Session 3: Are They Really as Bad as all That?

3rd Global Conference

Saturday 10th September – Monday 12th September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Philip Marlowe: The Indifferent Threshold
Debasree Basu
Center for English Studies (CES), School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies (SLL&CS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India

Colin Wilson in his essay ‘The Outsider’ defines ‘outsider’ as a person who perceives that, much of what we call civilization is a denial of the finest of human values. He experiences a deep sense of alienation both from himself and his society, but also struggles for a unity from within. Because he cannot feel at home in the world, the outsider closes in on himself; he crosses what Wilson calls ‘the Indifference Threshold’.

It was amidst the tremulous urban life of post-Depression war torn America; that a lone private detective, Philip Marlowe appeared on the streets of Los Angeles. Marlowe’s moral authority took shape against a sullied world, in which every other person was a criminal or a hypocrite, a world that needed a knight to redeem it but did not wanted such redemption.

The paper is an attempt to surface the complex characterization of the “tough hard-boiled” detective Marlowe in the light of Wilson’s definition. In him, there lies a complex and uncertain central figure who often uses his biting one-liners to sidestep serious personal questions that might give the reader any insight into his views on women, relationships, or even his unknown past. I will argue that Marlowe’s failure is not a mere pernicious influence of material interest in a world gone wrong, but rather one which focuses on his obsessive quest for glory and the hollowness of prestige that he treasures. The detective, who appeared to have risen above the others, is actually no different at all. Infact, he is a private figure rather than a “public” one which he thinks he is. This dialectic aspect in Raymond Chandler’s fictional creation narrows the gulf between the detective and the criminal manifesting a state of dull insensitivity that often expresses itself as critically existential and alien.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Juvenile Villains in America: Attitude-appropriate psych-social-sex-education, Framing of Grooming, Framing the Prevention of Trans-Diagnostic Sub-Clinical Patterns
Laura Mangan
Alumni, California Institute of Technology, USA

Over one third of the child sexual abusers in America are adolescent student offenders. The percentage of adolescent sex offenders has been rising in the past decade. Since most child sexual abusers are first-time offenders without prior records, evidence-based preventive measures are necessary to prevent villainous child sexual crimes. Reduction of the prevalence rates of child sexual abuse can forestall sexual trauma related psychiatric disorders, sexually transmitted infections and teen-pregnancies.

Attitude-appropriate psychological sex education, moral development program and judicial criminal charges can reduce the rates of villainous child sexual crimes. (1) Attitude-appropriate curriculum adaptively addresses the prevailing attitude towards sexual violence in impoverished neighborhoods. Psychological curriculum of diverse school-districts utilizes properly-framed messages to prevent potential child victims from sexual trauma, to deter potential debut adolescent offenders from sexual crimes, and to forestall repeated offenders from recidivism. Loss-framed messages targeting adolescent offenders stress the risks of sexual aggression and the costs of criminal prosecution. Adolescent offenders learn to monitor their triggers of sexual aggression and divert them in non-sexual manners. (2) Moral development programs elucidate the psychological, social, and legal risks of villainous sexual crimes against children. In a recent meta-analysis of offenders, maturity of moral development significantly reduces the rate of recidivism among juvenile offenders. Moral cognition has slightly more impact than moral emotion; indeed, mature moral cognitions lower long-term sexual recidivism rates of adolescent sex offenders. (3) Judicial criminal charges and no-tolerance policies of juvenile courts reduce the juvenile sexual crime rates. Adolescent sex offenders who were criminally charged are significantly less likely to commit repeated offenses (rape, sexual imposition) than adolescents who were not criminally charged. Evidence-based longitudinal study of adolescent offenders support that legal charges significantly reduce sexual recidivism.