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The study aimed to listen to refugee survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and/or torture and explore what justice meant to them in exile. This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. The research was funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.

Using a survivor-focussed justice lens combined with a trauma-informed approach, narrative interviews were held with 41 women and 20 men refugee survivors living in refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. The researchers also conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 key informants including refugee welfare councils, the UN, civil society, non-government and government organisations. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in the following themes being identified: no hope of formal justice for atrocities that occurred in South Sudan; insecurity; lack of confidence in transitional justice processes in Ugandan refugee settlements; abuse and loss of freedom in refugee settlements; and lack of access to health and justice services in refugee settlements.

This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. That is justice that is survivor-centred and includes elements of traditional and transitional justice, underpinned by social justice. By including the voices of both men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and getting the views of service providers and other stakeholders, this paper offers an alternative form of justice to the internationally accepted types of justice, which offer little relevance or restitution to refugees, particularly where the crime has been committed in a different country and where there is little chance that perpetrators will be prosecuted in a formal court of law.

The research findings are based on a small sample of South Sudanese refugees living in three refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. Thus, wider conclusions should not be drawn. However, the research does suggest that a “viable justice” approach should be implemented that is gender and culturally sensitive and which could also be trialled in different refugee contexts.

Improvements in refugee survivors’ dignity, resilience and recovery are dependent upon the active engagement of refugees themselves using a “survivor-focussed approach” which combines formal and community-based health services with traditional and transitional justice responses.

The provision of a “viable justice approach” ensures those who have experienced SGBV and/or torture, and their families, feel validated. It will assist them to use their internal, cultural and traditional resilience and agency in the process of recovery.

The research findings are original in that data was collected from men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and service providers. The empirical evidence supports this study’s recommendation for an approach that combines both formal and survivor-focussed approaches towards health and viable justice services to meet the needs of refugees living in refugee settlements. This is a response that listens to and responds to the needs of refugee survivors in a way that continues to build their resilience and agency and restores their dignity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the case for a truth and reconciliation (T&R) process in the context of mental health services.

The approach is a conceptual review of T&R approaches; a consideration of why they are important; and how they might be applied in the context of mental health services and psychiatry. First, the paper sets out a case for T&R in psychiatry, giving some recent examples of how this might work in practice. Then it outlines potential objections which complicate any simplistic adoption of T&R in this context.

In the absence of an officially sanctioned T&R process a grassroots reparative initiative in mental health services may be an innovative bottom-up approach to transitional justice. This would bring together service users, survivors and refusers of services, with staff who work/ed in them, to begin the work of healing the hurtful effects of experiences in the system.

This is the first paper in a peer-reviewed journal to explore the case for T&R in mental health services. The authors describe an innovative T&R process as an important transitional step towards accomplishing reparation and justice by acknowledging the breadth and depth of service user and survivor grievances. This may be a precondition for effective alliances between workers and service users/survivors. As a result, new forms of dialogic communication and horizontal democracy might emerge that could sustain future alliances and prefigure the social relations necessary for more humane mental health services.

This paper aims to examine the growing incidence of judicialisation of politics in Nigeria's democratisation experience against the backdrop of questionable judicial accountability.

The article draws on legal and political theory as well as comparative law perspectives.

The judiciary faces a daunting task in deepening democracy and (re) instituting the rule of law. The formidable challenges derive in part from structural problems within the judiciary, deficient accountability credentials and the complexities of a troubled transition.

Effective judicial mediation of political transition requires a transformed and accountable judiciary.

The article calls attention to the need for judicial accountability as a cardinal and integral part of political transitions.

This paper illustrates how Taiwan has tried to mobilize its prehistory Austronesian linguistic heritage and indigenous cultural memories to reposition itself in the Asia-Pacific. It examines how the attempt has gradually evolved into cross-border exchange and partnership based on the interconnectivity across the Pacific on different levels.

The research is based on policy review of the Taiwan government's growing focus on indigenous culture in strategizing diplomacy and cultural policy from 2000 through 2021 and the researcher's participant observation in expert cultural heritage meetings (2018–2021). It is also complemented by semi-structured interviews with both selected state actors and civil actors.

The past connection among indigenous communities in Taiwan and the Austronesian peoples contributes to building up new cultural circuits across-borders based upon shared indigenous heritage and demonstrates the extraterritorial role of heritage, which can be the potential base for developing diplomacy.

The research is limited in not directly engaging with actors in the Pacific given limited time, budget and mobility under the coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic. The author would like to follow on that in her future research.

The paper sheds light on the uneasy relationship between indigenous heritage making and nation building and its cultural implications. This study demonstrates that the state framework of heritage is not necessarily appropriate to deal with these complicated historical matters, especially when the notion of heritage per se is not decolonised in a settler state.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the community level factors associated with police strength and operational costs in Aboriginal police services from four different geographic zones, including remote communities inaccessible by road[1].

Analysis of variance was used to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference in per capita policing costs, the officer to resident ratio, an index of community well-being and crime severity in 236 rural and remote Canadian communities.

The authors found that places that were geographically inaccessible or further from urban areas had rates of police-reported crime several times the national average and low levels of community well-being. Consistent with those results, the per capita costs of policing were many times greater than the national average, in part due to higher officer to resident ratios.

These results are from rural Canada and might not be generalizable to other nations.

Given the complex needs of these communities, these findings reinforce the importance of delivering full-time professional police services in rural and remote communities. Short duration or temporary postings may reduce police legitimacy as residents may perceive that their rural or Aboriginal status makes them less valued than city dwellers. As a result, agencies should prioritize the retention of experienced officers in these communities.

These findings validate the observations of officers about the challenges that must be overcome in policing these distinctive communities. This information can be used to inform future studies of rural and remote policing.

This research aimed to explore the characteristics of respondents who accessed a municipal police service's webpage or social media (Facebook or Twitter). Perceptions about the usefulness of social media in policing were solicited from the respondents.

Several survey items about social media were included in a study of trust and confidence in policing that was collected in two waves: a random telephone sample of 504 community residents and 314 university students.

One in five respondents had accessed the police service's webpage, while 6.9 percent had accessed their Twitter feed and 5.4 percent had viewed their Facebook site. Social media users tended to be younger and better educated while respondents over 65 years of age rarely accessed these tools. Younger respondents reported that computer‐based methods of communication were useful whether they had accessed these services or not. Older non‐users, by contrast, saw little future value in social media. Chi‐square analyses revealed that users of social media had more confidence in the police as well as greater overall satisfaction with the police.

Participants were from a medium‐sized Canadian city and the results might not be generalizable to other populations.

Social media campaigns should be planned and target demographic groups likely to receive the intended message. Younger and better educated residents are the highest users of these services. Computer‐based media campaigns targeting senior citizens will likely be ineffective given their low participation in accessing social media and lack of interest in these methods of communication.

This study is one of the first to examine the recipients of social media and their perceptions of the usefulness of computer‐based communication for law enforcement.

This paper aims to discuss the constitution of the Memorial of Resistance of São Paulo (MRSP) by adopting the ANTi-History approach, thereby providing greater transparency to the socio-political relations of multiple actors involved in the constitution of this place as a site of memory.

By adopting the principles of ANTi-History, the researchers focused on the socio-politics of different human and nonhuman actors to examine how this site of memory was constituted. The researchers sought to turn the process of constituting the MRSP more transparent, putting together one of the possible historical versions of this phenomenon. The data collected included oral and documental sources (interviews, videos, books, newspapers and websites).

The findings support the notion of history as a socially constructed narrative that emerges through associations of heterogeneous actors in a dynamic and continuous process of (re)configuration. Additionally, by exposing the power relations and negotiations manoeuvres used by multiple actors, it allowed the researchers to highlight the complexity of the Memorial’s history as a black box, contextualizing them in a period of intense social upheaval, re-democratization and transitional justice within Brazilian society.

The paper outlines the process of listing the DEOPS/SP building and the social mobilization movements during the 1980s and 1990s in Brazil, illustrating some of the results obtained from a more extensive research project that dealt with the MRSP’s constitution process. It offers an in-depth example of using the ANTi-History approach in Organizational Studies, allowing the researchers to remove the organization’s veil of apparent simplicity and to bring back to life voices and actors that have been erased, disguised and silenced by the dominant version of events.

Extensive empirical evidence suggests that procedural justice (PJ) and distributive justice (DJ) are key success factors for achieving durable peace negotiations. This paper aims to investigate how complexity affects these factors and the outcomes in negotiations.

The qualitative study is based on an examination of the peace negotiations that led to the 2016 agreement between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo and the Colombian Government. Based on document analysis, the authors examined in detail how and where in the process the principles of PJ and DJ were applied. The authors then examined the implementation progress after 2016 and placed the peace process in the overall context of the Colombian conflict.

The authors found that the principles of PJ and DJ were present in both the negotiation process and the agreement. The negotiations were successful and satisfactory solutions could be found for all issues. The complexity of the conflict is reflected in the limited coverage of the peace negotiations. Not all groups, interests and subconflicts could be included in the negotiations. This limits their contribution to a durable peace in Colombia. Conflicts that remain unresolved also have a negative effect on the implementation of the agreement.

For conflict management, this implies that the negotiations should not be viewed as “one-and-done” but rather as a progressive, ongoing process. The agreement is only the nucleus for achieving total peace. It must be actively advanced and defended.

This study offers new qualitative insights into how PJ and DJ function in negotiations. It also establishes a systematic connection between PJ and DJ and complexity, introduces the notion of coverage and, thereby, opens a new perspective on the management of conflict complexity.

This paper is an author’s reply to the article by Cresswell (2017) critiquing the original piece by Spandler and McKeown (2017) on truth and reconciliation (T&R) in psychiatry. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

It continues the dialogue about the nature of reconciliation in mental health services and reflects on distinctions between the nature of historical abuses within the asylum system and the need to understand and prevent further harm within contemporary services.

Whilst the authors acknowledge the tension between reconciliation and democratic debate they suggest that the process does not have to mean agreement or acquiescence. They reaffirm their optimistic belief that better mental health services are possible and appreciate that true reconciliation is a process that will require both debate and the building of constructive alliances.

A grassroots T&R process might be a form of transitional justice which does not negate the need for wider social and policy changes, but may actually help achieve it.

This study aims to investigate the process of recovery for people diagnosed with personality disorder. This is related to the application of the new meaning of recovery from mental illness as explored by members of The Haven which, as the service setting for the study, addresses the problems of a client group that suffers significant social exclusion and aims to examine efforts which attempt to reverse this social exclusion.

A participatory action research approach was chosen for this study and The Haven Research Group, comprised of the author and Haven clients, formulated proposed research questions and conducted focus groups and individual client interviews with 66 participants, over a period of three years. The group has been concerned with the effectiveness of The Haven as a recovery tool from the perspective of service users and carers.

An examination of emerging themes, and the interplay between themes, gives insight into what participants considered to be the key steps to recovery for someone with a personality disorder diagnosis. From this thematic analysis, a map is proposed of the journey of recovery for people with the diagnosis.

As an alternative to the historically sequential path of rehabilitation and proposed recovery, this study offers a new, socially inclusive way of working with people who have a personality disorder diagnosis where they may choose to retain a haven while continuing to develop and progress on their chosen path in the wider world.

The Haven has emerged as a unique model where therapeutic community principles have been combined with a crisis unit which shows that it is possible to work effectively with a relatively large number of people with personality disorder, well in excess of 100 at one time, many of whom had not made progress in other service settings, resulting in significant financial savings to the health, social care and criminal justice system.

This study offers contributions to knowledge in terms of the service design and proposes a new model of recovery in personality disorder. This is defined as a journey of small steps highlighting recovery as a process rather than a goal, leading to the emergence of the new concept of transitional recovery.