New Article: Shoham, Victim Rhetoric among Sex Offenders: A Case Study of the Former Israeli President

Shoham, Efrat. “Victim Rhetoric among Sex Offenders: A Case Study of the Former Israeli President.” Journal of Politics and Law 8.1 (2015): 26-34.

 

URL: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jpl/article/view/45340/

 

Abstract

In 2009, the Israeli eight former president Katzav was accused of two counts of rape against an employee working under his authority during his time as Minister of Tourism. The story of the conviction of the eighth Israeli president of sex offences turned into a high-priority media story, which stayed at the top of the Israeli media agenda for a relatively long period. This qualitative paper, is aiming to identify and analyze the various rhetorical techniques utilized by Katsav, to replace the new criminal identity attributed to him with a victimized self-identity. The victimized rhetoric which is based on justifications and accounts such as: “Reverse character assassination”, “Attack the attackers” or “Contradiction technique”, had served the former president as a means to reduce his responsibility, to deny it and to build an alternative narrative that presents the alleged perpetrator as a persecuted victim. Never the less, the conviction and jailing of a president for sex crimes has greatly increased the awareness of sex offences in the workplace committed by people of power and authority.

New Article: Dagan, Looking Beyond Risk in Paroling Denying Prisoners

Dagan, Netanel. “Looking Beyond Risk in Paroling Denying Prisoners. A Response to Assy and Menashe’s ‘The Catch-22 in Israel’s Parole Law’.” Criminal Justice and Behavior (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0093854815589324

 

Abstract

This paper offers an additional theoretical perspective to the “Catch-22” problem as discussed in Assy and Menashe’s article, which appeared in the December 2014 issue of Criminal Justice and Behavior. It offers to look beyond risk in the discussion about parole of denying prisoners. By focusing on the retributive meaning of the problem, the paper offers an additional framework to discuss the magnitude of the problem (via proportionality analysis), and the overt and covert forces that influence a parole board’s discretion in action (via character retributivism analysis).