Transformative Justice: Psychological Services in the Criminal, Family, and Juvenile Justice Centres of the Subordinate Courts of Singapore

Les tribunaux de première instance de Singapour assurent la prévention et une justice rapide, loyale et efficace; ils font en outre preuve d'innovation. Les tribunaux sont perçus comme étant un creuset de conflits, de traumarismes et de dysfonctions relationnelles, ce qui exige d'eux une grande compétence dans le traitement des problèmes humains complexes. Les services de la psychologie vont au-delà de la fourniture classique d'un profil criminel pour devenir une aide au système judiciaire, ce qui peut constituer une force majeure de transformation individuelle, familiale et sociale. On présente trois interventions des services de la psychologie: les conférences familiales, les critères du comportement délinquant juvènile, et le projet HEART. Chaque intervention entraîne des transformations dans un cadre de légalité judiciaire.
In addition to being a centre for the expeditious, fair, and effective administration of justice and the disposition of deterrence, the Subordinate Courts of Singapore have developed as a centre of innovation. Courts are also conceptualised as a crucible of human conflicts, traumas, and relational dysfunctions, thus requiring expertise in dealing with complex human problems. Psychological Services go beyond the conventional notion of providing expert criminal profiling to becoming an adjunct to a judiciary which can become a driving force behind individual, familial, and societal transformation. Three functions of the Psychological Services are presented—Family Conferences; the Juvenile Offender Behaviour (JOB) Criteria; Project HEART. Each function reflects transformation within a forensic-legal framework.     

Procedural Justice and Affirmative Action

There is widespread agreement among both supporters and opponents that affirmative action either must not violate any principle of equal opportunity or procedural justice, or if it does, it may do so only given current extenuating circumstances. Many believe that affirmative action is morally problematic, only justified to the extent that it brings us closer to the time when we will no longer need it. In other words, those that support affirmative action believe it is acceptable in nonideal theory, but not ideal theory. This paper argues that affirmative action is entirely compatible with equal opportunity and procedural justice and would be even in an ideal world. I defend a new analysis of Rawlsian procedural justice according to which it is permissible to interfere in the outcomes of procedures, and thus I show that affirmative action is not morally problematic in the way that many have supposed.     

Experiential Learning and Social Justice Action: An Experiment in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Abstract. This essay discusses the process and findings of an experiment on the scholarship of teaching and learning conducted in a religious ethics classroom that utilized an experiential approach to teaching and learning about social justice. The first part lays out the focus of the investigation and the pedagogical principles drawn from experiential learning theory that provided the foundation for the experiment. The second part describes all of the components of the pedagogical strategy used in the experiment, the social justice action project. The third part discusses the qualitative methodology used to gather evidence and the findings drawn from that evidence. What the evidence shows is that an experiential approach to teaching and learning about social justice can be quite effective. The essay concludes with discussions of areas for further study and the implications for the practice of others. (The survey described in this article can be found on the Wabash Center Web site〈 http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/journal/glennon.html 〉).     

Competing Conceptions of Justice: Faculty Moral Reasoning About Affirmative Action

College faculty (N = 115) were recruited to investigate the influence of moral reasoning on hiring decisions about affirmative action dilemmas. Participants completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a standard test of moral reasoning, a measure that presented two hypothetical moral dilemmas about affirmative action that manipulated candidates' race and moral issues, and a scale evaluating the use of external norms versus self-chosen principles. Results indicated that moral issue but not race of a minority candidate affected hiring decisions. Faculty used greater percentages of principled reasoning when solving the more salient affirmative action dilemmas than when solving the hypothetical dilemmas of the DIT. Higher scores on the DIT were related to the use of principles rather than norms when making hiring decisions. Findings suggest that faculty decisions about hiring a hypothetical affirmative action candidate are more influenced by moral reasoning level and competing conceptions of justice than racial bias or ambivalence.     

Enhancing Procedural Justice in Local Government Budget and Tax Decision Making

Two studies examined criteria for procedural justice in the related contexts of local government budgeting (Study 1) and taxation (Study 2). Questionnaire data were gathered from 272 municipal police chiefs in Study 1 and 81 municipal property owners in Study 2, Regression analysis indicated that ethicality. accuracy, and bias suppression were signiticant ( p < 0.05) predictors of procedural justice in both studies. Other significant predictors of procedural justice in Study I were correctability and justification. However. the relationship between justification and procedural justice in Study I was negative. which is contrary to theory. The results suggest strategies that local government officials can use to enhance the perceived fairness of budget and tax decision-making procedures.     

Justice: The Neglected Argument and the Pregnant Vision

Countering the present trend in the discourse on justice wherein human reason is perceived and marginalized as an embarrassment to justice and the trend to reject the concept of formal justice, this paper argues that there is formal justice and the essence of justice is setting things right and setting righteousness to stand straight. By this token, justice means the rule of reason, not the rule of power and desire, and the ethics of justice differs fundamentally from the ethics of care/benevolence. The popular assumption that justice as the rule of reason is incompatible with the idea of justice as accommodating diversity is unjustified. The paper joins the present discourse on justice from a historical perspective. It examines the historical Confucian and neo-Confucian concept of justice in a way of its dialogues with other Western concepts of justice such as Plato's concept of justice.     

Aversive Racism and Resistance to Affirmative Action: Perception of Justice Are Not Necessarily Color Blind

This study utilized a factorial survey design to assess attitudes toward affirmative action as a function of targeted group (Black, handicapped, or elderly persons), framing of the policy (with or without social justification), and institutional context (business, college, or social organization). Resistance to affirmative action was aroused more by policies specifying Blacks as the targeted group and by policies presented without justification. Supportive of the aversive racism framework, the level of resistance to the policies presented without justification for Blacks as the target group was higher than for all other targeted groups with or without justification. Implications for these findings for strategies to reduce negative attitudes toward affirmative action are discussed.     

重新思考马克思与正义：希腊的维度

作者认为马克思思想具有希腊的维度,古希腊伦理哲学中的本质主义、目的论和正义这三个要素深刻地影响了马克思对资本主义的分析和批判.在作者看来,马克思的历史理论是本质主义和目的论的,这与亚里士多德的影响密不可分.而马克思对正义的看法则深受伊壁鸠鲁的影响,即将一种历史的维度引入了关于正义的讨论,在这种观点的影响下,马克思在正义问题上采取了"有限相对主义"的立场,即认为资本主义就其本身来看是正义的,但是从社会主义的立场来,这种正义又是有限的和不足的.正因为历史地看待正义问题,所以马克思又用道德的语言来谴责资本主义.作者认为,这种"有限相对主义"和用道德的语言抨击资本主义之间的张力并不像某些学者认为的是一种矛盾,而是马克思处理问题的一种辩证方法.     

Examining the Relationships Between the Justice Facets and Turnover Intent: The Mediating Roles of Overall Justice and Psychological Strain

We examined how interpersonal justice from coworkers, the traditional justice facets (i.e., distributive, procedural, interpersonal, informational), and overall justice perceptions relate to employee psychological strain and turnover intentions in Canadian Armed Forces personnel. Specifically, we hypothesized that overall justice would mediate the relationships between the justice facets (including coworker justice) and strain, and strain would mediate the relationship between overall justice and turnover intent. We used a cross-sectional correlational design with personnel from 2 military units (total N = 218) as our sample. A 2-step structural equation modeling technique was used to evaluate our hypotheses. Support for our hypotheses was obtained with 1 exception: informational justice did not predict overall justice judgments. Our results suggest that employees’ reactions to individual justice events and different sources of justice exert their effects on strain and turnover intent indirectly through their impact on a global evaluation of justice in their work environment.     

Rawls, Justice in the Family and Justice of the Family

I contend that a form of contractualism more individualistic than Rawls' would do better at addressing concerns about justice and the family raised by feminist theorists, and that it would also compel us to be more egalitarian. Dissatisfactions expressed with Rawls's neglect of issues related to gender and the family can only be addressed if 'parties in the original position' are strictly defined as individuals. Thus defined, they are not only able to address questions of justice within families, but can also explore the less familiar question of justice of the family, namely whether the family should exist, from the point of view of justice. I conclude by exploring the question of whether the family should be abolished, in view of its leading to life chances unequal between individuals, and compare the family with a generalized, well resourced and well run orphanage.     

The University and Social Justice

Considerations of social justice pertain to universities with respect to reserved spaces for applicants from disadvantaged groups, targeted hiring, differential student fees or faculty workloads and salaries, and similarly contested matters. This paper displaces debates over what constitutes just allocation of university resources from those over theories of justice in general to those about alternative visions of the proper goal of universities. To this end, educational and democratic theories of John Dewey are drawn on as an alternative to elitist conceptions and the implications of these competing viewpoints for specific justice-related issues are explicated.     

正义感及其进化论解释——从罗尔斯的正义感思想谈起

正义感是有助于人类合作的道德情感,但它并不是一种单一性的概念,而是复合性的,它至少包含了感激、愤恨、负罪与义愤,这些情感具有不同的进化机制,因此,对正义感起源的解释也就并非某种单一的进化论模式可以应付,不同的道德情感可能适用于不同的进化论解释模式,这才是理解正义感起源的科学态度.