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This chapter proposes and provides evidence for a conceptual framework for understanding the restoration of justice. Specifically, there is a fundamental distinction between two primary symbolic concerns that follow from transgressions: concern over the status/power relations between the involved parties, and over the violation of the values those parties expect to share. Recognizing these concerns is paramount to understanding the psychological needs of injustice victims, how they conceptualize the restoration of justice, and the processes by which various interventions instill feelings of justice. This framework also elucidates when alternative avenues towards justice might be more effective than traditional retributive responses.

In this study, we aimed at examining the unique and interactive effects of peer violence in cyberspace on adolescents’ emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment, as well as the mediational role of resilience in the link between adolescent’s pathogenic relational experiences and behavioral outcomes. Specifically, we intended to explore emotion differentiation and regulation in reaction to bullying perpetration and victimization and in terms of positive (proud, confident, good) and negative (ashamed, excited, guilty), Passive (sad, embarrassed, humiliated) and Reactive (angry, scared) emotions and how it impacted and predicted positive and negative outcomes.

A stratified convenient sample of 494 Italian students aged 13–19 years (M = 15.27, SD = 1.23) was selected to represent all different school types in Italy and the students were administered a self-report questionnaire on school bullying involvement. General Linear Models, ANOVA, and T-tests were employed to explore gender differences, the relationships between variables, and their contribution to the predictive model. A two-step Cluster analysis was used to profile adolescents based on patterns of resilience, health outcomes, and cyberbullying involvement.

Results showed significant gender differences, with females using internet and Facebook more than males and being more resilient, positive, and prosocial, but also responding to victimization with higher levels of alienation, anger, humiliation, and psychosomatic and emotional symptoms. Males perpetrated peer violence more than females, were less likely to be victimized, and were generally less emotionally impacted by it. Victimization rates (63.7%, n = 296) were higher than perpetration rates (51.7%, n = 233) and bully-victimization was prevalent (47.1%). Victims prevalently experienced passive emotions (sadness, humiliation, embarrassment) while perpetrators experienced negative ones (guilt and shame). Cluster analysis evidenced different pathways and trajectories of resilience and cyberbullying involvement: Resilient victims (RV), Healthy uninvolved (HU), Healthy Bullies (HB), Alienated Bully-Victims (ABV), and Resilient Bully-Victims (RBV). RV, HU, and HB resulted all well-adjusted, despite the different involvement in cyberbullying, and also RBV and despite the double involvement in cyberbullying, ABV were the only maladjusted and at-risk group in our sample characterized by very low Positivity, very low Resilience, and extremely high Alienation.

This study proposes a comprehensive, developmental, ecological, relational, and self-regulatory resilience approach to cyberbullying, which represents an innovative and advanced contribution to the literature with significant implication for research and practice. Fully understanding and measuring the emotional impact of cyber peer violence and resilience following cyberbullying victimization and perpetration can help in developing targeted interventions for both victims and bullies. This study highlighted the need for a self-regulatory model of resilience for modulating emotions, arousal, and behaviors across contexts, relationships, and difficulties. It also evidenced that moderate levels of resilience and positivity are sufficient to buffer youth from involvement in cyberbullying and to predict healthy adjustment and less pathological outcomes.

By profiling adolescents based on resilience levels, health outcomes, and cyberbullying involvement, we evidenced five distinct trajectories of risk evaluation for cyberbullying beyond participating roles. Our results confirmed the fundamental importance of assessing resilience and emotion regulatory resources together with peer violence involvement in identifying and targeting adolescents at risk.

Although cultural beliefs about gender differences in emotional experience and expression are pervasive, empirical evidence does not always bear out those beliefs. This disjuncture has led scholars to argue for the examination of specific emotions in specific contexts in order to understand more clearly the conditions under which gender differences emerge. Heeding this call, we focus on the justice context, reviewing and investigating men's and women's feelings about and emotional displays regarding distributive justice. Using a vignette study, we specifically examine how gender and the contextual factors of procedural justice, legitimacy of the decision-maker, and gender of the decision-maker affect emotional responses of injustice victims. We argue that a focus on the gender combination of actors in a situation moves the study of gender and emotions beyond the assumption that gender-specific cultural beliefs dictate individual's feelings across situations. Our findings show few gender differences in the experience and expression of anger, resentment, and satisfaction. Rather, contextual factors, including the gender of the decision-maker, had stronger effects on emotional responses than gender of the victim. In our justice situation, then, context matters more than gender in understanding emotional responses.

The primary goal of the Restorative Justice process is not punishment but making good the harm done by offending for the victim, the community and the offender. Offenders have to take responsibility for their actions as a precondition to addressing the harm that they have caused. Offenders become aware that a crime is committed, not against an abstraction, but against someone real, a person like themselves and against their community, who are directly and indirectly affected by what has happened. Crime and conflict affect relationships between individuals who are left outside the court system altogether by conventional justice. Proceedings and arguments of the restorative process are voluntary for all parties. People are given the opportunity to partake in mediation, or to accept reparation. The process is always confidential however; outcomes and agreements can be made public, depending on the authorisation by participants.

Trauma has become a buzz term, and the responses to trauma are slick and swift. Teams of mental health professionals can now be dispatched within hours of a catastrophe, and psychological intervention is fast becoming an industry. A more penetrating look at the state of trauma intervention reveals a less impressive picture. In spite of the heightened interest in the effects of trauma, mental health professionals are in fact a long way from fully understanding the impact of such trauma, and from providing responses to victims that are effective. Not only do we lack a psychotherapeutic antidote that can be distributed to the hundreds of thousands of victims of conflict across the globe, but to date we have failed to provide scientifically evaluated, evidence-based treatment guidelines for the psychological rehabilitation of victims.

The aim of this chapter is to apply a Feminist Social Constructionist (FSC) epistemological stance to the analysis of the literature on sexual harassment and aggression in the workplace. Research demonstrates that institutions and their policies are ineffective in addressing sexual harassment and that, for the most part, perpetrators are not sanctioned. This chapter deconstructs the ways in which Canadian policies and systemic variables serve to silence victims of workplace abuse and, consequently, protect perpetrators. To this end, we review the definition, legislation and policies related to sexual harassment. Next, factors that lead to risk, reporting and silencing are assessed. As well, organizational responses are analysed to identify institutional factors that result in creating environments that serve to perpetuate sexism, and the resulting victimization of workers with little to no change in the number of perpetrators being implicated.

In this chapter, the authors focus on a range of Australian news articles selected for their relevance to key themes in the area of child abuse and examine two high profile cases of child abuse deaths that were extensively reported on by the media and led to system reform. Challenges for media reporting on child abuse in Australia including a changing media landscape, lack of available child abuse data and lack of publicly available serious case reviews are discussed. The authors argue that there is a need for attention to be paid to children's resistance and agency in the context of violence and abuse to counter the objectification of children and uphold their rights. Following Finkelhor (2008), the authors argue that media reporting on child abuse in Australia reflects a general approach to child abuse that is fragmented, with different types of abuse viewed as separate from one another, and call for a more integrated understanding of child abuse. The authors highlight the complexity of media responses to child abuse in Australia, noting that while the social problem of child abuse can be misrepresented by the media, media reporting has also triggered significant systemic reform and advocated for children in cases where other systems failed them.

Purpose – Presents metrics and policy recommendations from the Dallas Domestic Violence Task Force (DDVTF) concerning the systemic response to domestic violence (DV) within this community.

Design/methodology/approach – In June 2017, 47 private citizens, nonprofit, criminal justice, social service and religious organizations, and governmental officials who participated on the task force were invited via email to participate in an electronic Qualtrics survey.

Findings – Both general annual metrics are offered as well as detailed monthly metrics and long-term trends for shelter and advocacy providers, police, the district and city attorney’s offices, and courts. In 2016–2017 alone, roughly 15,000 people were educated on DV, 246 victims were sheltered in emergency beds each night on average, roughly 8,000 victims were turned away due to lack of space, over 15,500 DV-related calls were handled by police, 11,000 county criminal cases were filed, and 7 intimate partner homicides occurred within the city of Dallas. Policy recommendations are offered.

Originality/value – The DDVTF annual report is one of the largest and most comprehensive reports of its kind in the United States, with over 3,000 variables collected across the partners. Now in its third reporting year, this chapter offers an overview of key findings and policy recommendations and highlights the work of this coordinated community response team.