Little is known about the psychological and physiological impacts of moral injury within organizational contexts such as Internet Child Abuse Teams (hereafter abbreviated to ICAT), who are repeatedly exposed to trauma through viewing and grading graphic images of children being sexually abused. The aims of the current research were to explore the key features of, and contributing factors to, moral injury and trauma as experienced by Internet Child Abuse Teams, how these manifested and how these factors can be mitigated. Six participants were recruited from ICATs located at two police constabularies. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings indicated that the moral injury experienced by the participants was predominantly attributable to repeated exposure to traumatising images, with too little decompression time. Dysfunctional coping mechanisms, most commonly substance misuse, cognitive avoidance of distressing thoughts and emotional numbing, amplified the psychological and physical symptoms of anxiety. For many ICAT investigators, such tactics were attempts to manage the moral violations arising from their work and experienced as moral injury. These findings will be used to inform psychological review systems and interventions within policing.

Over the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

From the wars of Ancient Greece to the collapsing Islamic State in the present, the same, apparently timeless protagonists appear and their stories told and re-told: the heroes, cowards and other combatants. This article proposes a framework which combines a Foucauldian genealogical approach with his conception of the subject as both constituted in relation to code-oriented moralities, and creatively self-formed in relation to ethics-oriented moralities (Foucault 1992, pp. 5, 25), to understand how it is possible to speak meaningfully of heroes and cowards in the age of the drone and the jihadist. Section one will explore the applicability of Foucauldian genealogy as the methodological basis for understanding present combatants in the context of war. The second section will assess Foucault's 'modes of subjectivation' and 'practices of the self' (Foucault 1992, p. 28), as a means of analyzing the emergence of the subject of war over millennia, with emphasis on the ethical dimension of subjectivity that can be applied to heroes and cowards. Then the third section will use insights from Homer and Augustine to begin to illustrate how Foucault's genealogical approach and his conception of ethical subjectivity combine to enable heroes and cowards to be meaningfully spoken of and better understood in the domain of war today. The purpose of such a study is to set out the basis on which political genealogy after Foucault can provide a nuanced conceptualization of subjectivity in modern war, as those subjects are formed, claimed, valorized and criticized by competing entities in contemporary political discourse.

BackgroundPolice officers and staff who work in child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) investigations are routinely exposed to traumatic materials and situations. Despite support services, working in this space can have negative impacts on wellbeing. This paper explores the experiences and perceptions held by police officers and staff involved in CSAE investigations in the United Kingdom, regarding work-related wellbeing support and barriers to accessing such support.MethodA sample of 661 serving police officers and staff working in CSAE investigations participated in a United Kingdom-wide ‘Protecting the Protectors’ survey. We analysed quantitative and qualitative responses relating to participants’ experiences and perceptions regarding three main areas: (1) availability, usage and helpfulness of existing work-based well-being support; (2) barriers to accessing support; and (3) desired support services.FindingsFive interconnected themes emerged from the qualitative data that represented participants’ experiences and views of work-based wellbeing support and the barriers to accessing it. These were ‘Lack of trust’, ‘Stigma’, ‘Organisational approaches to wellbeing’, ‘Support services’, and ‘Internalised barriers’. The findings suggest that whilst respondents were aware of work-based support, they indicated most frequently that they ‘never or almost never’ used them. Respondents also identified barriers to accessing support, which related to a perception of a critical or judgmental workplace culture and indicating a lack of trust in their organisations.ConclusionStigma regarding mental ill health has a pervasive and harmful impact on emotional health and wellbeing of police officers and staff involved in CSAE investigations, which creates a sense of lack of emotional safety. Therefore, eliminating stigma and creating a workplace culture that explicitly values and prioritises the emotional health and wellbeing of the workforce would improve the wellbeing of officers and staff. Police organisations could further improve CSAE teams’ wellbeing by developing a continuum of care which is available to workers from recruitment to the end of the role, training managers and supervisors to better support CSAE teams, improving workplace practices, and ensuring high quality, specialist support services are readily and consistently available across forces.

The war in Syria, and its ongoing analysis, is burdened by a variety of seemingly irreconcilable political motivations, actions, ideologies, religious affiliations and power dynamics of multiple state and non-state actors. In this context, various moral perspectives appear to come into direct conflict, underpinning the actions of the actors involved and to varying degrees influencing their competing political interests. Is there a coherent dialogue of moralities between the rivals involved or is Babel reborn with moral claims being launched but with no real exchange of meaning involved? On Syria, the answer is a complicated mixture of both but within which are important and as yet underappreciated patterns of convergence and divergence. This paper looks at the leading states involved as well as the role of individuals to elucidate this pattern of overlap and difference in the morality discourses surrounding Syria. Ultimately, it is argued that a moral Babel is not reborn in Syria: there is sufficiently common moral language being used by all sides for a degree of shared meaning to emerge. The challenge is for the protagonists to listen and really hear what is being said and work with those commonalties as tools towards peace.

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Recent moral justifications of military intervention in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn upon just war concepts set out by Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century. Augustine, writing as the political hegemony of the Roman Empire was ebbing away, provides a valuable touchstone for anyone engaged in analysing the complex interplay of power, war, morality and religious faith. Like most of the problems Augustine addressed in his writings, his attitude to just war was rooted in a potent mix of imperial politics, concern for individual souls and establishing and defending church orthodoxy. Though his personal telos was to be found in the Heavenly City, Augustine did not try to avoid the difficulties of dealing with the contradictions involved in the Christian's encounter with the decidedly ungodly Earthly City. Though he never ruled out the need for political power to be wielded through the medium of martial force, Augustine would only accede to such action with great reluctance. This article investigates aspects of the use and misuse of Augustine and his ideas in both the political and academic arenas in the justification of recent military interventions. Analysis of statements made by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the book Just War Against Terror by American political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain will show how Augustinian concepts have been used selectively to serve broader political agendas. Blair and Elshtain have been chosen for this study because they were both, in their respective fields, influential figures who advocated the 2003 invasion of Iraq; they are both declared Christians; Elshtain has explicitly associated herself with Blair's approach; and they both rejected any notion of religious crusade in the aforementioned interventions. By considering casus belli which included self-defence, opposing evil and liberating the oppressed, this article will demonstrate that the selective use of Augustine would eventually weaken the very case it was meant to strengthen. In the process, commonalities and discontinuities between Augustine's ideas in their original context and their application in the present will be highlighted. The article concludes that, in the process of using Augustinian concepts to justify recent military action, his renowned reticence regarding the use of force was undermined.

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