement of the juvenile justice system's aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key Practitioner Messages: Legal measures such as class action lawsuits and consent decrees may be effective in reducing child welfare workers' caseloads as part of systematic change.Schools of social work should expose their generalist and clinical track students to macro courses that address the role of such legal measures.Policy planning related to child welfare reform should involve frontline workers' experiences and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to delve into the history of Mexico’s colonial silk industry and of its workers in order to demonstrate, from a microsocial analysis, the existence of long-standing gender-exclusion processes and of integration mechanisms, displayed in the framework of institutional modernization, that were implied by the Bourbon Reforms on both sides of the Atlantic. To this end, an analysis of the bibliography on the subject has been made. The viceroyalty policies created to revive the industry have been briefly reconstructed and it has been possible, within this contextualization, to understand the circumstances in which the process was carried out. Multiple sources from the General Archives of the Nation of Mexico have been used to look into an episode of the social history of New Spain. In the course of the research, it has been found that women in the silk industry were not limited to spinning mills, and that they could have greater aspirations. Gertrudis Gutiérrez Estrada’s opposition to the silk spinning guild of Mexico City in 1795, and her triumph in the dispute, showed a circumvention of the restrictions imposed within the silk industry to a particular sex and the implementation of resistance mechanisms that were institutionally —by the Bourbon legislation— and socially —by her family— constructed. It was a paradigmatic case that served to modify, in 1806, all the guild ordinances of the time and it is, at the same time, one of many examples that must be traced in the archives in order to rethink the role of women in the colonial industry.

Adoption is a way of enabling children and adolescents deprived of family life to have a family. Adoption candidates must undergo a process of evaluation and preparation, guided by the technical teams of the Child and Youth Courts. Professionals should evaluate complex questions about adoption and parenting, but the lack of a guiding criterion can lead to difficulties in this process. Thus, the present study aimed to describe the criteria used by judicial technicians of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the qualification processes for adoption. Interviews were conducted with psychologists and social workers from 7 cities in the state. The content analysis identified that issues related to life history, personal characteristics, family and social relationships, and motivation for parenting should be evaluated. It is argued that the qualification process can be thought of as a space for reflection on the adoption project and the parenting of the adopters besides only an evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to understand how the evaluation of applicants for adoption in the Brazilian context has been approached, described and problematized in the scientific literature, by means of an integrative review. Based on pre-established criteria, 30 studies were retrieved in the SciELO, PePSIC, LILACS and PsycINFO databases (2006-2016) and analyzed by the PRISMA strategy. Empirical studies of qualitative character predominate, with varied instruments and samples, and which, in general, discuss a culture of adoption in which the child is recognized as the protagonist, as well as different family configurations gain visibility and seek legitimacy. Only eight studies allow the visualization of instruments/techniques, challenges, recommendations and criticisms present in the evaluation process. However, the evaluation of applicants does not appear as a focus of problematization in the studies, limiting comprehension about professional practice and suggesting that it is a subjective analysis by the aspects it encompasses. Further studies on the actors involved in the adoption process are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the findings from a qualitative study involving 65 women who have engaged with the legal system after experiencing domestic and family violence. The interviewees report on the increased levels of stress and trauma they experience as a result of impending court appearances, in preparation for cross-examination and in negotiating court orders and on the actions they take to address this stress. While many reported that they sought help from mental health practitioners, some women reported choosing not to seek medical assistance for, and hiding, mental health concerns and self-medicating in an effort to avoid negative court outcomes. In light of the women's experiences, this paper considers policy implications and practical considerations for legal practitioners and judicial officers involved in cases involving domestic and family violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Body-worn camera (BWC) footage is expected to be objective, thereby improving transparency. But can other information about an incident affect how people perceive BWC footage? In two experiments, we examined the effects of officer-generated misinformation and outcome information on people's memory for an event. Participants viewed BWC footage and/or read an officer's report containing misleading information. Some participants learned the officer was punished, some that the citizen was arrested. Participants then answered questions exploring their memory for the facts, the extent to which they relied on the officer's misinformation in judging who was at fault, and their impressions of the officer and civilian. Even when participants saw the BWC footage, their conclusions were consistent with the officer's misinformation. Moreover, participants’ attitudes toward police predicted their interpretation of the footage, suggesting BWC footage is unlikely to be perceived objectively. We explain our results in terms of misinformation effects and confirmation bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Untrustworthy faces incur negative judgments across numerous domains. Existing work in this area has focused on situations in which the target’s trustworthiness is relevant to the judgment (e.g., criminal verdicts and economic games). Yet in the present studies, we found that people also overgeneralized trustworthiness in criminal-sentencing decisions when trustworthiness should not be judicially relevant, and they did so even for the most extreme sentencing decision: condemning someone to death. In Study 1, we found that perceptions of untrustworthiness predicted death sentences (vs. life sentences) for convicted murderers in Florida (N = 742). Moreover, in Study 2, we found that the link between trustworthiness and the death sentence occurred even when participants viewed innocent people who had been exonerated after originally being sentenced to death. These results highlight the power of facial appearance to prejudice perceivers and affect life outcomes even to the point of execution, which suggests an alarming bias in the criminal-justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence is a pervasive, significant social and public health issue that often has physical, emotional, social, legal, economic and political ramifications. The present qualitative study sought to address the paucity of knowledge in the domestic violence literature by identifying the psychological impact of the Family Court process on women who have left abusive relationships. A thematic analysis was conducted on the narratives of 15 women who had left abusive relationships and who had, or were currently, engaged with the Family Court. The results revealed that the experience of engaging with the court process caused considerable distress for the women. Principal themes related to fear of the ex-partner and having to confront him at hearings, constantly reliving the relationship via affidavits, and the insensitivity of some legal professionals to the difficulties experienced by women confronted with these experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about how best to understand the notion of 'public wrongs' in the longstanding idea that crimes are public wrongs. By contrasting criminal law with the civil laws of torts and contracts, it argues that 'public wrongs' should not be understood merely as wrongs that properly concern the public, but more specifically as those which the state, as the public, ought to punish. It then briefly considers the implications that this has on criminalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an exploratory study of the role of solicitors acting for parents with intellectual disabilities (ID) in public law proceedings. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 11 solicitors and a subsequent focus group in which the interview findings were presented and reflected on by six of the eleven participants. Two of the five themes that emerged will be discussed here. They are entitled ‘Attitudes and Influence’ and ‘Legal Processes’ and concern the attitudes and influence of those involved in assessing, supporting and representing parents with ID and the care proceedings processes encountered by parents with ID. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Critics of mandatory interventions for intimate partner violence (IPV) propose that the justice system disempowers victims by denying them voice and choice in legal proceedings. This exploratory study examines this claim through observations of three criminal courts. Findings show that victims are offered voice and a degree of choice in only one of the three courts. Court procedures that enhance victim voice and choice include a specialized IPV court, victim advocates trained in victims’ rights issues, and a lead judge who models respectful treatment of victims. The author proposes that voice and choice are distinct aspects of victim empowerment and that the provision of voice may have benefits to IPV victims that are distinct from the benefits of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Victims' testimony plays a pivotal role in domestic violence hearings in Italy. In examining this role, I approach the Italian legal field as a heterogeneous system of knowledge and power that engages in complex relations with techniques of subjection and discourses of truth and, thus, as eminently suited to investigating the production of the victim-subject. Paradoxically, the testimony of female victims of abuse is trapped between the normativity of justice system requirements and the confessional device, rendering it legally insignificant and thus essentially inadequate. In this context, the women's credibility and agency are central. I outline one legal case in which race and class intersect and the required modes of testimony are disrupted through the use of communication styles drawn from popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a doctoral study which investigated the legal and management frameworks required for establishing private universities in Swaziland. The focus is particularly on the legal framework for establishing the Southern Africa Nazarene University (SANU). Managers involved in establishing SANU encountered a lack of both specific legislation dealing with private higher education and existing legislation regulating higher education in Swaziland in general. These managers disagreed on whether the legality of a private university derives from a private Act of Parliament or from a Certificate of Registration. The researcher designed the study as action research and acted, as one of the managers, as an insider researcher. After investigating this problem through a literature review, focus group discussions, participant observation and personal conversations the researcher concluded that, to ensure that the legality of SANU is not questioned in future, the best option in establishing SANU was to follow a dual process of adopting a private Act and engaging in a registration process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two studies reported here demonstrated that a combination of anger and disgust predicts moral outrage. In Study 1, anger toward moral transgressions (sexual assault, funeral picketing) predicted moral outrage only when it co-occurred with at least moderate disgust, and disgust predicted moral outrage only when it co-occurred with at least moderate anger. In Study 2, a mock-jury paradigm that included emotionally disturbing photographs of a murder victim revealed that, compared to anger, disgust was a more consistent predictor of moral outrage (i.e., it predicted moral outrage at all levels of anger). Furthermore, moral outrage mediated the effect of participants' anger on their confidence in a guilty verdict--but only when anger co-occurred with at least a moderate level of disgust--whereas moral outrage mediated the effect of participants' disgust on their verdict confidence at all levels of anger. The interactive effect of anger and disgust has important implications for theoretical explanations of moral outrage, moral judgments in general, and legal decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study provides a discourse analysis of judicial attributions about battered women in Canadian sentencing decisions involving women convicted of killing their abusive intimate partners. For cases in which the accused received a jail sentence, judges downgraded acts of previous partner violence by using minimizing descriptions and by emphasizing the mutuality of the violence and of substance abuse. These discourses mobilized doubt about the relationship as abusive and limited sympathy for the accused as a battered woman. Judges’ descriptions formulated domestic abuse as discrete episodes of violence, attributed in many cases to alcohol rather than to an ongoing pattern of serious domestic abuse. These descriptions reinforced the accused’s capabilities and strength, which served to diminish the opposing claim that she was trapped in a seriously abusive relationship. Recommendations include incorporating information about battered women’s resistance efforts into traditional battered woman syndrome testimony and examining police decision making in cases of dual arrest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because of the critical roles of police officers in dealing with rape cases, the purpose of the current study was to examine the perceptions of rape among male police officers, with a particular focus on how attitudes toward women, rape survivor myths, and myths about the impact of rape are related to perceptions of rape scenarios. Utilizing cross-sectional data from 236 male police officers in South Korea, results of structural equation modeling indicated that attitudes toward women and rape survivor myths were positively related to rape perceptions. Those who had stereotypical attitudes toward women and those who had stronger beliefs in rape survivor myths were more likely to endorse rape-supportive attributions in rape scenarios. Results also revealed that officers' attitudes toward women were indirectly related to rape perceptions through rape survivor myths. Moreover, previous attendance at a sexual assault educational program was inversely related to rape perceptions, such that those who attended an educational program were less likely to endorse rape-supportive attributions in rape scenarios. The implications of these findings for practice and policy are discussed, including the need for the Korean legal system to recognize the need for self-determination and for police training to be better targeted and ongoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the interracial marriages between Chinese and Mexican people living in Sonora, Mexico, during the 20th century. The author considers the discriminatory laws and government policies designed to marginalize the Chinese population at the time, especially the Ley 31 (Law 31), which prohibited interpersonal relations, specifically marriage and other intimate relationships, between these two groups. He also examines the attempts made to repeal the law, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of Mexico during the 1930s.

People attribute minds to other individuals and make inferences about those individuals’ mental states to explain and predict their behavior. Little is known, however, about whether people also attribute minds to groups and believe that collectives, companies, and corporations can think, have intentions, and make plans. Even less is known about the consequences of these attributions for both groups and group members. We investigated the attribution of mind and responsibility to groups and group members, and we demonstrated that people make a trade-off: The more a group is attributed a group mind, the less members of that group are attributed individual minds. Groups that are judged to have more group mind are also judged to be more cohesive and responsible for their collective actions. These findings have important implications for how people perceive the minds of groups and group members, and for how attributions of mind influence attributions of responsibility to groups and group members. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Basic psychology research suggests the possibility that confessions—a potent form of incrimination—may taint other evidence, thereby creating an appearance of corroboration. To determine if this laboratory-based phenomenon is supported in the high-stakes world of actual cases, we conducted an archival analysis of DNA exoneration cases from the Innocence Project case files. Results were consistent with the corruption hypothesis: Multiple evidence errors were significantly more likely to exist in false-confession cases than in eyewitness cases; in order of frequency, false confessions were accompanied by invalid or improper forensic science, eyewitness identifications, and snitches and informants; and in cases containing multiple errors, confessions were most likely to have been obtained first. We believe that these findings underestimate the problem and have important implications for the law concerning pretrial corroboration requirements and the principle of “harmless error” on appeal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many rape survivors seek help from the legal and medical systems post-assault. Previous studies have examined how social system personnel treat survivors, but less attention has been paid to how survivors attempt to shape their interactions with these systems. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine rape survivors’ agency—the active process in which they engaged to alter their experiences with the legal and medical systems. In-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 female rape survivors who had contact with the police and a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program. Analytic induction was the guiding analytic approach. Findings indicate that this group of survivors engaged in three agentic processes in their interactions with the legal and medical systems: compliance in order to increase the likelihood their case would achieve what they deemed to be a successful outcome, defiance through noncompliance in order to protect themselves from further harm, and defiance by challenging the response to their case in order to alter the response to their case. Based on these findings, possible strategies for facilitating survivors’ participation and agency during their help-seeking experiences (e.g., systemic changes to empower survivors, improving the responsiveness of system personnel to survivors’ needs) are discussed. Implications may be of particular interest to rape-victim advocates and legal and medical personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although most battered women seeking formal help have some contact with court, limited research exists on what they find helpful and harmful about these experiences. Using qualitative data from low-income, largely Black battered women, this study finds that issues related to court outcomes, such as case disposition and enforcement, are important to evaluations of helpfulness. More frequently mentioned, however, are court processes, including treatment by staff, process length, and public disclosure. Results highlight the importance of research and practice attending to issues beyond court outcomes, as well as the potential impact supportive treatment at court may have for victims’ recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper reports an exploratory study of a school peer mediation program implemented as an alternative way to manage bullying and other destructive conflict. The study explores the effects of the program on the well-being of members of the school community by examining perceptions of students, staff and a sample of parents and former students. Drawing on therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) the study explores whether the component parts of the program, separately or together, promote intended or unintended therapeutic effects. The preliminary findings of the study emphasise the importance of peer mediation training and suggest that existing scholarship in the area of school conflict resolution and peer mediation, when viewed through a TJ lens, may provide valuable insights into how to optimally configure programs for development and adoption in schools and other community settings. The study highlights the lack of attention paid by the legal system to valuable scholarship in the area of school conflict resolution and peer mediation, which may have implications for the understanding and development of legal processes and the law in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of information obtained in forensic interviews is critically important to credibility in the legal system. Research has shown that the way interviewers frame questions influences the accuracy of witnesses' reports. A separate body of research has shown that speakers gesture spontaneously when they talk and that these gestures can convey information not found anywhere in the speakers' words. In our study, which joins these two literatures, we interviewed children about an event that they had witnessed. Our results demonstrate that (a) interviewers' gestures serve as a source of information (and, at times, misinformation) that can lead witnesses to report incorrect details, and (b) the gestures witnesses spontaneously produce during interviews convey substantive information that is often not conveyed anywhere in their speech, and thus would not appear in written transcripts of the proceedings. These findings underscore the need to attend to, and document, gestures produced in investigative interviews, particularly interviews conducted with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As researchers and clinicians seek to better understand, prevent, and address violence in dating relationships among adolescents and young adults, there is also a need to better explore the possible legal consequences for perpetrators of aggression. The purpose of this paper is to review legal involvement in violent intimate relationships, with a specific focus on dating relationships, as these sanctions represent possible punishing consequences for violent perpetration. Punishing consequences of aggression, including legal interventions, could serve to lessen or eliminate violence in the current relationship and also circumvent possible aggression in future relationships. Implications of this review for clinicians, law enforcement, judiciary officials, and prevention programmers addressing dating violence are provided, along with directions for future research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Terrain is the property of Mission Patrimoine Ethnologiq and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)