This qualitative research examines gender differences in offenders'ability to negotiate a positive identity once the pejorative labels of criminal, prostitute, drug dealer, and incompetent parents have been imputed onto them. In-depth semi-structured focused interviews were conducted with a purposeful information-rich sample of eight male and eight female offenders. Content analysis reveals that males were much more adept than female offenders at juggling with conventional and street norms to justify and/or resist stigmatizing labels in order to construct a favorable identity. Appeal to such personal strengths as know-how, competence, loyalty, and a code of honor allowed male offenders to challenge the boundaries between conventional and delinquent worlds. Concomitantly such an appeal gave rise to a sense of efficacy perception and an optimistic explanatory style. In contrast, even though female offenders were able to justify the labels of drug dealer, prostitute, and thief by appeal to higher loyalties and reject that of insane, all their justifications collapsed when having to negotiate the identity of incompetent mother. Female offenders' negative internal attributions and deprivation of the normative center-motherhood resulted in apathy, anomie, and lack of confidence in their ability to do something worthwhile. Rehabilitation guidelines would build female offenders' personal strengths while redirecting those exhibited by male offenders into lawful enterprises.

Eleven female drug-court participants looked at current and past experiences to assess their program and envision future program innovations. From these women's perspective, the strongest component of drug court was being surrounded by staff dedicated to their progress and recovery. Graduated supervision and accurate drug testing were appreciated rather than resented when the participants were not humiliated and were treated with respect. Wraparound services, resources, and referral; treatment facilities that accepted children; and individualized treatment plans and therapy with offenders who are ex-addicts, and preferably females, allowed for greater involvement and active participation in recovery. Progressing through three phases, acquiring skills, a job, and visitation rights to see their children or regaining custody, increased these women's sense of self-efficacy perception and confidence in their ability to lead a drug-free, meaningful life. Findings show the importance of qualitative criteria in evaluating drug-court participants' progress and the process of recovery.

This study examined the extent to which a multiethnic sample of 900 Israeli high school students supported date-rape and victim-blaming attitudes and the predictors of such support. Findings indicate wide support for stereotypes justifying sexual coercion by time and the location of the date, the victim's behavior, and the minimization of the seriousness of date rape. A regression analysis indicates that students' gender and age are the strongest predictors of rape-tolerant and victim-blaming attitudes. Socioeconomic status and religious orientation explain a small proportion of the variance in the support of such attitudes. By contrast, no significant relationship is indicated with ethnicity. Alternative sex-education and rape-prevention programs must address date-rape and victim-blaming attitudes and make students of both genders aware of various factors that continue to be misread as an invitation to have sex and put them at high risk of experiencing sexual coercion on a date.

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This study examines the process of identity negotiation for Israeli female ex-convicts who were separated for extensive periods of time from their children and eventually lost custody over them. The content analysis of in-depth interviews reveals that these women were able to reconstruct their biographies and retrospectively account for their crimes and drug addiction in terms of the sexual, physical, and economic abuse they had endured and by appeal to higher loyalties, their children who they had to provide for. However, when having to account for their fallings as mothers, all biographical reconstruction, external blame, and accusation collapsed. Looking at themselves through their children's eyes, female offenders were simply unable to renegotiate the imputed identity of incompetent mother. They could neither confront their children's anger nor explain to them why they had abandoned them. Permanently alienated from the center of motherhood, these women were doomed to an existential chaos.