Do you give to someone begging? For centuries, the figure of the beggar has caused public fear, sympathy and confusion. In this book, criminologist Joe Hermer explores how the dilemma of giving to someone begging today has become an unusual site of regulation, public inquiry and law reform. This book investigates why handing pocket change to someone begging is now widely viewed as a gift crime, one that attempts to make the giving public complicit in the policing and control of visibly poor people. Drawing on the historical insight that public feeling is a central problem of policing the vagrant beggar, the author examines how a quirky provincial experiment to stop people giving to beggars morphed into an unlikely movement across England. Hermer ranges widely in his analysis, with discussions of 'diverted giving' schemes, specialised police operations, activist efforts to repeal the Vagrancy Law, and begging-like activities such as busking, Big Issue vending and flag day collections. The author pays particular attention to the Vagrancy Act 1824 and the historic reforms enabled by gift crime regulation to this storied area of criminal law. The consequence, this book argues, is the continuing abandonment of some of the most vulnerable individuals in society through direct appeals to compassion and kindness.

Named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Washington Post “Tangled Up in Blue is a wonderfully insightful book that provides a lens to critically analyze urban policing and a road map for how our most dispossessed citizens may better relate to those sworn to protect and serve.” —The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . Brooks has produced an engaging page-turner that also outlines many broadly applicable lessons and sensible policy reforms.” —Foreign Affairs Journalist and law professor Rosa Brooks goes beyond the "blue wall of silence" in this radical inside examination of American policing In her forties, with two children, a spouse, a dog, a mortgage, and a full-time job as a tenured law professor at Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks decided to become a cop. A liberal academic and journalist with an enduring interest in law's troubled relationship with violence, Brooks wanted the kind of insider experience that would help her understand how police officers make sense of their world—and whether that world can be changed. In 2015, against the advice of everyone she knew, she applied to become a sworn, armed reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. Then as now, police violence was constantly in the news. The Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum, protests wracked America's cities, and each day brought more stories of cruel, corrupt cops, police violence, and the racial disparities that mar our criminal justice system. Lines were being drawn, and people were taking sides. But as Brooks made her way through the police academy and began work as a patrol officer in the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the nation's capital, she found a reality far more complex than the headlines suggested. In Tangled Up in Blue, Brooks recounts her experiences inside the usually closed world of policing. From street shootings and domestic violence calls to the behind-the-scenes police work during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential inauguration, Brooks presents a revelatory account of what it's like inside the "blue wall of silence." She issues an urgent call for new laws and institutions, and argues that in a nation increasingly divided by race, class, ethnicity, geography, and ideology, a truly transformative approach to policing requires us to move beyond sound bites, slogans, and stereotypes. An explosive and groundbreaking investigation, Tangled Up in Blue complicates matters rather than simplifies them, and gives pause both to those who think police can do no wrong—and those who think they can do no right.

The police fight a different kind of war, and the enemy is the police officer's own civilian population: those who engage in crime, social indignity, and inhumane treatment of others. The result for the police officer is both physical and psychological battering, occasionally culminating in the officer sacrificing his or her life to protect others. This book focuses on the psychological impact of police civilian combat. During a police career, the men and women of police agencies are exposed to distressing events that go far beyond the experience of the ordinary citizen, and there is an increased need today to help police officers deal with these traumatic experiences. As police work becomes increasingly complex, this need will grow. Mental health and other professionals need to be made aware of the conditions and precipitants of trauma stress among the police. The goal of this book is to provide that important information. The book's perspective is based on the idea that trauma stress is a product of complex interaction of person, place, situation, support mechanisms, and interventions. To effectively communicate this to the reader, new conceptual and methodological considerations, essays on special groups in policing, and innovative ideas on recovery and treatment of trauma are presented. This information can be used to prevent or minimize trauma stress and to help in establishing improved support and therapeutic measures for police officers. Contributions in the book are from professionals who work with police officers, and in some cases those who are or have been police officers, to provide the reader with different perspectives. Chapters are grouped into three sections: conceptual and methodological issues, special police groups, and recovery and treatment. The book concludes with a discussion of issues and identifies future directions for conceptualization, assessment, intervention, and effective treatment of psychological trauma in policing.

The Compassion Fatigue Workbook is a lifeline for any helping professional facing the physical and emotional exhaustion that can shadow work in the helping professions. Since 2001 the activities in this Workbook have helped thousands of helpers in the fields of healthcare, community mental health, correctional services, education, and the military. In addition to a comprehensive description of compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization, The Compassion Fatigue Workbook leads the reader through experiential activities designed to target specific areas in their personal and professional lives. It provides concrete strategies to help the reader develop a personalized plan for identifying and transforming compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization. Topics covered include: understanding compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma symptom checklist targeting areas for strategic planning understanding warning signs assessing contributing factors evaluating self-care identifying triggers solutions: personal, professional and organizational strategies.

In light of the numerous challenges posed by globalization, living together as humanity on one planet needs to be reinvented in the twenty-first century. To create a new, peaceful, just, and sustainable world order is vital to the survival of us all. In this regard, humankind will have to expand the limited scope of its moral imagination beyond the borders of family, tribe, class, religion, nation, and culture. Will the cultivation of compassion, as scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Karen Armstrong, and religious leaders like the Dalai Lama maintain, contribute to a more just world? A global movement to cultivate and extend compassion beyond the immediate circle of concern may indeed find inspiration from many different religious traditions. The question at the heart of this book is whether the Christian legacy provides us with sources of moral imagination needed to guide us into the global era. Can the Christian practice of faith contribute to a more compassionate world? If so, how? And is it true that compassion is what we need, or do we need something else (justice, for example)? In Considering Compassion, colleagues from different theological disciplines at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Groningen, Netherlands, take up these challenging questions from a variety of interdisciplinary angles.

Do you give to someone begging? For centuries, the figure of the beggar has caused public fear, sympathy and confusion. In this book, criminologist Joe Hermer explores how the dilemma of giving to someone begging today has become an unusual site of regulation, public inquiry and law reform. This book investigates why handing pocket change to someone begging is now widely viewed as a gift crime, one that attempts to make the giving public complicit in the policing and control of visibly poor people. Drawing on the historical insight that public feeling is a central problem of policing the vagrant beggar, the author examines how a quirky provincial experiment to stop people giving to beggars morphed into an unlikely movement across England. Hermer ranges widely in his analysis, with discussions of 'diverted giving' schemes, specialised police operations, activist efforts to repeal the Vagrancy Law, and begging-like activities such as busking, Big Issue vending and flag day collections. The author pays particular attention to the Vagrancy Act 1824 and the historic reforms enabled by gift crime regulation to this storied area of criminal law. The consequence, this book argues, is the continuing abandonment of some of the most vulnerable individuals in society through direct appeals to compassion and kindness.

This Summer 2008 (VI, 3) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is dedicated to an exploration of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Engaged Buddhist philosophy and spiritual theory and practice from a sociological and social scientific vantage point, to highlight the significance his teaching bears for the development of a self-reflective, globally humanist, and environmentally concerned, sociological imagination. Included are several talks, letters, and a poem, by Thich Nhat Hanh on the meaning and practice of Engaged Buddhism—in regard to issues ranging from war and conflict, the environment, food industry and consumption, and history of Engaged Buddhism. Other articles put his views in social science and sociological contexts, specifically exploring the overlapping landscapes of Engaged Buddhism with Pragmatism, Deep Ecology, sociological imagination, and ideological analysis. Other contributions are illustrative of the ways in which Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings have engaged contexts such as: international conflict; the classroom; urban policing; traumatized populations; economic theory; environmental crisis; and family loss and trauma. A critical commentary by a participant’s experience of attending one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s retreats in 2005 is also included, followed by a response from a representative of the Plum Village community in France. Contributors include: Thich Nhat Hanh, Winston Langley, Michael C. Adorjan, Benjamin W. Kelly, Julie Gregory, Samah Sabra, Darren Noy, Sujin Choi, Marc Black, Samiyeh Sharqawi, Richard Brady, Michael J. DeValve, Cary D. Adkinson, Robert Brian Wall, Glenn Manga, Angela Tam, Karen Hilsberg, Lisa Kemmerer, Bhikshuni Chan Tung Nghiem (Barbara Newell), Robert Andrew Parker, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.

Compassion’s COMPASS: Strategies for Developing Kindness and Insight offers a systematic approach to developing compassionate insight that has been adapted from Tibetan mind training strategies, secularized for modern audiences, and supplemented with relevant research, anecdotes, and exercises in accessible language. This book contains easy exercises for regaining composure, boosting compassionate insight, preventing compassion fatigue, and maintaining compassion resilience. “COMPASS” is an acronym for “Compassion and Analytical Selective-Focus Skills”. Selective-focus skills suggest contemplations that can help to generate and enhance compassionate insight. These exercises follow an “emotional logic” in which one step produces a basis for cultivating the next. These skill steps are broken down in detail within each section of the book containing a discussion of the purpose of the skill being presented, supporting research for it, examples of its use, and short exercises for the reader to try in order to cultivate and enhance it. These techniques have been piloted with social workers and therapists-in-training. Details of these pilot studies are included along with a handbook for helping professionals in the prevention and healing of compassion fatigue. The exercises that are presented in each chapter are also compiled in order for easy use in the handbook in back of the book.

Bringing together leading scholars, scientists, and clinicians, this compelling volume explores how therapists can cultivate wisdom and compassion in themselves and their clients. Chapters describe how combining insights from ancient contemplative practices and modern research can enhance the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse, suicidal behavior, couple conflict, and parenting stress. Seamlessly edited, the book features numerous practical exercises and rich clinical examples. It examines whether wisdom and compassion can be measured objectively, what they look like in the therapy relationship, their role in therapeutic change, and how to integrate them into treatment planning and goal setting. The book includes a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.