/library/oar/handle/123456789/11624 2025-12-21T10:43:03Z 2025-12-21T10:43:03Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/141934 2025-12-04T11:15:45Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Sentencing in Maltese courts : a gender based analysis Abstract: This thesis is set to explore whether discrepancies exist between male and female offenders who appear in front of the Court of Magistrates (Criminal Judicature) and to explore the reasons why this occurs. Another aim of this study is to identify which types of crimes are mostly committed by females in Malta and whether aggravating factors and/or mitigating factors as well as sympathetic life circumstances can influence the type of sentence meted out. In order to answer the research questions a comparison and analysis between similar crimes committed by females and males was performed. The theoretical framework used in this research is that of the Focal Concerns Theory which attributes the more lenient sentences received by female offenders to the fact that the judiciary see female offenders as less blameworthy, less dangerous to society and to practical constraints both on an individual level as well as on a logistical level. The other theory to be tested is the Paternalism/Chivalry Theory which states that the judiciary views female offenders as naïve and therefore in need to protection. Hence they are meted out lenient sentences. This theory also includes the Evil Woman Hypothesis which states that when female offenders commit a crime which is usually perpetrated by males, the female offender will be met with harsher penalties because she is breaking the law and most importantly, she is going against socially accepted gender norms. The research method used in this thesis is that of a Mixed Methods approach. The quantitative research method consisted of gathering data of female offenders who were found guilty of a crime from criminal court sentences published online from the year 2005 to the year 2020. Subsequently the crimes were compared with similar crimes committed by males in the years 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. The factual information gathered through the quantitative approach helped in formulating the semi-structured interview guide which was used to interview ten professionals working/or used to work in the criminal justice field. A thematic analysis was used as a qualitative research method to place the author in a better position to answer the research questions while portraying exactly the participants’ opinions and experiences on the subject matter. The results of the quantitative approach clearly showed that there are gender discrepancies in Maltese criminal sentencing. Other results include the facts that Females are associated with Assault, Financial crimes, Sexual offenses, and Threats and that Assault is more common among EU and Non-EU Females and that Females are consistently associated with non-incarceration sentences, while males are associated with incarceration sentences. Different themes emerged after an in-depth analysis of the information gathered from participants; Female Offenders’ Demeanor in Court; Societal Views and Gender Stereotypes influencing the Criminal Court’s View of Female Offenders; the Validity of the Evil Woman Hypothesis, Sentencing Practice Outcomes between Male and Female Magistrates and finally the Introduction of Sentencing Guidelines in the Maltese Criminal Court Context. This research highlights the importance of the introduction of sentencing guidelines in the Maltese Criminal Court system. Another policy recommendation is to provide training in relation to stereotypical attitudes to the Judiciary. Description: Ph.D.(Melit.)

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/141889 2025-12-03T11:24:51Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Comparing linguistic and visuo-linguistic representations for noun-noun compound relation classification in English Abstract: Noun-noun compounds (NNCs), such as ‘restaurant owner’ and ‘city morgue’, are very frequent in the English language, and new ones are created regularly due to the high productivity of compounding as a word formation process. To fully understand the meaning of an NNC, we need to not only know the meaning of its parts, but also deduce the implicit semantic relationship between them. That is, we need to understand whether ‘city morgue’ means ‘a morgue made of cities’, ‘a morgue located in a city’ or something else entirely. Humans have clear intuitions about what relations can hold between the constituents of an NNC, but interpreting NNCs in a computational setting is a challenge. Accurate NNC processing is crucial for the advancement of many natural language processing tasks, including machine translation, text summarization, and natural language inference. Previous methods of computational NNC interpretation have been limited to approaches involving textual representations and linguistic features. However, research from both cognitive science and natural language processing suggests that grounding linguistic representations in vision or other modalities can increase performance on this and other tasks. Backed up by findings about human conceptual combination as well as theories of symbol grounding, our work is a novel comparison of linguistic and visuo-linguistic representations for the task of NNC interpretation. We frame NNC interpretation as a relation classification task, evaluating our approaches on a large annotated NNC dataset, with over 19,000 relationally-annotated compounds (Tratz, 2011). We employ two lines of experiments; one line explores the use of word2vec (Mikolov et al., 2013a) embeddings, compositionally combined into NNC representations in various ways, as inputs to an SVM classifier. The other line utilizes a BERT model, fine-tuned with a classifier layer on top. In both settings, we experiment with combining the textual representations with visual feature vectors obtained with a ResNet (He et al., 2016) model on images from ImageNet (Deng et al., 2009). We find that adding visual features increases performance on almost all data configurations in our SVM experiments, and that the results are statistically significant in some cases. In our BERT experiments, we find that BERT performs well on coarse-grained test data that may include previously seen constituents, but performs poorly on all other data configurations. However, adding raw ResNet feature vectors does increase BERT’s performance on the remaining settings, while normalized ResNet feature vectors contribute to little or no increase in performance. Our findings suggest that a visually grounded approach to NNC interpretation is a promising venture, and we view our novel approach as an encouraging starting point for more investigations into multimodal NNC processing. Description: M.Sc. (HLST)(Melit.)

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/141625 2025-11-25T12:51:22Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Criminalising homelessness? : an analysis of vagrancy, begging and loitering laws in Malta Abstract: This dissertation examines how the Maltese laws of vagrancy, begging and loitering relate to similar international laws that scholars argue disproportionately affect individuals experiencing homelessness. The research purpose was to understand the arguments both supporting and opposing such laws, and to consider how these insights might inform social policy in Malta. A qualitative research design was adopted, in which peer-reviewed academic literature was thematically analysed to identify recurring themes around the criminalisation of homelessness. The analysed articles included discussions on the implications of complaint driven enforcement practices, the barriers to reintegration and support faced by those experiencing homelessness, and the normative justifications for interventions targeting street homelessness. While efforts were made to locate literature outlining the negative consequences of repealing these provisions, no substantive evidence in favour of their retention were identified. This analysis informed the subsequent consideration of vagrancy, begging and loitering laws in Malta, and led to three recommendations: repeal Articles 338(w) and 338(x) of the Criminal Code, phase-out loitering bylaws, and invest in structural supports such as affordable housing and low-threshold services. Description: B.A. (Hons)(Melit.)

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/141624 2025-11-25T12:45:49Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: A comparative study on the access to social protection for migrant workers from outside the EU who are living in Malta or Ireland on the basis of an employment license Abstract: This dissertation analyses the national social protection legislation of Malta and Ireland, focusing specifically on the Social Security Act of Malta, and Ireland’s Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 (running consolidation). Access to four welfare benefits is examined: unemployment benefits, pensions, guaranteed minimum resources, and healthcare benefits. The research aims to assess the level of access third-country national (TCN) workers with a single work permit (Malta) or general work permit (Ireland) have to these benefits, and to identify the challenges they face. Additionally, the study aims to analyse specific social protection characteristics in each country, aligning them with Sainsbury’s theoretical welfare regime framework. The research is contextualised in Chapters 1-3, with a brief introduction to each country’s social protection and third-country national migration contexts. A qualitative research approach is adopted, using policy content analysis and descriptive coding to examine the legislative texts, and a cross-national comparative design is applied to address the two-country focus. The findings and analysis reveal that although the legislation states the same eligibility requirements for all applicants, the intersection of social protection legislation, immigration legislation, and administrative procedures, result in TCN workers being disproportionately disadvantaged when trying to access social protection. Additionally, it is highlighted that both countries demonstrate characteristics of the conservative corporatist and liberal welfare regime types. Considering the findings, key recommendations include modifying legislation to ensure clearer eligibility and decision-making processes, increasing training for professionals involved in the social protection system, and providing unemployment benefits and allowing longer timeframes for TCN workers to find new employment. It is also recommended to increase the accessibility of information for TCN workers, and to promote changes aimed at supporting and protecting all workers equally. Overall, the findings highlight the need for accessible and equitable social protection provision, founded on the principle of valuing and supporting all workers, regardless of their nationality or immigration status. Description: B.A. (Hons)(Melit.)

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z