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The purpose of this paper is to find out what role intermediaries have in facilitating communication with victims and prisoners at Parole Board (PB) oral hearings.

A survey was designed and administered to 39 PB members to find out their perceptions of, and experiences with, the use of intermediaries. Frequency tables and verbatim quotations are used to report the results.

Overall, participants had not experienced any use of intermediaries with victims or family members presenting victim personal statements at an oral hearing. Further, there had been limited use of intermediaries for prisoners attending oral hearings. Nevertheless, there was a good recognition of a range of communication needs that a prisoner might present with at a hearing. There was also general support for the use of intermediaries with some caution about possible delays to procedural fairness.

The early identification of communication support needs for prisoners and victims attending an oral hearing is essential. The PB should raise awareness with the PB Membership about the role of intermediaries. The PB should continue to develop guidance and policy surrounding intermediaries. Prison lawyers and HM Prison and Probation Service may require specialist training in identifying communication needs in vulnerable prisoners and identifying when a communication specialist might be required for an oral hearing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published paper examining the role of intermediaries at PB oral hearings. It builds on the evidence base of the use of intermediaries in other criminal justice contexts.

This study aims to analyse how the collective processing of the #MeToo legacy in the form of community discourses and activism conceptualises organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and enhances the development of new accountability instruments.

The study draws on social movement theory and the intellectual problematics of accountability, together with the empirical insights from two research engagement projects established and facilitated by the author.

The study reveals multiple dimensions of how post-#MeToo community activism impacted the conceptualisation of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work. The movement enhanced discourses prompting a new societal sense of accountability for sexual wrongdoings. This in turn facilitated public demands for accountability that pressured organisations to respond. The accountability crisis created an opportunity for community activists to influence understanding of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and to propose new accountability instruments advancing harassment reporting technology, as well as an enhancing the behavioural consciousness and self-assessment of individuals.

The study addresses a topic of social importance in analysing how community activism arising from a social movement has transformed accountability demands and thus both advanced the conceptualisation of organisational accountability for sexual misconduct at work and established socially desirable practices for it. The study contributes to theory by revealing the emancipatory potential of community activism to influence organisational accountability practices and to propose new instruments at a moment of organisational hesitation and crisis of accountability.

This paper aims to systematically review over two decades of academic articles on romance fraud to provide a holistic insight into this crime and identify literature gaps.

More than two decades of peer-reviewed academic journal articles from 2000 to 2023 were systematically reviewed using multiple search engines and databases for relevant papers, identified through searches of paper titles, keywords, abstracts and primary texts.

The findings reveal 10 themes: i) the definitions and terminology of romance fraud; ii) romance fraud’s impact on victims; iii) the profile of romance fraud criminals and victims; iv) romance fraud methods and techniques; v) why victims become susceptible to romance fraud; vi) the psychology of romance fraud criminals; vii) the links between romance fraud and other crimes; viii) the challenges of investigating romance fraud; ix) preventing romance fraud and protecting victims; and x) how romance fraud victims can be supported.

The paper reveals implications regarding the future direction of policy and strategy to address the pervasive low reporting rates and narratives of shame bound with victims of this crime.

Romance fraud is a serious crime against individuals with impacts beyond financial losses. Still, this fraud type is under-researched, and the literature lacks a holistic view of this crime. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic literature review providing a holistic view of romance fraud. It combines evidence across the academic landscape to reveal the breadth and depth of the current work concerning romance fraud and identify gaps in the understanding of this fraud crime.

We examine experimentally the extent to which three potential tax authority interventions encourage the reporting of tax fraud to tax authorities and how two types of guilt feelings are involved in this decision. Using a sample of 728 adult taxpayers in the United States, we find that a cash award, a prosocial award and a moral suasion message positively influence whistleblowing intentions and that the moral suasion effect is mediated by intrapsychic guilt (when an individual violates their moral values) and interpersonal guilt (when one's actions cause harm to another). The combination of a cash award and moral suasion message results in the greatest likelihood of tax whistleblowing. Our research contributes to the tax whistleblowing literature by providing evidence of the efficacy of potential interventions and also extends literature on the role of moral emotions by showing the relevance of intrapsychic and interpersonal guilt to the tax fraud reporting decision.

The reality with many developing countries is that the countries have failed to create enough jobs for the poor and vulnerable. Under such circumstances, vulnerable employment plays a critical role in providing earning opportunities to people who are unemployed and determining the economic and social progress of such economies. The study aims to examine the possible non-linear relationship between vulnerable employment and growth in light of this background.

The study employed five-yearly averaged data of 73 developing countries for the period 2000–2019. The empirical analysis is performed using the dynamic panel data analysis and the two-step system generalised method of moments (GMM) approach. The estimations are run separately for male, female and total vulnerable employment. The threshold levels are obtained using Sasabuchi (1980) and Lind and Mehlum (2010) (SLM) test. Several sensitivity checks are performed to validate the results.

The findings of the study suggest a non-linear U-shaped relationship between vulnerable employment and growth. Thus, a positive association between vulnerable employment and growth is witnessed at higher levels of vulnerable employment. At lower levels, the relationship is negative. Threshold levels for male, female and total vulnerable employment are 46.80%, 49.29 and 50.94%, respectively. Therefore, vulnerable employment beyond the threshold levels is found to be positively associated with growth.

Countries below the threshold level of vulnerable employment should understand why these workers are not able to contribute to the growth despite working so hard. If any socio-economic barriers hinder their contribution towards growth, such barriers require greater policy attention. Countries with vulnerable employment levels above the threshold level should recognise the contributions of these workers towards the growth and actively support them in increasing their economic contribution. In either case, given the precarious circumstances under which these workers work and the pittance earnings, policy interventions aimed at ensuring decent working conditions and better earnings for these workers are encouraged.

The current study is the first one to examine the relationship between vulnerable employment and growth to the best of the author's knowledge. As such, it makes novel contributions to the literature on development policy.

This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of key stakeholders working with homeless people during the implementation of universal credit during the austerity years.

The literature on austerity reveals welfare reforms’ impact on support services staff. Service providers’ perceptions of the impact of austerity-led policies and welfare reform via nine interviews with people working in homelessness organisations in Brighton and Hove in the UK. Service providers see the situation for their service users has gotten worse and that the policies make it more difficult to extricate themselves from their current situation. Three central themes relating to the impact of austerity-led welfare reforms were, namely, Universal Credit: the imposition of a precarious livelihood on welfare claimants; a double-edged sword: “If people are sanctioned: people can’t pay”; and “Hard to maintain my own mental equilibrium”.

More precisely, this paper captures service providers’ perceptions and experiences of the impact of austerity-led policies on their services and how they believe this, in turn, impacts their clients and their own lives.

The dimension cuts across service provision to vulnerable people and is intertwined with health and well-being outcomes. Austerity is detrimental to the health of service users and their clients. It is known that when it comes to the health and well-being of the most vulnerable, who have suffered most from the impacts of austerity policies. However, in times of open austerity, it falls also on those trying to ease their suffering.

The data suggest that policies were developed and accentuated by austerity, which led to the stripping of welfare support from vulnerable people. This process has impacted the people who rely on welfare and service providers.

The authors aim to broaden the understanding of incivility through the lens of bystanders who witness incivility toward women. Integrating attributional ambiguity and emotional contagion theories with the literature on workplace mistreatment, the authors propose that witnessing incivility toward women may negatively impact bystanders.

The authors collected multi-wave data from 324 employees to assess the consequences of witnessing incivility toward women at work for bystanders.

Utilizing a serial mediation model, the authors found evidence that witnessing incivility toward women indirectly increased turnover intentions six weeks later, first through elevated negative affect and then through increased cognitive burnout.

Taken together, this study's findings suggest that the negative effects of incivility toward women can spread to bystanders and highlight the importance of considering individuals who are not directly involved, but simply bear witness to incivility at work.

This chapter offers an autotheoretical account of my experiences as a trans man training for my first amateur bout – one that has yet to come but borne out of a never-ending fight. My chapter is in conversation with autobiography (McBee, 2018), journalistic (Oates, 2006) and ethnographical scholarship addressing the intricacies of pugilistic violence as a response to systemic gender, racial, sexual and economic oppression (Beauchez, 2017; Rutter, 2007).

Boxing draws fighters from marginalized communities. As a trans man, I have fought intense ‘negative’ feelings most of my life – emotions culminating into rage. I joined an amateur boxing club in Ottawa after trying to instigate a street altercation with a stranger. Feeling out of control, I sought refuge with others who also believe fighting solves problems.

Influenced by Oates' observations that boxing is ‘primarily about being, and not giving, hurt’ (2006) and sharing McBee's experience of ‘loving those men even as I hit them in the face, and knowing that they love[] me back’ (2018), I explore boxing as intimate and affective grounds for bearing witness to the pain and injury of the other shaping their daily lives. Amateur boxing as an embodied and affective space exceeds the oft reductionist (mis)understanding of the sport as a violent spectacle of individual bravado and the emphasis scholars and the mainstream media place on the ‘heroic body’ (Woodward, 2007); instead, I offer glimpses into the healing justice as social justice that witnessing the pain, vulnerability and resilience of oneself and other boxers can provide.

Background: This work is a situation analysis of reported human rights abuses that have characterized the COVID-19 controls and lockdown in some countries of the world. This is as documented by reliable mass media sources, relevant international organizations and human rights non-governmental organizations between January 2020 to April 2020.

Methods: A combined content analysis, critical analysis, and doctrinal method is applied in this study in line with the reproducible research process. It is a secondary-data-based situation analysis study, conducted through a qualitative research approach.

Findings: The findings revealed among other things that: COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews' enforcement by law enforcement officers contravened some people's fundamental human rights within the first month. Security forces employed overt and immoderate forces to implement the orders. The lockdown and curfew enforcements were not significantly respectful of human life and human dignity. The COVID-19 emergency declarations in some countries were discriminatory against minorities and vulnerable groups in some countries.

Research limitations/implications: This report is based on data from investigative journalism and opinions of the United Nations and international human rights organizations, and not on police investigations or reports. The implication of the study is that if social marketing orientations and risk communication and community engagement attitudes were given to the law enforcement officers implementing the COVID-19 lockdowns and or curfews, the human rights and humanitarian rights breaches witnessed would have been avoided or drastically minimized.

Originality: The originality of this review is that it is the first to undertake a situation analysis of the COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews human rights abuses in some countries. The study portrayed the poor level of social marketing orientations and risk communication and community engagement attitudes amongst law enforcement officers, culminating in the frosty police-public relationships.